Art work analysis

Surrealisms roots were formed in 1916 with the movement name Dada. Dadaism objective was to attack established concepts and values of art and to replace them with the power of chance and the irrational. Max Ernst, Hannah Hoch, Raoul Hausmann, are a few artist that created Dadaism. Dada was not only restricted to painters with poet Tristan Tzara, and German writers Hugo Ball and Richard Hulsenbeck. This movement theme was anti-art. Any Ready-made objects could be works of art, for example Marcel Duchamp drew a moustache on a reproduction print of the famous Mono Lisa. This movement mocked the public art admirers who believed art was good just because it was in a museum.

In Paris in about 1922 Dada was overtaken by a world of imagination and the subconscious, Surrealism. The literary movement of surrealism gave the movement its direction experimenting with a new automatic writing (automatism) which was writing down the words that pour into one's head, Parallel to the painters who commit to canvas the images that spring into mind. Like dada, poets as well as painter and sculptors were involved. It was once again based on the irrational but in doing so was quite different. Exploration of the subconscious and hidden depths of the mind surrealism was less focused on art than producing significant psychological documents. In 1924 with the publication of the “Manifesto of Surrealism” by the poet and critic Andre Breton, it shed light on the surrealism movement and was an explanation into world of the subconscious. Surrealist painters where more concerned with images than form and colour, making use of picture perfect realism. Realistic in detail these images may be, but far from realist in the subject matter chosen. Like photographs from nightmares, revealing the disturbing subconscious mind. The art works force us to question the sense or meaning of the picture, and thus the meaning of everything.

Paris was the historical centre of the surrealism movement, yet the surrealist artist that contributed to the movement and where well known were not of French origin. Max Ernst came from Germany, Miro and Dali was Spanish, and Magritte and Delvaux were Belgian.

The two artists I have chosen are those who I feel greatly contributed to the surrealism movement, their art work I chose to analysis are from the two are such which appeal to me.

The Son of a Man, 1964

Rene Magritte

A man is standing in the foreground wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a red tie. He is wearing a black bowler hat, standing in front of a small grey stone brick wall. The composition of this painting is based around the man in the centre of the work. The man's legs are cropped out of the bottom of the painting. Almost the entire face of the man is hidden behind a hovering green apple, but you can just make out the man's left eye peaking around behind the apple. The man's left arm appears to be bent backwards. In the ...