Surrealism (1936-1948 CE) Flashcards
Object (Le Dejeuner en forrure)
Originally kept the tea warm
Ordinary objects turned into vessels for poetic meaning
No one likes hair in their mouth
Sexual undertone (it’s a furry vessel)
“Repels the tongue”
Mocks sculptural masculinity
Fur is fetishistic
Gazelle fur (delicate, prancing, feminine)
Object (Le Dejeuner en forrure) IDs
Meret Oppenheim
1936 CE
Surrealism
Fur-cover cup, saucer, and spoon
Surrealist style
Intellectual and political
Influenced by Freud’s dream theories and Marx’s politics
Draws upon the private world of the mind (restricted by reason and societal limitations/expectations)
Surprising and unexpected
The Two Fridas
Self-portrait
Paints what she feels, not what she sees
Stormy sky (metaphor for life)
Frida 1 (traditional Mexican wedding dress, vein where Diego’s portrait would be is cut off)
Frida 2 (signature style, inspired by indigenous Mexican clothing, whole heart with a vein traveling to her hand to a portrait of Diego because he is part of her blood)
The two parts of Frida brought by her parents (holding hands because they come together to create her)
Painted after Diego requested a divorce
The Two Fridas IDs
Frida Kahlo
1939 CE
Surrealism
Oil on canvas
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Final product not intended (changed as he drew)
Intended to be a scene of a brothel (some male clients that were eliminated to work on the forms and the space)
Space is reduced to a suffocating stage
Jagged, shard-like planes (curtains in background and the blue background) represents drapery and empty space
Figures are taken apart and put together again
Women are sharp and angular instead of soft and curvy
Awkward poses
Egyptian art elements (stance of the first figure)
African art elements (masks)
Is the squatting one facing towards or away from us?
Women aren’t behaving as normal (aggressive, in our faces)
Avignon (red light district)
Paint what you know, not what you see
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon IDs
Pablo Picasso
1907 CE
Surrealism
Oil on canvas
The Jungle
Sugarcane (doesn’t grow in jungles, represents importance of sugarcane to Cuban economy and how the hard work it took to cultivate it defied white expectations)
Crescent-like round forms repeated
Butts
Unproportionate figures (creates an uneasy balance between the dense top and open bottom of the painting)
Seems like it’s on the verge of falling over (there aren’t enough legs and feet to support the upper part)
Unusual landscape (vertical, tight, directionless, ungrounded)
Contrasts from tourist ideals that Cuba was a destination for Americans looking for beachside resorts
Cuban politics were destabilized because the US controlled it heavily
The Jungle IDs
Wilfredo Lam
1943 CE
Surrealism
Gouache on paper mounted on canvas
Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park
Characters of Mexican history strolling through Mexico City’s largest park (Hernán Cortés, Sor Juana, and Porfirio Díaz to name a few)
Confrontation between an Indigenous family and a police officer
Someone shooting someone else who is getting trampled by a horse
Skeleton smiling
Central four figures (Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Guadalupe Posada, and La Catrina)
La Catrina (an elegant, upper-class woman who dresses in European clothing, skeleton to critique the Mexican elite)
Yin and yang object (in Frida’s hand, symbolizes the complex relationship between her and Diego)
Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park IDS
Diego Rivera
1947-1948 CE
Surrealism
Mural
