1. Rene Magritte Personal Values 1952
Rene Magritte
Personal Values
1952

2.
Salvador Dali
Sleep
1937

3. Surrealism

4. This book became central to the Surrealist movement.
At the beginning of the 20th century the study of psychology – the workings of the mind – was developing. In 1919 Dr Sigmund Freud published a book called The Interpretation of Dreams, which claimed that dreams symbolically express our underlying desires.
Freud identified a part of the human mind where memories and our most basic instincts are stored and, because we are mostly unaware of it, called it the unconscious.
This book became central to the Surrealist movement.

5. The Manifesto of Surrealism
A group of artists and writers drew on ideas of Dada & Sigmund Freud and began the Surrealist movement. In 1924, Andre Breton wrote his Manifesto of Surrealism explaining their aims and beliefs.

6. Definition of Surrealism according to Breton:
SURREALISM, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which we propose to express, verbally, in writing, or by any other means, the real process of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.

7. The Definition of Surrealism
In French, Surrealism means ‘above realism’ or ‘beyond reality’ – in other words, ‘more than real’.

8. Techniques of the Surrealists
The Surrealist artists adopted various techniques to unlock the unconscious mind, casting aside traditional methods of creating art and challenging usual ways of production.
E.g. Exquisite Corpse

9. Surrealism -- Two Directions
Group 1: Veristic Surrealism Max Ernst, Salvador Dali & Rene Magritte painted dream-like images – technically skilful, their works are often illogical. - Dali called his pictures ‘hand-painted dream photographs’
The Eye of Silence by Max Ernst

11. Surrealism -- Two Directions
Group 2: Automatism Automatism – the Surrealist term for Freud’s technique of free association, which he used to reveal the unconscious minds of his patients. Joan Miro and Andre Masson were amongst this group, which worked instinctively: not thinking about what was being created, but letting the unconscious take over. Any material could be used and the resulting colours and shapes should express underlying feelings and emotions.
Harlequin’s Carnival by Joan Miro
1924-5
Card Trick by Andre Masson
1923

12. Belgian painter, one of the leading Surrealists
RENE MAGRITTE
Belgian painter, one of the leading Surrealists
Painted illogical images with startling clarity.
~ Magritte’s style:
- Placed everyday objects in absurd settings
- Juxtaposed familiar sights in unnatural contexts
- The challenging images in Magritte's works stem from revelations of the mystery of the visible world. "My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable" - said Rene Magritte. Ren� Fran腔is Ghislain Magritte was born on 21 November 1898 in Lessines, Belgium.Painting had always seemed "vaguely magical" to him. Magritte studied at the Acad士ie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels for two years until 1918.In 1922 Magritte got married with Georgette Berger, whom he had met at the age of fifteen and met again at in Magritte was inspired by Georgette and she became his model.Magritte produced his first surrealist painting, Le jockey perdu in 1926, and held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1927.Magritte's simplicity is misleading. Magritte chose ordinary things from which to construct his works - trees, chairs, tables, doors, windows, shoes, shelves, landscapes, people.Magritte's work frequently contains a juxtaposition of objects or an unusual context giving new meanings to familiar things.Magritte shared the Surrealist concept of the power of desire and eroticism and wanted to translate this idea through unconventional images.Magritte's work was shown in the United States in New York in 1936.In 1965 a large retrospectives of Magritte's work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992, a manifestation of his worldwide recognition.

13. Magritte:
* Painted things as they look to us, but in situations where neither they nor we could occur and then added titles which accompany them in the way that names correspond to objects without either illustrating or explaining them.
Personal Values
Golconde

14. The Difficult Crossing 1926
Rene Magritte
The Difficult Crossing
1926
What do you see?
What do you think about that?
What does it make you wonder?

15. Rene Magritte The Reckless Sleeper 1927 What do you see?
What do you think about that?
What does it make you wonder?

16. What do you think about that? What does it make you wonder?
Rene Magritte
The Red Model
1934
What do you see?
What do you think about that?
What does it make you wonder?

17. Rene Magritte
Time Transfixed
1938
What do you see?
What do you think about that?
What does it make you wonder?

18. Rene Magritte
Homesickness
1940
What do you see?
What do you think about that?
What does it make you wonder?

19. Rene Magritte
Personal Values
1952
What do you see?
What do you think about that?
What does it make you wonder?

20. What do you think about that? What does it make you wonder?
Rene Magritte
Signature in Blank
1965
What do you see?
What do you think about that?
What does it make you wonder?

21. Rene Magritte The False Eye 1928

22. Rene Magritte
Treason of images
(This is not a pipe)
1929

23. Treason of images
(This is not a pipe)
1929
On a oil painting, wrote in large letters “this is not a pipe”, which, of course, it isn’t. It is a picture of a pipe, but as a picture, an image, its reality is different from a pipe’s.

24. Rene Magritte
The Human Condition
1934

25. * A canvas stands on an easel in front of a view through a window.
- Canvas has a picture of what we assume to be the view.
* Illustrates the contradiction between three-dimensional space which objects actually occupy and the two-dimensional plane of the canvas used to represent them.
* Pun in the painting: Since Renaissance, pictures had been purported to be ‘windows’ opening on to reality.
~ Easel and canvas are realistically painted.
~ Intensifies the question: is the landscape real or painted?
The Human Condition
1934

26. The Human Condition
1934
* On the aims of this painting:
“I placed in front of a window a painting representing exactly that part of the landscape hidden from view by the painting. So the tree in the painting obscured the tree behind it outside. It existed for the spectator simultaneously in his mind and outside in the real landscape. This is how we see the world -- as being outside ourselves, even though it is only a mental picture of what we experience inside ourselves.”
- Magritte

27. Rene Magritte
The Human Condition
1935

28. Rene Magritte
The Son of Man
1964
Magritte said that the painting just shows us about humanity. He says that everything we see hides some other thing yet we still want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is always some sort of interest in what is hidden and what the visible does not show us. This brings about some sort of conflict between the visible that is present and the visible that is hidden.

29. * Eliminated conventional expectations
Some ways which Magritte used to give the ‘shocking’ quality in his works?
* Eliminated conventional expectations
1. Exploit astonishing discrepancies of scale.
2. Deny the law of gravity.
3. Endow an item with a different material /substance that in reality is not associated with the original

30. ~ Aim: To project the world of dreams as convincingly as possible.
SALVADOR DALi
- Spanish painter.
~ Aim: To project the world of dreams as convincingly as possible.
- From childhood, he was subjected to hallucinations & acts of sudden & uncontrollable violence.

31. * Important works created between 1929 to 1939.
* 1929: Joined the Surrealists.
* Important works created between 1929 to 1939.
- Developed his ‘paranoiac-critical’ method.
~ Proposed ‘a paranoiac and active advance of mind’ which would release from the unconscious, images of force and power that they in turn would react upon it, thereby affecting the deepest sources of individual & social action.
The Invisible Man

32. The Persistence of Memory
Salvador Dali
The Persistence of Memory
1931
24 cm x 33 cm

33. The Metamorphosis of Narcissus
The Metamorphosis of Narcissus
1937
51 cm x 76 cm

34. Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War 1936

35. Cannibalism in Autumn
1936

36. Sleep
1937

37. ~ The surprise effect of Dali’s work depends on his presentation of incongruities in a meticulous, miniature-like technique.
- Dali’s paintings were a direct transcription of things envisioned in a dream-like or trance-like state.
Time Transfixed
1938