Surrealism, who has not heard this word nowadays? World of the dreams and everything that is irrational, impossible or grotesque, a cultural movement founded immediately after the First World War and still embraced nowadays by many artists. In order to understand it better it is necessary to look deeper into the work of two outstanding artists strongly connected with this movement, and for whom this style was an integral part of their lives. This essay's primary objective is to look closer at Desk Suit , 1936, by Elsa Schiaparelli and compare it to Anthropomorphic Chest of Drawers, 1936, by Salvador Dali. These two pieces of art although so different, have a lot in common.
These differences originate from the difference in purpose because of the heritage, culture and beliefs of the artists. Both Metamorphosis of Narcissus and The Attitude of Lightning Towards a Lady-mountain are prime examples of Surrealist paintings. There are many similarities and differences that exist between the two artworks. The differences are largely due to the heritage of the artists, their beliefs and experience as well as the culture during the period. Whilst the motivations and what the works depict are different, the way they do so are quintessentially Surrealist.
Dali used many mediums to illustrate his inspirations. His most popular of course are his paintings, but he also used such media as jewelry, advertisements, beer-bottle designs, ballet sets, and costumes. Dali also experimented his talents in film as well. In 1928 he and childhood mentor Luis Bundel produced the famous surrealist film ÒUn Chein AndalouÓ (An
Throughout history artists have used various mediums to express their views of the world, some use oils and canvas, some use marble or clay, and others use a camera. Gregory Crewdson uses both a camera and his flawless lighting skills to create beautiful other worldly scenes. In the Article In a lonely place by Gregory Crewdson, Crewdson discusses how his art reflexes the “ideas of beauty, sadness, alienation, and desire.” Crewdson has derived these ideas from a myriad of influences. The most influential of these sources would have to be other artists and Hollywood films. The light work used in almost all of Crewdson’s pieces is very reminiscent of the unnatural light that embodies the great works of the Baroque period of art.
Near the Inner Station: "A black figure stood up, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms, across the glow. It had horns... some sorcerer, some witch-man, no doubt; it looked fiend-like enough" The African landscape is not only culpable for Kurtz's wrongs, but it is also a place of darkness and of evil, a place of paganism, with "the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations"; a place of "lurking death", cannibalism, disease and insanity - all of Marlow's reality is filtered through the European consciousness, and all of his narrative serves to endorse European supremacist ideologies.
The woman on the left and her mirrored image on the right gives the painting a symmetrical balance. The composition seems to be divided by the left mirror post that goes down vertically. The symmetry is what made me attentive to the fact that the reflection of the girl’s face is not the same as her face on the left side of the painting. The girl’s gesture as she reaches out to the edges of the mirror links the girl and her reflection. Picasso put emphasis on this by using the red stripes beginning at the girl’s chest extending all the way to the ends of her fingertips.
“The Grafin von Scholfeld with her Daughter” is oil on canvas art piece painted in 1793. It is a painting of a woman holding her daughter on her lap, the woman being “The Grafin von Schonfeld.” The woman is dressed in clothing that is from the upper class or a royalty stature in the late 1700’s. The clothing looks rich in material and sleek like silk in the colors of wine and a rich green. She has a covering on her head that looks like an extravagant scarf that drapes over her shoulder on one side, also made of the same silky material used for her dress. The woman has pale skin, reddish brown hair, bluish eyes, and rosy cheeks.
At this period, surrealists were very attracted to Salvador Dali because of his strong personality and his violent works and paintings full of sexual and excrements allusions (Neret, 2000, p.21). The trompe-l'oeuil photographs, by Salvador Dali, took surrealist paintings to another level by using techniques never used before. These paintings are filled with unusual shapes, double-sided figures and, anamorphosis, that are distorted images that could be well understood only if seen from a certain angle. They made him "a quarter century in advance, the patron saint of American photo-realists" (Néret, 2000, p.27). They were used to transcribe the image of Dali's dreams.
Dante's Inferno and The Garden of Earthly Delights The Garden of Earthly Delights painted by Hieronymus Bosch, depicts many vivid fictional scenes in triptych style. The right wing of the triptych depicts Hell and the causes of man's downfall, which Dante wrote about in the Inferno. Dante tries to convey to all humanity the consequences of human actions and the levels of hell that he believes exist for different levels of sins. Dante divides Hell up into ten different circles, and there is an upper and a lower level of Hell. Dante and Bosch have similar views on the evil within people and this evil is represented in their works, whether it transpires in a painting or in a book.
The “dream world” style is depicted as, “each object existed in strange contrast to other objects and was contained in a space that often appeared to tilt sharply upward. He applied bright colors to small objects set off against large patches of dull color” (Encyclopedia 1). The biggest influence on Dali’s paintings was the Surrealist movement which leads to smaller influences like history, science, and other artists. Through these influences Dali created many unique paintings such as: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans, The Persistence of Memory, and Portrait de Paul