Surrealism

[Tecdavid]

Anyone a fan of this medium? I've always loved it, myself, although I admit I haven't seem very much outside the works of Dali.
What I like about surrealism is that there doesn't need to be any deep-rooted message or meaning in order for a piece to create a sense of curiousness, mysteriousness, or poignancy. You could get lost in such works for hours, simply seeing whether there's a puzzle to solve, or whether there’s any little secrets you may not have noticed at first glance.
It's not just art on canvas, either - I find surrealist music, film and animation very intriguing, too. Sometimes it's fun to hunt for meaning, even when you know there nary a scrap of meaning to be found.

[Interference]

I'm interested in knowing who makes Surreal music?

Surrealism in art has fascinated me. Like you, Dali is the one that springs most readily to my mind - I loved his set work on Hitchcock's Spellbound, which I saw first as a wee thing and it haunted me for decades.

I'm not sure, though, if there's no meaning to find or if, as in most art, you can't have hours of harmless fun analysing the artist

But I'm weird - I like abstract, as well....

[HareBrain]

I've never been that excited by Dali, but I was lucky enough to go to an exhibition of paintings by Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo in my local gallery last year, and some of the images blew me away. Carrington's "Are You Really Sirius" is one of my favourite paintings of all.

[Tecdavid]

I'll have to check those out sometime.

[J-Sun]

An SF/F book you might find interesting is Lisa Goldstein's The Dream Years, in which her fictional protagonist hangs out with several of the historical surrealist crowd in 1924 Paris and slips through time into the 1968 Paris riots and again to a revolution in the future. The line "Everybody switch drinks!" still sticks with me.

[Arwen Delyon]

I love Dali's work a lot, I suppose I just find it easy to relate to the images, which is probably due in part to my own background. I love surrealism but haven't come across very much that isn't obviously inspired by this man, at least not any art I could take very seriously. :/ this brings up a good point; the world needs more surrealism artists.

[odangutan]

I'm more a fan of Dali in himself, or in his diving suit, than his art (which is admittedly great but has suffered from over-exposure, at least for me). The more subtle art of someone like Rene Magritte interests me far more.

[TheTomG]

I do love this kind of work, though I have to admit the meaning is usually lost on me, as I am such a literalist. Dali I find pleasant to look at though, and I am finding some other abstract forms have a connection that I can't quite define.

As a literalist, I am dreadful at creating such works of art though heh. Surrealism is beyond me to create.

[J-WO]

I love Max Ernst myself, especially his Europe after the Rain and The Eye of Silence. Surralist works you can take literally as fantasy/ alien worlds. They've inspired a lot of my writing.

[Tecdavid]

That's the thing, Tom - there isn't always a meaning to be found. Though it's always quite fun to look for one. I imagine different surrealist artists (like all artists) have different methods of motivation and sources of inspiration. Dali, if I remember right, was a starving artist, and based his paintings around the curiosities he witnissed on the dreams his hunger gave him. (Not that that's a mode of inspiration I'd personally attempt. :P )

I agree, J-WO. The otherworldly ambience of surrealism has always been an inspiration to me.

[J-Sun]

Originally Posted by J-WO

I love Max Ernst myself, especially his Europe after the Rain and The Eye of Silence. Surralist works you can take literally as fantasy/ alien worlds. They've inspired a lot of my writing.

Both those links currently point to "Europe". I did find a smallish version of "Eye", though.

[J-WO]

Oops! Thanks J-Sun. And its not that smallish when you click on it- you can see a lot of the detail of that sumptuous picture.

I always plan to get a piece of glass and do the paint dragging thing used in both paintings. Never get around to it though...

[Tecdavid]

On the subject of surrealist works outside the canvas, has anyone seen any of David Firth's animation work over the likes of Youtube? Salad Fingers and Spoilsbury Toast Boy are a far darker example of surrealism - they're just plain eerie!

[J-WO]

I'll have to take a look and let you know what I think...