Ok Belkina, Toes heels, 2022. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm.
Surrealism: amusing introduction
Salvador Dalí changed the approach to the art world forever when, some eighty years ago, he procured a diving suit, pursuing the intention of wearing it to an important lecture in order to "delve into the depths of the human subconscious." The special equipment was sourced by the artist in the spring of 1936 at a dive store in southeast England, where the Spanish master also made his intentions known to the business clerk. This very diving suit, transformed by the eccentric Dali into a means of investigating the human psyche, was the centerpiece of the International Exhibition of Surrealism, which, held in London that same year, brought together the greatest masters of the twentieth century, including, Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, Max Ernst, Alexander Calder, Giorgio de Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Alberto Giacometti, Paul Klee, Joan Miró, and, of course, Salvador Dali. During this important event, the aforementioned lecture took place, where Dali, dressed as a diver, made a "heavy" entrance on stage: the iron costume was so cumbersome that some friends had to help him onto the stage. Only once he reached his destination did the master realize that his words, concealed by the heavy "armor," could not be heard by the audience; nevertheless, he continued with his speech. At one point, however, inside the suit began to run out of air, and Dali began to fidget nervously in order to warn the audience of the imminent danger of suffocation. The participants, however, did not immediately understand the artist's pleas for help and continued to applaud and laugh at the apparent performance. Undoubtedly, this would have been one of the most absurd, and stupid, deaths in the history of art, if, at some point, the artist's wife had not realized the gravity of the situation and urged the event organizers to release her beloved. Why narrate this episode as an introduction to Surrealism? Indeed, this fact sums up with force, irony and impetus the ideology of the aforementioned movement, which, often, precisely through eccentricity, placed at the center of its poetics the unconscious and dreamlike dimensions of the human being, considered as the only entities capable of narrating reality without the filters of reason.
Dominic Virtosu, Pink king, 2021. Oil on canvas, 130 x 100 cm.
Taco Eisma, TV, 2022. Oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm.
Brief History of Surrealism
The term Surrealism, invented by the poet Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917, means everything that represents those motions and associations derived from the human unconscious, made partly "tangible" by their placement within a dimension of "super-reality." The Surrealist movement was born after World War I and, more precisely, two years after the end of Dadaism, an artistic trend from which it inherited certain aspects, such as: reaction to Cubist formalism, proximity to the nihilist revolt, exaltation of nonsense and the irrational, and the use of elements of psychic automatism and randomness. Despite the great weight that Surrealism exerted in the world of figurative art, it arose primarily as a literary movement, aimed at exploring the unconscious, without the aid of rationality and logical thought. In fact, the Surrealist Manifesto, published in 1924, was written by the literati Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault and André Breton, who were intrigued by the expression of the deepest human thoughts, and the investigation of them, by the well-known psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. It was the latter who was recognized as the first inspirer of the movement and, in particular, his 1899 book, entitled The Interpretation of Dreams, pushed the Surrealists to understand the mechanisms of the unconscious through the study and analysis of the dream world. In addition, Freudian free association theories also massively influenced the movement, which, through the latter, was able to give voice to the deepest insights of the human being. In a nutshell, surrealist artistic research was applied by letting ideas flow freely, without some rational filters, giving birth to forms, words, gestures, actions, lines, drawings and colors, which were expressed through a natural automatism. With regard to the artistic techniques, and stylistic devices, employed by the Surrealists in order to realize the above purposes, three distinct methodological areas were developed: the first was frottage, grattage and collage, which aimed to create a new figurative language through the union of oil painting with materials that formed figures in relief; the second was the dream "method," that is, dedicated to the investigation of the world of dreams, where Salvador Dali and René Magritte distinguished themselves, without a shadow of a doubt; and the third was abstractionism, where works were created through the automatism of thought, much like the paintings of Joan Miró. In summary, the main purpose of Surrealism is to investigate the self; in fact, precisely through viewing the works of this movement, viewers can be stimulated to reason about their unconscious in order to understand their own mind. This quest for self-awareness, which involves a different observation of the self, made the theories of the Surrealists among the most interesting of the 20th century.
