Surrealism

Surrealism

What is surrealism? It is an art movement that came from the 20th Century to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, like the irrational juxtaposition of images. It was a cultural movement which developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War 1. The movement is best known for its visual artworks and writings and the juxtaposition of distant realities to activate the unconscious mind through the imagery.

There were many surrealist artists like Salvador Dali. He was a Spanish painter who remains one of the most controversial and paradoxical artists of the twentieth century. He is also well known as an individual artist synonymous with surrealism. This is what Dali is most famous for and depicting this theme through his paintings and other art works. Most of his art shows a dream like sequence which he often draws hallucinatory characters. 

Another surrealist is René Magritte who was a Belgian artist, who became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images, that often-depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context. His work is known to challenge observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality.

One of his famous works is The Son of Man. He painted The Son of Man as a self-portrait, which consists of a man in an overcoat and a bowler hat standing in front of a short wall. Beyond the wall you can see the sea and a cloudy sky. His face is largely obscured by a hovering apple, but the man's eyes can be seen slightly seen peeking over the top of the apple edge.

It was one of the most recognizable paintings of the surrealist movement, it is both simplistic and ambiguous with the meaning left to the interpretation of the viewer. 

    

My picture in the surrealist style of René Magritte.