. . . I've been told that I write novels for email messages. Perhaps this is the way to go. I'll try to make each entry, or Gemstone, a "precious" one. On mediocre days, all I might be able to produce is a "semi-precious" entry. In any case, an entry might be a "neat" Gemstone--something that is uniquely mine.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Surrealism

I've learned a lot from the art teacher at the elementary school that I work for (Previous Post). Recently, I've learned that impressionists paint light and that cubists paint what they know. Now, he is teaching us (the 6th grade class and me) that surrealists paint what they imagine.  The prefix, "sur", means to be above, so surrealism is "above reality".  

He began the lesson by saying that we experience life through the senses. Reality is what we experience through sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound. But how do you know that something is absolutely for certain real? How do you know you aren't dreaming? Senses can be deceived. If you close one eye and point your finger at an object across the room, and then open your eye, the object moves. Sight has deceived you.  It is not "real".

Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am."  I exist because I can do the thinking and ask the questions.  I exist because I can use my energy to create something, like art.  And Freud's work with dream analysis and the hidden unconscious led surrealist artists to revolutionize the art of the time by painting from their imaginations instead of just what they saw or knew.

So what if you rose above reality and created art through your imagination or dreams? You'd have shapes shifting from something that is real into another form that is surreal.

One great surrealist painter is Salvador Dali, who painted this well-known piece of art called "The Persistence of Memory." Of course, I didn't know what the title of the painting was, nor who painted it until my art teacher taught me, but I did know of the painting.

One of our art teacher's favorite sayings is, "Talking about art is like dancing about architecture." He told us that he had talked long enough and now it was time for everyone to "DO IT."  Create our own surrealist art.  And not just "produce" art because any animal can produce art (such as Bill the Chimp, RIP).  But humans can "create" art and when we use our imaginations, pretty awesome works occur.

 ~~~~~~~~~
Neat

3 comments:

Valerie said...

Rene Magritte. A surrealist artist that I like also. It's cool that you are discovering art now...better late than never :-)!

Neat Rox said...

I've always liked and appreciated art. I just never took the time to learn about it. I did take one Humanities class in college that covered different art so I at least learned some famous sculptors and artists from that, but I never went pat that one class. Of course, I'm only learning a bit at a time, but it is fun.

Neat Rox said...

Oh, and I did look up some of Rene Margritte's work and found a biography also. I liked the Human Condition and The Mysteries of the Horizon found on Wikipedia here -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Magritte