Understanding surrealism paintings/Can you really ever?
CHENNO
My Question to anyone is as follows- Can you really ever understand a surreal
painting? or any of the forms of painting? understand meanings, or really
innterpret them?(I do not mean understand titles such as
cubism,abstract,renaissance..etc) I mean the meaning?
Doesn't the artist hold tha artistic expression key alone?
,I ask how can you really know what the artist is truly after?
or thinking?...in the worlds of dream and fantasy is a painting or a poem
understood by anyone really,or a formed opinion?
bright colors and fanciful shapes that fill paintings, are within the artist
alone,and put to the canvas, paper what have you ...
Art is as varied as the life from which it springs. Each artist portrays
different aspects of the world, So I ask can you really ever understand?
CHENNO ôżô
Painting is silent poetry, and poetry painting that speaks. - Simonides
Dale Houstman
> My Question to anyone is as follows- Can you really ever understand a surreal
> painting? or any of the forms of painting? understand meanings, or really
> innterpret them?(I do not mean understand titles such as
> cubism,abstract,renaissance..etc) I mean the meaning?
>
> Doesn't the artist hold tha artistic expression key alone?
>
>
I have found that most people think "meaning" is the same as
"paraphrase" in that a particular image or text is "merely" an
obstruction between the viewer and the "nougat". This notion
is propped up in school by the rather clam-handed approach
taken towards analysis: "what is the poet *really* trying to say
here?" But this never appealed to me even as a child; I assumed
that the writer meant exactly what they had written. For myself,
the entire notion of "mystery" and "riddle" in art is overstated.
In essence there is no "key" to be owned, since there is no "door"
to be opened.
This isn't to say that my experience of any work is the same as
the artist's, anymore than my experience of plumbing is the same
as the plumber's. But it doesn't need to be, and really shouldn't
be; the work grows into an existence as I approach it, and finally
it is what it finds in me that is the pertinent point. Or the impertinent
point.
Dale
barrett john erickson
whenever i use the term "art" i am thinking of a _process_ which begins with
a spontaneous act of creation (physical -- by an "artist") producing an
artifact (in the form of a painting, or a text, or a performance, or a film,
etc.) which is then encountered in a creative interaction which produces
some psycho/physical changes in an "other".
"meaning" can be found in the "artist" or the "other" (as far as they report
it) but not in the artifact.
in my opinion, any attempt to place meaning in the artifact itself is a
mystification of "art" which enhances the falsified roles of "artist" or
"critic" or "curator" or etc. while perpetuating the alienation of the
"other" from his/her creative potential, thereby reinforcing the an existing
order which depends upon this alienation for its survival.
-- barrett
bar...@MagneticFields.org
http://www.MagneticFields.org/
"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of
the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and
future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be
perceived as contradictions."
...André Breton
Talysman
:)> My Question to anyone is as follows- Can you really ever
:)> understand a surreal painting? or any of the forms of painting?
:)> understand meanings, or really innterpret them?
Dale Houstman:
:) I have found that most people think "meaning" is the same as
:)"paraphrase" in that a particular image or text is "merely" an
:)obstruction between the viewer and the "nougat".
in Theodore Roszak's _Where_the_Wasteland_Ends_,
at some point he makes a distinction between "symbol"
and "cypher" in relation to art and mysticism. what
you describe and condemn is the college professor's
approach to interpreting poetry and art as a series
of cyphers, a secret code where "Moby Dick" represents
"Satan" and "Ahab" represents obsession.
this is different from a symbol, which does not "stand
for" something else, but suggests many different things
and forges connections between what may have previously
been unconnected.
--
Warhol dreamed our worst nightmares in the printing press of his pillow.
His Most Feathered Eminence, the Ur-Beatle
Dale Houstman
>
> this is different from a symbol, which does not "stand
> for" something else, but suggests many different things
> and forges connections between what may have previously
> been unconnected.
Duly noted, although I never used the word "symbol"
in my post. But there is no doubt that (for instance) the
Amercian flag is a symbol. And it does "stand for" something
else. I am not at all certain your distinction between the
collegiate paraphrase and the symbol is clearly drawn.
What you claim for "symbols" is more properly assigned
to "metaphors" which far from "standing for something
else" constitute as near an approach to the marvelous as
many of us are likely to make.
The point stands: as far as I could tell in college and
elsewhere, the "symbol" constitutes (as its very name suggests)
a system of similitude and replacement. "Ahab" stands in for the "Devil
of Human Pride" and "Campbells" stands in for "soup."
Symbols (of course) may stand in for a myriad of things
(the American flag is victory, blood, freedom, love, pride,
power, mother, apple pie) but it still can be used to cover
the ground of perception with an all too easy tarp. One
cannot avoid symbols of course (since words and gestures
etc. are also that), but as they are used consciously in
texts, they have a tendency to be used childishly, to stand
in for (finally) thought.
