Surrealist Sculpture and Surrealist Photography

I think that both sculpture and photography are great mediums for Surrealism. It's quite simple: with sculpture, you can mold or shape any figure you want as you want it (it doesn't even have to be a real figure); there's no limit for your imagination. Similarly, with photography, the artist can decide what is he or she going to portray and how he or she is going to do it (angles, exposure, zoom, focus, effects), and even when they have their original photographs, they can also make compositions and impressive editions to them. Surrealist sculpture and photography somehow provide the same experience as Surrealist painting, and the results are great as well!
Some sculptures may be pushing to abstraction, but, in general, the Surrealist sculptures clearly refer to objects that you can recognize easily from real life but that still don't make any sense.

We can recognize a sort of backbone here!

There's a human figure there, for sure, but it is kind of dreamy

A human grass hoper?

In Surrealist photography I just loved the use of distortion mirrors and the assemble of objects and images that artists used. Of course, they were portraying objects and people that actually exists but that somehow seem unreal in the photograph... really magical!

I loved this 'nude' compostion!

Pablo Picasso and Surrealism

Picasso's Surrealist period is really interesting in both his paintings and sculptures. It is noticeable the change of his style in his Surrealists paintings, but somehow I feel that there are still some inches of Cubism and other sryles in there. Certainly, this works aren't pure Surrealism, but they do fit this beloved movement. After today's class I just drew a conclusion that Picasso, just as Frank Lloyd Wright, doesn't follows any manifesto, rules or specific techniques...  I think that Picasso doesn't do Cubism or Surrealism, Picasso just does Picasso, why would he do anything else? He is the man of the century!

Women and Surrealism

I hadn't really any Surrealist woman (apart from Frida Kahlo) until now. It's kind of a shame because their paintings are just fantastic! My favourites, however, are reduced to Dorothea Tanning and Kay Sage (It's funny that her husband Yves Tanguy rejected her as a Surrealist because I think Sage's paintings are way better than his). Tanning and Sage both give a mysterious and thrilling atmosphere to their paintings, they are alarming, and somehow disturbing, and they don't make any sense either but they are just so beautiful, and one can easily notice the high skills of these two women. Even though I feel proud of Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington and Frida Kahlo, their paintings are not so aesthetically nor emotionally attractive to me... they're actually somehow depressive in a no delightful way. These women's paintings are really personal, and thus reflect the pain and dissatisfaction that, for example, Frida Kahlo had in her life.

By the way, Meret Oppenheim's design is just disturbing, I didn't like it a lot, but it is certainly Surrealist.

Tanning's 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik'

Sage's 'Danger, Construction Ahead'

Surrealism

Surrealism is just my favourite art movement of all art history (I think I have mentioned it  before). For some reason, surrealism speaks to me in such a way that any other movement (although Art Nouveau is close to it). My favourite surrealists are by far Salvador Dalí and René Magritte (I've even painted some of their paintings myself -couldn't resist- and I have a huge poster of 'The Persistance of Memory' from NY), and luckily I was able to visit both of their museums in Figueras, Spain for Dalí and in Brussels, Belgium for Magritte. Both museums are just an overwhelming and sublime experience that just made me fall in love even more with surrealism. Dalí's museum in specific is delirious. Since you walk in and see that rainy taxi with a huge boat spilling painting above it, you know you have entered to an amazing and somehow silly and nonsense place, but that's just wonderful!

Although I did enjoyed a lot Max Ernst's, Andre Masson's, Paul Devaux's, Hans Bellmer's (really disturbing, by the way), Matta's and Wilfredo Lam's work, I'll always keep my three favourites: Dalí, Magritte and Miró.

Both Dalí and Magritte send me to a dreamy and mysterious places from which I can make wonderful stories; their work delight me greatly. Miró, on the other hand, always makes me happy: his paintings are cheerful, relaxing, and childish, and they just put a big smile on my face.

It's hard to describe my love for surrealism, but I can say both the subject-matters and the techniques all Surrealists painters used are marvellous... and the best part is that you don't have to figure a meaning for a painting... you just enjoy it! It's surrealism! Doesn't make any sense so why worrying about finding a factual meaning?! It's just great! I think Surrealism is the most creative and innovative movement, they basically invented everything and left anything for us to create now... I love them.

