SURREALISM

Figurative composition with imagined environment

ASSIGNMENT:Surrealist Artwork using shading and imagined landscape

• Apply skills learned from shading/value lesson to shade the mannequin(s) to create the illusion of 3-D form.

• Must include at least one full figure (head to foot). Optional include more than one full or partial figure/mannequin

• Include at least one object of your choice from direct observation. Draw object in correct proportional relationship to mannequin, shade and/or color it.

• Create an imagined environment in the negative space (background). Must be creative and inventive in doing this but also need to refer to visual references for greater verisimilitude. Use 1 or 2 point perspective.

• Use entire page and arrange objects to make an dynamic and balanced composition, with a clear center of interest. Make at least 3 thumbnails before you begin.

Surrealist figure assignment cont’d.

• Apply previous knowledge of foreground, middle ground and background as well as attention to pleasing distribution of positive and negative shapes.

• Show evidence of care and effort to produce a creative, original work of art

• Artwork clearly relflects the influence of Surrealism as an art movement based on visuals displayed and discussed in class

• Artwork expresses a complete idea and is completed by due date:

• Materials: Gray or White paper, 18 x 24 inches, graphite sticks, (white pastel), colored pencils, drawing pencils, kneaded eraser

Surrealism

• Surrealism as an art historical early 20th century movement and a term used to describe certain kinds of artwork in which artists combine normally unrelated objects and situations...(in which) scenes are often dreamlike or set in unnatural surroundings.(see Bonner,Gerald. Davis Pub. Worcester MA, 1997. p.615)

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931

SOME SURREALIST STRATEGIES

• Juxtaposition of unrelated objects• Disproportion of one object to

another• Distortion or exaggeration of

features such as melting clocks• Opposites included in same

picture such as day and night, interior and exterior, back view conflated with front view

• Unrealistic or illogical events depicted (figures floating in air, mountain suspended in sky)

• Threatening or dreamlike atmosphere or mood conveyed through extreme perspective and/or lighting

Strategies used to create Surrealist images cont’d:

Giorgio de Chirico, Ritornant

Giorgio de Chirico, The Profit, 1915

Please Google Giorgio De Chirico

To explore his work further. Especially note the emotional

Effect evoked by his backgrounds or settings.

What is it that makes them so foreboding????

De Chirico, La Fabrique des Reves

CHIRICO

Link to video on Salvador Dali and Max Ernst:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUGwqm7Q-vo&feature=fvsr

S. Dali, Lighted Giraffes, oil on canvas, 1936-7

Max Ernst The Barbarians 1937

David Salle, Contemporary American painter

David Salle, Angels in the Rain, 1998

David Salle (born 1952) is an American painter and leading contemporary figurative artist.

Salle was born in Norman, Oklahoma. He earned a BFA and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied with John Baldessari.

Salle’s work first came to public attention in New York in the early 1980s.His paintings comprise what appeared to be randomly juxtaposed images, or images painted on top of each other with deliberately ham-fisted paint handling.

His subject matter tended toward the popular, the gratuitous, and the pornographic, and was combined in ways that appeared deliberately incomprehensible. His work was called "cynical", "calculating", and "cold”.

In the next few years he and his contemporaries - termed “postmodern” - achieved a succes de scandale with their work. He also turned his hand to set and costume design, photography, and directing mainstream cinema.

David Salle

Neo Rauch, Contemporary German painter, b. East Germany

Frida Kahlo, Mexican mid 20th century painter (1907-1954)

“Two Fridas”

Art Vocabulary/Review

What is Proportion?

comparative size relationship between several objects or between parts of a single object or figure.

What is Foreground, Middle-ground and Background?

Foreground- A term used in a composition that describes the objects closest to you, which are also farthest down the picture plane

Middle-ground- Area between the Foreground and Background

Background- The part of a pictorial representation that appears to be in the distance. This area provides relief from objects in foreground.

Ways to make your artwork Surreal

Changing an object’s scale

Use of Juxtaposition

Use of metamorphosis

Use of dislocation

Use of levitation