#surrealist object functioning symbolically

[jareckiworld]

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) — Surrealist Object that Functions Symbolically "Gala’s Shoe" [mixed media; shoe, marble, photographs, clay, 1932]

[worldsandemanations]

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) — Surrealist Object that Functions Symbolically “Gala’s Shoe” [mixed media; shoe, marble, photographs, clay, 1932]

[cewritten23]

Surrealism

• began in 1924 and lasted until 1966

“Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that see art” Man Ray.

“Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality”-

“Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see”- Magritte.

• Surrealist artists aimed to delve into the unconscious mind in order to reveal the abilities of our imagination.

• Influenced by rationalism, literary realism, and heavily influenced by psychoanalysis.

• Beloved that the rational mind did not allow us to fully embrace our imagination.

• inspired by Karl Marx and aimed for the psyche to reveal contradictions within our everyday lives as well as spark a revolution.

• having personal imagination puts surrealist artists on the same line as Romanticism.

• their interest in myth and primitivism influenced many other art movements within todays world.

• Andre Breton described surrealism as “psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner- the actual functioning thought”

• surrealism and the idea of automatism allows artists to go past the conscious mind and bring our visions and thoughts to life through our art, in turn allowing us to embrace chance.

• Sigmund Freud’s theory and his The Interpretation of dreams, (1899) was heavily influential within the surrealist art movement.

• Surrealist imagery is the most recognisable of the movement.

• Each artist engaging with this movement used their own motifs and ways of working in order to convey their thoughts of their dreams and unconscious mind.

• Many of surrealist imagery is described as outlandish, perplexing and at times uncanny.

Key Artists:

• Andre Breton

• Hans Arp

• Max Ernst

• Salvador Dali

• Alberto Giacometti

• Joan Miro

• Rene Magritte

• Man Ray

• Yves Tanguy

• Leonora Carrington

• Pablo Picasso

• Meret Oppenheim

• Hans Ritcher

• Hans Bellmer

• Luis Bunuel

• Claude Cahun

• Remedios Varo

• Andre Masson

• Gala Dali

• Paul Eluard

• Louis Aragon

• Charles Baudelaire

• Arthur Rimbaud

Overview:

• Anti-rationalism of the Dada art movement.

• Made effective and work that was outwith the norms of the art world and gave a new direction for artists.

“creativity is that marvellous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from the juxtaposition”- Max Ernst.

Beginning of Surrealism:

• grew and developed from the Dada movement and was a rebellion against middle-class’s known judgements and ignorance against others.

This art movement was also inspired by Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico, Gustave Moreau, Arnold Bocklin, Odilon Redon as well as Henri Rousseau.

Artists from the Renaissance period were also inspiration for Surrealist artists, these included Hieronymus Bosch and Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

Breton is at times described as the 'Pope' of Surrealism as he officially founded the movement in 1924.

the term "Surrealism" was founded in 1917 by Guillaume Apollinaire.

Breton's manifesto, La Revolution surrealiste this included art and writing.

The Bureau for Surrealist Research or Centrale Surrealiste established in Paris in 1924.

Surrealism: Concepts, Styles and Trends

Artist utilised their fantasy and dream imagery to create works using a wide range of media in order to convey their inner minds in an eccentric, bold, and symbolic ways. In turn this exposed ones anxieties allowing the artist to use their art to help themselves.

Surrealist Paintings:

works like Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy and Rene Magritte's paintings were create with hyper-realistic imagery were all objects were depicted in very sharp and crisp detail with a three-dimensional quality, in turn drawing attention to their dream-like appearance and atmosphere.

works like Joan Miro and Max Ernst used many techniques and media such as; collage, doodling, frottage, decalcomania, and grattage to create their surrealism artworks.

Rise and Decline of The Surrealism Art Movement:

global war and political issues had negative effects on the views towards the art movement as civilians were in a state of crises during the 1930s and 1940s.

During World War 2 many Surrealist artist emigrated to the Americas which resulted in their ideas and work being recognised on a larger scale.