Haydar Ekinekk, Woman & rope 2, 2020. Oil on canvas, 100 x 120 cm.
Arman Ohanyan, From psychiatric hospital series, 2022. Oil on cardboard, 85 x 65 cm.
Surrealism in contemporary art
The great success encountered by Surrealism within contemporary art is the manifest of the more classical conception of existence, the linear one, in which time, represented as a wheel, reproposes events, and consequently artistic currents, within related epochs, following in an incessant perpetual motion. In fact, Surrealism, which arose in a traumatic and unstable cultural climate, post-World War I, is well re-proposed within the dramas of our modernity, indelibly marked by conflicts, pandemics and economic crises, where, once again, it appears necessary, and comforting, to take refuge within a "super-reality." This desire for escapism can be found in the work of multiple contemporary surrealists, such as, for example, Mary Reid Kelley, Penny Slinger, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Jonathan Meese, and Inka Essenhigh, but also within the artistic investigation of some of Artmajeur's artists, such as Sailev, Robert Van Den Herik, and Jean-Marie Gitard (Mr. STRANGE).
Sailev, Foodchain disruption, 2019. Oil on canvas, 81,6 x 66,3 cm.
Sailev: Foodchain disruption
Sailev is a contemporary French painter, whose artistic investigation deals, predominantly, with themes related to nature and human society, which are expressed through poetic and provocative visions, aimed at reflecting a world perceived through dreamlike, psychedelic, symbolist and ironic constructions. Moreover, in the painting entitled Foodchain disruption, an additional point of view is added to the aforementioned features, which, oftentimes, animates the artist's works: the promotion of concepts related to eco-art and socially engaged art. In fact, the canvas, in which animals intent on "eating" one another are superimposed, as in a kind of tower, pursues the intention of openly denouncing the looming environmental crisis, in which the customs of the food chain are often interrupted. Speaking of the great examples of surrealism, other animals that "eat" each other are also found in Salvador Dali's iconic painting entitled Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee, where, in the same dreamlike atmosphere, a fish and two tigers with gaping jaws follow one another.
Robert Van Den Herik, Forever home, 2022. Oil on MDF panel, 80 x 80 cm.
Robert Van Den Herik: Forever home
About the painting Forever home it is necessary to quote first of all the words of the artist himself: It is a surreal representation of a deserted planet in the cosmos. At first glance, it has much in common with the royal galleries of the seaside resort of Ostend (Belgium), which, known for its beautiful mosaic floor, enjoys a splendid view of the sea. To these exhaustive descriptions by Robert Van Den Herik, it is good to add how, in addition to the vision of a realistic seascape, the presence of the earth and other static planets in the sky are also added, in a totally surreal, dreamlike and imaginative way, aimed at re-proposing a poetics of stillness, immobility and silence, which brings us back to Giorgio de Chirico's metaphysical stylistic features, such as: the timeless atmospheres, the looming sun, the perspective that is falsely coherent but actually responds to different vanishing points, the total absence of human presence, the fascination of columns, and the flat-grounding of color.
Jean-Marie Gitard (Mr STRANGE), The fall, 2022. Oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm.
Jean-Marie Gitard (Mr STRANGE): The fall
Mr. STRANGE's painting, titled The Fall, seems to be a continuation, in a contemporary key, of the story of the protagonist of Magritte's iconic masterpiece The Son of Man, for in both works we find the presence of a distinguished man wearing a bowler hat. In The Son of Man, the clothes of the painting's protagonist were carefully chosen by the French master in order to represent the bourgeoisie, a class he openly despised, as he considered it mean and hypocritical. Mr. STRANGE probably also harbors some kind of hostility toward this social class, which, with great irony, he portrays at the moment of his fall.
Olimpia Gaia Martinelli
