Genre study

Is life repetitive after death?- Genre study

As part of my year 2 component one study I have lengthened my personal investigation around the topic of ‘life and death’, the idea around the theme I have chosen stemmed from the constant thoughts that have been negatively effecting me since I was 12 years of age. The concept of the theme ‘Life after death’ is to explore new theories of what possibilities there are after death and if we are able to conclude whether there is some sort of reincarnation. I also want to put my mind at ease from the negative emotions that I feel every time I hear the word ‘death’ because the truth is, we are all going to die, however, my brain feels like it is in a dark empty room when I think remotely about death and so therefore, I want to express and change the way I think about the harsh truth of our soul dying.

Furthermore, the concept of focusing on death is a deepened exploration in which I can relate to unanswered questions that I ask myself on a daily basis such as “Why do we all experience a Deja Vu?” or “Why do we have nightmares such as ‘near death experiences’ where we wake up before we die in it?”.

1.Definition of Surrealism; a style of art and literature developed principally in the 20th century, stressing the subconscious or non-rational significance of imagery arrived at by automatism or the exploitation of chance effects, unexpected juxtapositions, etc.

I would like to begin to link my concept to ‘surrealism’ and include conceptual art because I feel like this genre of art is a raw representation of a topic or question that an artist has in their mind but is unable to explain it verbally. Surrealism is not necessarily trying to preach an issue or topic that occurs within somebody’s day to day life but it could be a theory of what an artist thinks about something which is important to them, I want to be able to link surrealism to my theme of afterlife by exploring what happens to a humans identity when their heart stops beating.

To help me deepen the acknowledgment of what I may think happens after death, I have researched stories of people who have experienced a near death situation and have begun to look at what different religions believe happen to them when they die.

Moreover, I am very interested in comparing ‘near death experiences in nightmares’ to ‘death’ because I believe that the feelings you get from a near death experience in a nightmare can relate to what it feels like before we die, as a result, I leave the question to myself about ‘why do we wake up before we are about to die in our nightmare/dreams?’.

The surrealist movement was first created in the 1920's when a combination of both 'cubism' and 'Dada' elements which influenced the first few artists around surrealism to create work based around them.

Dada definition: Dada was an art movement formed during the First World War in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war. The art, poetry and performance produced by dada artists is often satirical and nonsensical in nature.

 This piece is called 'The art critic' which was made between 1919-20  by an artist called Raoul Hausmann who was a Dada artist. His work was to stress the questioning of why war was occurring and by doing so, He was politically against the reasoning to why war occurred.

Tate have summarised the image ' Hausmann, a founder member of the Berlin Dada group, developed photomontage as a tool of satire and political protest. Although the 'art critic' is identified by a stamp as George Grosz, another member of the group, the image was probably an anonymous figure cut from a magazine. The fragment of a German banknote behind the critic’s neck suggests that he is controlled by capitalist forces. The words in the background are part of a poem poster made by Hausmann to be pasted on the walls of Berlin.'

This piece of work in particular is very important as it has a political aspect as part of its genre whilst recognising the surrealist approach, the background appears to be a doomed in view of writing which could represent conflict in a letter form, However, the artist has specifically zoomed into a few words to acknowledge a significant importance.

On the bottom right corner you can see a cut out of a manly figure in a background of what appears to be a photograph of war in action, The artist has chosen to use only a cut out of a political representative as he wants the viewer to focus on the newspaper cut into the outlined shape.

The use of pencil and colour pencil drawings outline the 'cartoon' humours approach to surrealism, On the facial features he he has not added a shadow or a gray scale to create a realistic drawing of the individuals lips, The mediums are dry but basic, adding to the effect of being child like.
In my opinion this is the most influential piece of work created because it has a real life passive aggressive argument involved, The ideology of showing somebody that you don't agree with their actions through art is clever and intriguing, especially it being shown in a cartoon, humourus way.
The use of political faces tells us that Hausmann is acting in a passive protesting approach as he is creating a response to war but is acting through surrealism and conceptual art.
Haussmann has created a piece that has added humour in it which signifies that he is acting against war, The distortion of a political leaders face creates the effect of making him look abnormal and unrealistic.