Anyway, I was mainly talking about the distinction that
lies between "meaning" and "paraphrase". If what a viewer
is looking for is some form of direct involvement with the
object they are viewing, then such considerations as paraphrase
are only there to obstruct the process. But this is exactly
what a person is taught to do; to break down the depictions
into easily-assimilated symbols and to reconstruct a paragraph
which "explains" the work. This very process defeats their
innate ability to view the world as a whole. It is little different
from seeing a chair and spending an hour or two writing a
paraphrase of its function before one can sit in it.
This also connects directly to Breton's distinction between
"the mystery" and "the marvelous" in that "the mystery" of art
is construed as an elitist gatekeeper. "The marvelous" is direct
apprehension of the world. Difficult as that seems, it is
basically natural. There is little reason to suppose that the
world of the arts must be forever hidden behind mysteries. I
personally have never experienced that. Art is directly
accessible, and the education of paraphrase only will defeat
that process.
Dale
Perceptor
> Talysman wrote:
>
> > Warhol ... nightmares...
>
> click click bang bang
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> [Image]
Bang, Bang.
Pop, Pop.
It's all the same to him now.
barrett john erickson
sub...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
<7adam8$v4m$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>Dada plays were written to be so full of pseudo-symbolism that theater
>critics would put all sorts of meaning into them. of course, they were
>completely absurd and surrealist in the truest sense of the word. they were
>created to exploit the pretension of the bourgeois audience. Therefore
>surrealist art can not be understood. If you ask a surrealist about the
>meaning of a painting, he will tell you it transcends meaning. However, the
>true and sober purpose of surrealism is to create nothing and try to pass
it
>off as something. If you try to look past all that nothingness, you're just
>as pretentious as those critics that surrealism means to revolt against
you begin by making a specious claim that dada plays can somehow prove
something about surrealist painting, then you mis-attribute dada nihilism to
"surrealism".
the first "true and sober purpose of surrealism" was certainly not to create
nothing -- much less pass nothing off as something -- but to transcend the
nihilism of dada that you seem to confuse it with, and infuse daily living
with the kind of meaning which can only be found in the poetic dimension.
that said, aside from the fact that you continue to mistake the poetic
saturation sought by surrealists with the hollow "nothingness" of dada, you
end with a valid position against critics and their pretensions which is
worth defending.
sub...@my-dejanews.com
critics would put all sorts of meaning into them. of course, they were
completely absurd and surrealist in the truest sense of the word. they were
created to exploit the pretension of the bourgeois audience. Therefore
surrealist art can not be understood. If you ask a surrealist about the
meaning of a painting, he will tell you it transcends meaning. However, the
true and sober purpose of surrealism is to create nothing and try to pass it
off as something. If you try to look past all that nothingness, you're just
as pretentious as those critics that surrealism means to revolt against
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Kay Kane
disconcert the viewer which, in turn, makes the viewer (with brains and an
open mind) reexamine preconceived notions of reality.
Kay Kane
sub...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
<7adam8$v4m$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
Brandon J. Freels
art.
Surrealism is the freedom of the mind.
See the declaration of Jan. 27, 1925!!!!
---BJF
Kay Kane wrote in message ...
Lutegirl
naive,really has been an undertaking of the subconscious sending information to
other subconsious
receivers,who are consciously being decieved into implying or derriving meaning
from the imagry.True it is nothing on the surface as to what the real image is
all about.
The conscious mind cannot accept or comprehend that it is a helpless pawn and
tool of the subconsious,so it justifies this ignorance with "meaning"...which
means nothing....which includes this explaination.
barrett john erickson
>Wrong! The true purpose of surrealism is to subvert reality in order to
>disconcert the viewer which, in turn, makes the viewer (with brains and an
>open mind) reexamine preconceived notions of reality.
>Kay Kane
Brandon correctly highlights the flaw in your comment : it limits action to
the scope of a performance intended to disrupt a "viewer's" sense of reality
(which consequently makes it more a description of dada than "surrealism").
this simply isn't sufficient.
it isn't enough to disrupt another's complacency and subvert their reality.
we need to overthrow the suffocating constrictions (both internal and
external) which retard the imagination.
we must pursue the _enhancement_ of reality, expanding the experience of
all, through the integration of the liberated imagination into daily
living -- not as a terrorist act, but as a _revolutionary_ act.
Leo Sgouros
barrett john erickson wrote in message
<_reB2.786$986....@nntp1.nac.net>...
people's need to view reality a certain way-
it is presuming the artist is a piece of some larger entity, when in fact
the surrealist may be far from it-but in the universal language of free-flow
idea and art you imprint your symbolism on the work.The artist has long gone
by the time you get around to it.
Do not presume the bare skin is there for your pleasure only.
Leo
miles cromwell
i do not believe in milk.
do you believe in honey?
everything that is, is metaphor.
elag
Dale Houstman
elag wrote:
> a metaphor is like a simile.
I met a whore who liked my smile. Once
a long time ago, like...
Metaphors are not as easily assimilated as similes.
Simile is to Metaphor as Kali is to Shiva.
Similes do the petty labor for the Metaphor's Uberness.
Similes are cowardly Metaphors.
DMH
Leo Sgouros
elag wrote in message <36D98686...@concentric.net>...
>a metaphor is like a simile.
euphoria is like a smiley,then.