Dead Art forms
Jack Rubin
In the Beginning
Surrealism as we know it today is closely related to some forms of abstract
art. In fact, they shared similar origins, but they diverged on their
interpretation of what those origins meant to the aesthetic of art.
At the end of the First War World, Tristan Tzara, leader of the Dada
movement, wanted to attack society through scandal. He believed that a
society that creates the monstrosity of war does not deserve art, so he
decided to give it anti-art-not beauty but ugliness. With phrases like Dada
destroys everything! Tzara wanted to offend the new industrial commercial
world-the bourgeoisie. However, his intended victims were not insulted at
all. Instead they thought that this rebellious new expression opposed, not
them but the "old art" and the "old patrons" of feudalism and church
dominion. In fact, the bourgeoisie embraced this "rebellious" new art so
thoroughly that anti-art became Art, the anti-academy the Academy, the
anti-conventionalism the Convention, and the rebellion through chaotic
images, the status quo.
One group of artists, however, did not embrace this new art that threw away
all which centuries of artists had learned and passed on about the craft of
art. The Surrealist movement gained momentum after the Dada movement. It was
lead by Andre Breton, a French doctor who had fought in the trenches during
the First World War. The artists in the movement researched and studied the
works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Some of the artists in the group
expressed themselves in the abstract tradition, while others, expressed
themselves in the symbolic tradition.
Two Distinct Groups Emerge
Michael S. Bell, through his research, realized that these two forms of
expression formed two distinct trends of surrealism with marked differences.
One could be qualified as Automatism, the other, as Veristic Surrealism.
"Automatism" explains Mr. Bell, "is a form of abstraction. It has been the
only type of surrealism accepted by critical reviewers after the war."
Basically, two different interpretations of the works of Freud and Jung
divided the two groups. For the purpose of personal analysis, Jung had
talked about not judging the images of the subconscious, but simply
accepting them as they came into consciousness so they could be analyzed.
This was termed Automatism.
The Automatists
When psychology talked about Automatism, these artists interpreted it as
referring to a suppression of consciousness in favor of the subconscious.
This group, being more focused on feeling and less analytical, understood
Automatism to be the automatic way in which the images of the subconscious
reach the conscience. They believed these images should not be burdened with
"meaning."
Faithful to this interpretation, the Automatists saw the academic discipline
of art as intolerant of the free expression of feeling, and felt form, which
had dominated the history of art, was a culprit in that intolerance. They
believed abstractionism was the only way to bring to life the images of the
subconscious. Coming from the Dada tradition, these artists also linked
scandal, insult and irreverence toward the elite's with freedom. They
continued to believe that lack of form was a way to rebel against them.
The Veristic Surrealists
This group, on the other hand, interpreted Automatism to mean allowing the
images of the subconscious to surface undisturbed so that their meaning
could then be deciphered through analysis. They wanted to faithfully
represent these images as a link between the abstract spiritual realities,
and the real forms of the material world. To them, the object stood as a
metaphor for an inner reality. Through metaphor the concrete world could be
understood, not by looking at the objects, but by looking into them.
Veristic Surrealists, saw academic discipline and form as the means to
represent the images of the subconscious with veracity; as a way to freeze
images that, if unrecorded, would easily dissolve once again into the
unknown. They hoped to find a way to follow the images of the subconscious
until the conscience could understand their meaning. The language of the
subconscious is the image, and the consciousness had to learn to decode that
language so it could translate it into its own language of words.
Later, Veristic Surrealism branched out into three other groups (see
Research on Surrealism In America).
Two Masters, Two Opposing Approaches to Art
Every profession has its own history in which the accumulation of knowledge
is the basis to push the frontiers into the unknown. Dali and Picasso are
two masters who stand at the vanguard of two opposite approaches to art in
the Twentieth Century: To use that accumulated knowledge and build upon it,
or to discard it.
Dali embraced all the science of painting as a way to study the psyche
through subconscious images. He called this process the Paranoiac Critical
Method. As any paranoiac, the artist should allow these images to reach the
conscience, and then do what the paranoiac cannot do: Freeze them on canvas
to give consciousness the opportunity to comprehend their meaning. Later on,
he expanded the process into the Oniric-Critical Method, in which the artist
pays attention to his dreams, freezing them through art, and analyzing them
as well. As Freud said, "A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter
that is not opened."
Picasso took the opposite approach to art. He inherited the gusto for
ugliness, scandal and chaos of the Dada movement and the automatic
surrealists. Picasso rejected the craft to become "primitive," deciding that
the ingenuity of childhood is the basis of art. To him this meant that the
less the artist is preoccupied with his craft the better his art. To Dali,
however, the "ingenuity of childhood" meant keeping an open mind and
maintaining the curiosity and excitement of the child throughout one's life,
not painting as a child.
The Struggle of Surrealism
For the automatists the approach to the mystery of Nature is to never become
conscious of the mystery, for the surrealists it is to learn from it. The
Picasso camp, won the "faith" of society. The Dali camp would have to secure
a dialog with the public to be able to show the individual the "surrealist
way of life" or the "path of individuation" as Jung called it.