The first surrealism piece was first created in 1924 when ideologies around Karl Marx (1818-1883) and his theory of socialism contradicting the capitalism system became very significant to the world after he died.

 He made surrealists further their ideas that ‘The rational mind repressed the power of the imagination. The Surrealist impulse to tap the unconscious mind, and their interests in myth and primitivism, went on to shape many later movements, and the style remains influential to this today.’

Some artists who are very important within the surrealist movement vary in terms of the pieces of work that are created, However, I have picked out some in which are my favourite and would give me inspiration for my own theme.

Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte is an artist who is known for having an idiosyncratic (Something which seems and feels peculiar to an individual) approach to surrealism as itself, He creates pieces which can be connected to on an intellectual level whilst including visual puns behind the images.

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A popular piece created by himself is called in 1993 called ‘The Human Condition’ which is a surrealist piece as a painting on a canvas being copied as to outside the window.

The piece of work itself was created on a large scale in significance of making the viewer look at something which isn't actually there, The use of colours are mostly cool, shadowed colours which don't make the piece look too unrealistic.

However, it is known as a surrealist piece because the brain is tricked into an illusion of thinking that something is there when in fact, it isn't.

In my opinion, surrealism has changed massively since it was first created in comparison to 1990's when this piece of work was created, showing a rapid change in the way surrealism is viewed.

The artist has carefully thought about the shadowing of the image to make it look as real life as possible, creating shades on the floor to signify the canvas on the picture being 3D,

The illusion was created purposely to create an effect on the viewer, The artist wanted the viewers to think about what could be behind the ‘painting on a canvas ‘ as to whether what they are looking at is what it seems to behind it.

Rene wanted to make it obvious that the whole image is not real nor photographed, he wanted the viewer to think with their imagination of what is hidden behind the canvas.This really gave me inspiration towards the movement of surrealism because I acknowledged that in the 1900’s surrealism was not in the form of Photoshop or photography.

Sigmund Freud

Freud is another influential artist throughout the 20th century which changed the surrealist movement as he created ideas which struck the psychological and artist history, Freud made a theory that we are able to communicate with one another through our dreams whilst we are unconscious.

Surrealists looked up to Freud by acknowledging how important it is when we have dreams and what they could be a representation of, for example, Freud would contextually write down his thoughts and emotion after being unconscious, and so therefore, he explored the legitimacy of dreams.

Although his art work was not in the form of a painting he was able write and talk about his work as they are able to link to his theories to the psychoanalytic movement.

psychoanalytic movement: The method of psychological therapy originated by Sigmund Freud in which free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts, in order to free psychic energy for mature love and work.

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dali created one of the most important pieces of surrealist art pieces in 1929 when he visited Paris to sight see the surrealist exhibition. He created a piece of work called 'The accommodations of Desire' which explores the vivid memories and dreams he had which symbolises what he did whilst being in Paris.

Salvador suggested to himself that he was able to create such significant pieces of work by developing the paranoid-critical method, This method helps Dali to overthink his emotions of thought and will allow him to access his unconscious self.
The image stemmed from Dali's disagreement with another artists wife called Gala Eluard where he explores the pebbles as being the little insecurities with Gala Eluard, He chose to add pebbles within his piece as he represents the shape of a circle being 'circled around the concepts of decay'.
The surrealist painting was used as a way to experiment with collage by layering cut out images onto of the painting itself, Dali has used a cut out of the lions face as reference to symbolism it acting as a sign of fear.
On one of the pebbles we see that the lions actual face has been cut out and I think he has done this to acknowledge the personality of the animal being taken away, I believe the artist has done this as a representation of not wanting Gala to see how he feels about his insecurities.