Ideas and views towards Surrealism changed and challenged due to the rise of Existentialism.

Abstract Expressionist artists were inspired by Surrealism, however Abstract Expressionism took over and invented new techniques in order to convey the unconscious.

British Surrealism:

Female Surrealist artists; Eileen Agar, Ithell Colquhoun, Edith Rimmington and Emmy Bridgwater.

The British interpretation of the Surrealist movement was towards thoughts of humans relations to their surrounding natural environment, specifically the sea.

Paul Nash had an interest in the object trouve which involved collecting objects from the beach.

The International Surrealist Exhibition (1936) in London, a major event for many British artists, in turn allowing the Surrealist art movement to thrive in the UK.

The Persistence of Memory (1931) by Salvador Dali

How does this relate to my work?:

When painting my sinister characters I use my imagination or images I have seen when sleeping in order to create the faces of my sinister characters. It is as though I am entering my own pitch black world where I can see these face formulate in front of me. Once they have formulated enough in my head i automatically convey their imagery onto the canvas, not thinking too much about what they will look like. I almost allow the medium and my hand to do their own thing. My works have been more refined and soft in shape much like some of the shapes within surrealist paintings, however, I have been experimenting with a new technique that allows automatism to surface allowing my to have less control on the overall outcome of my paintings. These images in my head are other worldly, I do not see them in my everyday life unless I force it in order to create my paintings. They are not images that the people around my can see unless the engage with my art.

[disease]

GALA’S SHOE— SURREALIST OBJECT FUNCTIONING SYMBOLICALLY SALVADOR DALÍ // 1931/73

“In Dalí’s objects, he undermines the familiar nature of such mundane objects as a phone, a shoe, a drawer, or a jacket, by combining them with such provocative items as a lobster, a sugar cube with pubic hair, the Venus de Milo, or a series of shot glasses filled with crème de menthe and dead flies. In each case, Dalí produces an object that is not about artistic beauty, but rather about sexual obsessions and psychological complexes.

Dawn Ades has observed, ‘Dalí’s Surrealist Shoe seems more like a compendium of sexual references running from fetishism to pornography.’ Freud interpretation proposes, ‘the last impression received before the uncanny traumatic one…typically becomes the fetish object. Thus the foot or shoe owes its attraction as a fetish object.’ Other interpretations classify the shoe as a symbol of the female genitalia.”

[assemblage with: shoe, white marble, photographs, a glass containing wax, a gibbit, a matchbox, hair and a wooden scraper | 19 x 11 x 3 11/16″]

[brooklynmuseum]

Closing out National Poetry Month, our Spring Interns paired some of their favorite poems with works from our collection. We hope you enjoy!

— Jeffrey Alexander Lopez, Curatorial Intern, American Art & Arts of the Americas

Image: Suzuki Harunobu (Japanese, 1724-1770). Page From Haru no Nishiki, 1771. Color woodblock print on paper. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Peter P. Pessutti, 83.190.1

from Citizen: “Some years there exists a wanting to escape...” [Excerpt] By Claudia Rankine 

/

I they he she we you turn only to discover the encounter

to be alien to this place.

Wait.

The patience is in the living. Time opens out to you.

The opening, between you and you, occupied, zoned for an encounter,

given the histories of you and you—

And always, who is this you?

The start of you, each day, a presence already—

Hey you—

/

— Halle Smith, Digital Collections Intern Catherine Green (American, born 1952). [Untitled] (West Indian Day Parade), 1991. Chromogenic photograph, sheet. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 1991.58.2. © artist or artist's estate 

Ode to Enchanted Light by Pablo Neruda

Under the trees light has dropped from the top of the sky, light like a green latticework of branches, shining on every leaf, drifting down like clean white sand.

A cicada sends its sawing song high into the empty air.

The world is a glass overflowing with water.

