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by Dan Burnstein, Staff Writer
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History
In his 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, André Breton identifies Sigmund Freud's work in psychology as contributing to the founding of Surrealism. Most important was Freud's distinction between the unconscious and conscious realms of the mind. Breton advocated a joining of the unconscious dreams and fantasies with conscious reality to achieve "an absolute reality, a surreality."
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Subject
Incorporating images from dreams, imagination, and free-association, surrealist paintings often appear nonsensical, as is the case in The Significance of Koi, by Karen Rose. The cutaway section in the upper-right corner of the painting serves as a reminder of physical--therefore conscious--reality. The fish that spans the divide between the cutaway and the scene is like the artist, who swims between the realms of the real and the imagined to create her art.
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Common Motifs
Animals are perfect stand-ins for people in surrealist art because like the unconscious mind, they operate instinctually. Ruined columns represent the breakdown of structured, rational thought, and their shape invites the Freudian interpretation of phallic dream-imagery.
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Composition
Steep perspective; geometric, checkerboard patterns; heavy, out-of-place shadows; and large tracts of empty space often appear in surrealist art. Such compositional devices disorient the viewer to some degree, but only in order to stimulate the imagination.
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Color
Common to the work of famed Surrealists Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, and René Magritte, the color blue helps create the kind of cool, mysterious atmosphere found in Karen Rose's painting.
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Brushstrokes
In a past QuickSketch, visible brushstrokes like those made by impressionist painters are referred to as "loose." Surrealist painters tend to use "tight" brushstrokes. Their aim is to meld fantasy with reality, which they accomplish by rendering individual forms realistically, but placing them out of context.
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See more surrealist art on PaintingsDIRECT.
Other QuickSketches:
Naďve/folk art,
Realism,
Impressionism,
Expressionism,
Cubism,
Pop Art,
Minimalism, and
Abstract Art
View all styles.
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