Surrealsim

I became interested in art toward the end of junior school.  I found that it was a way to express myself as well as that I was reasonaly good at it.  It is an escape for me  and allows me to be calm.  I do art at school and therefore do art history.  Because of this I have been exposed to many artists and here are some that I have recently found interesting:

These artists are Surrealists.  They were inspired by Freud's and Jung's writing on human psychology and the dream world.  Both of these psychoanalysists were resposible for a new revolution regard the human psyche and peoples actions.  These artists used these ideas to explore the subconscious mind by making the unseen visible.

Salvador Dali:
Dali was a Spanish painter. I love his beautiful, clean technique and silent anguish.  He suffered from nightmares and was also inspired by Freud's writings on the dream world.  This inspired many of his works.  His most well known piece, The Persistance of Memory comments on the fluidity of time and experesses his odsession with dreams.  He was a mad man who did crazy things like give lectures while standing in milk and waxing his mousache.  He said that he did this inorder to induce madness so that he could connect with his subconscious. 

The Persistance of Memory

Max Ernst:

He was an amazing artist who created new techniques such as Grattage(scrapping paint over textures over objects placed beneath) and he believed in The Law of Chance which created more abstract images.  The most well known of these is, The Elephants of Celebe.  This image shows an elephant (:P) that has been given machine like qualities.  Its trunk looks like a pipe and reminds me of an old fashioned boiler.  



Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale

The Elephant of Celebe

These artists are two of the main leaders of this group and I find their ideas on art and their ways of experessing themselves amazing.

Em x