Here are some pictures on some crazy and interesting things of Dalí's museum (they let you take pictures here!) and Magritte's museam (I could only take pictures on the entrance hall) 

Entrance to Magritte's Museum I

II

III

A crazy design by Dalí (He made SO beautiful jewelry)

Entrance to Dalí's museum

Well, why not? Dalí wanted it there...

His cript is under the museum

This is the ceiling of a room of the museum!

Picasso as seen by Dalí

(I tried my best with photographs, but dark rooms are difficult)

My Goya Is Finished

So here's my version of 'Saturn Devouring His Son'... what do you think?

Cubism - Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque

Cubism may not be the greatest artistic movement of contemporary art (my favourite movement of all art history is surrealism; Dalí and Magritte are like Gods to me, and I've even made some of their paintings myself), but still it makes up one of the most important and interesting parts of art history.

Pablo Picasso is certainly a model artist; he had this natural talent that not all painters had, and thus he created a lot of quite prolific, varied, and interesting works (I've made a couple of Picasso's too). When I was in Barcelona, we visited the little Picasso museum of the city in which they are basically exposed the early works of the Spaniard (although they had some paintings of this rose and blue period, and the series of 'Las Meninas'), and I must say that his first paintings are way different from his Cubist works that made him famous. I think Picasso shouldn't be judged only for his Cubist period, but for all his compilation of works.

Picasso's early works were usually featured by his dad. In 'Science and Charity',  If I remember correctly portraits the death of his mother (on the bed), his dad (on the left) and Picasso himself as a child (on the right carried by the nun). This painting is really an experience: Picasso had a some perspective errors, so if you see the painting from the centre  it looks normal (just as it looks in the photo), but as walk left the bed looks bigger an bigger.

Picasso's and Braque's Cubist painting are beautiful and interesting. Even though they may not seem to have a clear or a significant and relevant content, they do. For example, Picasso's 'Guernica' is response to the attacks in Guernica during the bloody Spanish Civil War and his 'Meninas' are a beautiful reference to Velazque's masterpiece. Both Picasso and Braque portrait daily life objects that were important not only for them, but for pretty much any artist (the guitar is a great example)... I don't think Cubist painting are senseless at all, they actually have a lot of subject-matters that still amaze people. Picasso, Braque, Gris, and all the other 'minor' Cubists painters have led a strong legacy to art, and I really appreciate them.
I think playing with shapes, although it may seem easy, is one of the most demanding techniques of paintings, and being able to translate  reality into a painting without portraying the objects exactly as they are is really difficult. When  I painted Picasso, I could recognized it was really easy to copy, but actually coming out with the idea of using the colours and the shapes of each painting is something that only a few artists can achieve.

As I've said before, Cubism isn't my favourite artistic movement, but I shouldn't be underrated either.

I painted this Picasso's

Picasso's 'Musicians' - My favourite from him

Miro's sculptures in Barcelona reminded of some Cubists sculptures!

Woyzeck - Wozzeck

If we're talking about the precursors of Expressionism in literature, we definitely should mention Buchner's 'Woyzeck'. This proto-Expressionist play can be defined in a single word: tragedy. The poor Woyzeck has nothing but his wife to keep him alive. He's despised and criticized the whole story (he's even the lab rat experiment of a doctor!), he has no money,  neither a great job, and his 'unblessed' doesn't provide him any happiness either. Woyzeck has the shittiest life in the world, but at least he had his beautiful wife Marie. So, when he finds out she's been rather unfaithful with him, his whole world turns down... inside his mind he gets crazy, insane and desperate until he finds a solution for his suffering. However, his resolution didn't gave him any peace, and thus he decides to commit suicide in a 'purifying' way. During the whole play, we just read the despair and misery of Woyzeck... there's nothing but emotions here.

The opera Wozzeck keeps quite loyal to the original play (although the ending isn't specifically the same). Berg's mise en scène is, in my opinion, really successful. The actors and sopranos that play each one of the characters effectively portrayed the figures and personalities that we can read in Buchner's 'Woyzeck'. Moreover, I think that the backgrounds used during all the scenes just fit perfectly with what we, the readers, can imagine while reading the original play. Hats off to both Buchner and Berg.

Werner Herzog a version of his own if this tragedy as a film, but I haven't been able to watch it. Hope I do it soon.