Surreal
Feckless
synonym for strange, or weird. I'm not even sure what a correct usage would
be, outside of an art history class. Has anyone encountered a good example?
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AWILLIS957
>From: "Feckless" so...@2muchspam.com
>Does this word mean anything? I hear it increasingly as an > all-purpose
synonym for strange, or weird.
Visually strange or weird.
So you see a girl walking up the high street dressed as a rabbit and carrying a
pink umbrella with carrots dangling from it, and the sight might strike you as
surreal. (Either that or you live in Brighton.) "Bizarre", "weird", or
"strange" don't convey the visual sense.
Dali, Magritte, and the gang painted oddity into conventional reality, or vice
versa, and so lent a useful word to the language. That the word has become so
hackneyed probably owes something to the banality of Surrealism as a way of
seeing, and to its accessibilty as an art form. You never hear people saying
"how cubist".
Albert Peasemarch.
Pat Durkin
"Chris Malcolm" <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:aieam2$on7$1...@scotsman.ed.ac.uk...
> nature of reality and appearances. The surrealist painters held a
> particular view on this, which they tried to express by painting weird
> things. Sometimes these needed explanation, such as Magritte's
> painting of a pipe, which would have been confusing without its title
> (translated) "This is not a pipe." The weird things they painted were
> not in themselves surreal, but gave rise to the popular use of the
> word "surreal" to mean "like a surrealist painting".
>
> Since we have no other word for the strictly surreal, and plenty for
> the bizarre, I recommend retaining the proper use of "surreal".
>
I include Escher in the surrealist category, even if he isn't the
contemporary of Dali. For me, surrealism is the "tied in knots" effect
of trying to work my way through the presented graphic, and finding
that to believe my eyes requires a distortion of reality.
Who invented the Möbius strip? Well, I guess it bears his name, but I
think I would put him in the same category.
MCKAY john
But it may not be related to art at all ... Have you not heard of Conway's
surreal numbers ?
John McKay
--
But leave the wise to wrangle, and with me
the quarrel of the universe let be;
and, in some corner of the hubbub couched,
make game of that which makes as much of thee.
J. J. Lodder
Strictly speaking the idea of the surreal was a theory about the
> nature of reality and appearances. The surrealist painters held a
> particular view on this, which they tried to express by painting weird
> things. Sometimes these needed explanation, such as Magritte's
> painting of a pipe, which would have been confusing without its title
> (translated) "This is not a pipe." The weird things they painted were
> not in themselves surreal, but gave rise to the popular use of the
> word "surreal" to mean "like a surrealist painting".
On the contrary, the aim of the explanation is to confuse,
Jan
J. J. Lodder
Escher himself would very much object to your cetegorization.
He wasn't interested in the surrealist kind of thing.
What interested him were the peculiarities inherent in making 2-D images
of 3-D objects.
> Who invented the Möbius strip? Well, I guess it bears his name, but I
> think I would put him in the same category.
Of course not, Moebius was just a plain mathematician,
doing straightforward (then just invented) topology,
Jan
Pat Durkin
"J. J. Lodder" <nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote in message
news:1fgb16e.25n...@de-ster.demon.nl...
> Pat Durkin <p...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "Chris Malcolm" <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote in message
> > news:aieam2$on7$1...@scotsman.ed.ac.uk...
> > > awill...@aol.com (AWILLIS957) writes:
> > >
> > > >>Subject: Surreal
> > > >>From: "Feckless" so...@2muchspam.com
> > >
> > > >>Does this word mean anything? I hear it increasingly as an >
> > all-purpose
> > > >synonym for strange, or weird.
> > >
> > > >Visually strange or weird.
> > >
> > reality, or vice
> > > >versa, and so lent a useful word to the language.
> > > Strictly speaking the idea of the surreal was a theory about the
> > > nature of reality and appearances. The surrealist painters held a
> > > particular view on this, which they tried to express by painting
weird
> > > things.
> > >
> > > Since we have no other word for the strictly surreal, and plenty
for
> > > the bizarre, I recommend retaining the proper use of "surreal".
> > >
> >
> > I include Escher in the surrealist category, even if he isn't the
> > contemporary of Dali. For me, surrealism is the "tied in knots"
effect
> > of trying to work my way through the presented graphic, and finding
> > that to believe my eyes requires a distortion of reality.
>
> Escher himself would very much object to your cetegorization.
> He wasn't interested in the surrealist kind of thing.
> What interested him were the peculiarities inherent in making 2-D
images
> of 3-D objects.
>
I don't care what Escher _might_ think of my perceptions of his work.
I don't care what _any_ artist thinks of my opinion. If I get a strange
feeling in observing someone's work, I will describe that work in my
terms, and not try to conform my thoughts to what the author or some art
critic thinks the work means.
> > Who invented the Möbius strip? Well, I guess it bears his name, but
I
> > think I would put him in the same category.
>
> Of course not, Moebius was just a plain mathematician,
> doing straightforward (then just invented) topology,
So what? Can't you ever step outside the bounds of logic?
R H Draney
news:1fgb13t.10p...@de-ster.demon.nl:
> Chris Malcolm <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> Magritte's painting of a pipe, which would have been confusing
>> without its title (translated) "This is not a pipe."
>
> On the contrary, the aim of the explanation is to confuse,
The *effect* maybe, but I'm not so sure about the "aim"...it's my
understanding that the artist was aiming for a "higher truth" than
simple representation, a truth in which the word "this" could be said
to refer to the painting (it's not a pipe; it's a *painting* of a
pipe), to the word "ceci" or the entire caption, or to the French
language itself....
Magritte often painted sets of four objects, with each frame labelled
as something utterly unrelated to the object depicted...one of his
most jarring works take the same form, but with *one* of the four
frames depicting an article of luggage marked "le valise"...a nice
touch, casting doubt on the theory that his captions were meant to
mislead....r
--
This post has nothing whatsoever to do with giraffes.