The Veristic Surrealist quest is none other than the one described by Breton
as, "The cause of freedom and the transformation of man's consciousness." In
the works of surrealists we find the legacy of Bosch, Brueguel, William
Blake, the Symbolic painters of the Nineteenth Century, the perennial
questioning of philosophy, the search of psychology, and the spirit of
mysticism. It is work based on the desire to permit the forces that created
the world to illuminate our vision, allowing us to consciously develop our
human potential.
The Veristic surrealists of today recognize the difficulties that their
movement has faced during the second half of the Twentieth Century as it
attempted to become a major cultural force, like modernism had. The United
States, a country in which the business community never had to share its
power with the aristocracy, wholeheartedly embraced abstraction and
modernism. They shared the belief of abstract artists that the chaos of
action painting and automatism were expressions of freedom, and that form,
subjugation and inhibition walked hand in hand.
The American art establishment looked at the image of form with mistrust
until the advent of Pop Art, which glorified the imperialism of commerce,
advertisement and marketing. Later, Photorealism which glorified modern
life, was accepted. With these two movements Realism entered the cultural
picture again (see Art Through the Ages). Therefore, the only historical
artistic expression still in want of recognition as a cultural force in the
Twentieth Century, is Veristic Surrealism.
The Future of Surrealism
Because it was ignored and rejected by the new academy of modernism,
Veristic Surrealism in its evolution has become a new art. A new art that in
the words of Donald Kuspit, "Must first show that it has democratic
appeal-appeal to those generally unschooled in art or not professionally
interested in it. Then it must suffer a period of aristocratic rejection by
those schooled in an accepted and thereby 'traditional' form of art-those
with a vested interest in a known art and concerned with protecting it at
all costs."
Contemporary Veristic Surrealists have worked for the past fifty years in
silent seclusion. A renaissance of this art form will provide the world with
new eternal aesthetic pleasures and reawaken the use of meaningful
expression in art, so that it can once again have a dialogue with the
public.
It would take fifty years for artists born after the Second World War to
discover how right this method is for helping us all understand the
architecture of the psyche. Those who have understood the method, who have
faithfully followed the images of the subconscious and, with patience,
painted and analyzed them, have a lot to teach us about the make up and
interaction of the three planes of the Spiritual, the psychological, and the
physical.
david
surrealist.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.rickerby/rickerbyweb/openingpages/rick1welcome.htm
Jack Rubin
You have to ask Mani Deli that because he is the expert on surrealism here
But this one is pretty good so let's call it Gothic.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.rickerby/rickerbyweb/prints/pages/printswhitby.htm
Mani Deli
wrote:
>Hi jack, what group do i fit in? i have always referred to my art as a
>surrealist.
>http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.rickerby/rickerbyweb/openingpages/rick1welcome.htm
>
Art school talent, ability limited by poor technique which makes good
ideas look amateurish. The work shows how bad complexity looks when
technique is lacking.
No skill no art!
Tired of Modern Art? check http://www3.sympatico.ca/manideli/
Mani Deli
wrote:
>Hi David ,
>
>
> You have to ask Mani Deli that because he is the expert on surrealism here
>
>But this one is pretty good so let's call it Gothic.
>
I'm not interested in labels. Paintings aren't better or worse because
of labels or isms or whether an artist worked hard and was honest.
Biljo White
> Art school talent, ability limited by poor technique which makes good
> ideas look amateurish. The work shows how bad complexity looks when
> technique is lacking.
Yep.
Greenbud
"Mani Deli" <ma...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:lg3i90l6190olqkrq...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 05 May 2004 08:04:25 +0100, david <rick...@ntlworld.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Hi jack, what group do i fit in? i have always referred to my art as a
> >surrealist.
>
>http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.rickerby/rickerbyweb/openingpages/rick1w
elcome.htm
> >
>
> Art school talent, ability limited by poor technique which makes good
> ideas look amateurish. The work shows how bad complexity looks when
> technique is lacking.
>
It's really difficult to judge the technique, especially the rendering by
looking at such tiny pictures. The pixels are way bigger than the
brushstrokes.
--
Greenbud
Mani Deli
<gNr0e5e...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>It's really difficult to judge the technique, especially the rendering by
>looking at such tiny pictures.
If something looks bad as a tiny picture in my opinion it hopeless in
a larger format.
> The pixels are way bigger than the
>brushstrokes.
In fact even when something looks good in small format it doesn't mean
it will look good enlarged.
That in my opinion is why one needs to stand far away from much 20th
century realism as a close look usually reveals disaster. Fine work
holds up at any distance but especially from close.
sam ende
> That in my opinion is why one needs to stand far away from much 20th
> century realism as a close look usually reveals disaster. Fine work
> holds up at any distance but especially from close.
you know that is so true. recently i loaded a hi res pix of the mona
lisa in gimp and played around with with it, adjusted brightness and
contrast et blah (it's amazing just how young and pretty she actually
is under all that darkening), and zooming in its just flawles the face
is.
sammi
david
dose it fit in? and don't say junk.
DNALJM
>dose it fit in? and don't say junk.
>
The subject matter (eyeballs, melting skies, working from your mind and
photos rather than life) seems to be related to T shirt designers and tattoo
artists. Some people consider this to be "folk art" or "outsider art." I
don't know any forums for this work but you could do a web search for it.
Self-taught would probably work too as you may find some hits that relate to
yours.
Jane