Consuelo Kanaga’s black and white photograph captures a dazzling, yet fleeting moment from everyday life. Three textured glasses cast shadows whose patterns are almost kaleidoscopic in effect. We can imagine Kanaga passing by her kitchen table, as she is brought to a halt to take a closer look at, and ultimately to photograph, the simple beauty generated by the play of light and everyday objects. The close-up scale of this image emulates the singularizing framing techniques deployed by Surrealist photographers, who also took parts of everyday life and blew them up in the photographic frame, thereby encouraging their viewers to look at life around us from a different angle. It is a way of saying: Here, take a closer look. Viewing the world with wonder, along with the joy that this act brings, are encapsulated in Pablo Neruda’s poem Ode to Enchanted Light. The speaker observes the way light passes through trees and creates enchanting patterns. He not only observes, but feels the beauty in the simple details of life, from the way light falls from the sky, to the sheen of leaves, to the buzzing of cicadas. Approaching life through such a hopeful lens evokes a glass-half-full perspective. In fact, the speaker is so hopeful that he believes “The world is/a glass overflowing/with water.” I think Kanaga would have felt the same way. 

— Kirk Testa, Curatorial Intern, Photography Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894-1978). [Untitled] (Glasses and Reflections). Gelatin silver photograph. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga, 82.65.25

Easter Wings By George Herbert

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,

      Though foolishly he lost the same,

            Decaying more and more,

                  Till he became

                        Most poore:

                        With thee

                  O let me rise

            As larks, harmoniously,

      And sing this day thy victories:

Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne

      And still with sicknesses and shame.

            Thou didst so punish sinne,

                  That I became

                        Most thinne.

                        With thee

                  Let me combine,

            And feel thy victorie:

         For, if I imp my wing on thine,

Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

Easter Wings by George Herbet and Martin Bach’s flower vase from the Brooklyn Museum’s Decorative Arts collection reveal the interrelationship between form and function. In Easter Wings, Herbert strategically varies the line length to create an image that enhances the meaning of the poem; when you turn the poem on its side, it resembles the wings of a bird, of which are symbolic of the atonement of Jesus Christ. In doing so, the author is not only telling us his message, but he is showing it visually as well. Similarly, the vase takes the visual form of its function. Its floral design amplifies the meaning of the object, as the vase is meant to hold flowers. In both instances, we see how aesthetic properties of a work echo the meaning and function of the work itself.

— Amy Zavecz Martin Bach (American, 1862-1921). Vase, ca. 1905. Opalescent glass. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mrs. Alfred Zoebisch, 59.143.16. Creative Commons-BY 

I am the Earth (Watashi wa chikyu) [Excerpt] by Kiyoko Nagase, Translated by Takako Lento

I am warm, moist soil  I am a single supple stalk  I draw my life  all the way up into corollas of wild berries on the roadside 

I am amazed at  a breast of water welling  to flow into the inlet of a muddy rice paddy  I am amazed at  myself being  hot steam blowing fire and sulfur up  from the bottom of the great ocean, deep indigo.  I am amazed at  the crimson blood flow  covering the earth’s surface in human shape;  I am amazed that it swells as the tides ebb and flow, and gushes out monthly under distant invisible gravity … I am the earth.  I live there, and I am the very same earth. 

In the four billionth year  I have come to know  the eternal cold moon, my other self, my hetero being,  then, for the first time, I am amazed that I am warm mud.

The vivid imagery conjured up by Kiyoko Nagase’s poem is beautifully visualized by Emmi Whitehorse’s painting. The emphasis on deep Earth tones and abstract corporeality in both the poem and the painting really creates an intense metaphysical link between the environment and the self.

— Amanda Raquel Dorval, Archives Intern Emmi Whitehorse (Navajo, born 1957). Fire Weed, 1998. Chalk, graphite, pastel and oil on paper mounted on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Hinrich Peiper and Dorothee Peiper-Riegraf in honor of Emmi Whitehorse, 2006.49. © artist or artist's estate

Seventh Circle of Earth by Ocean Vuong

On April 27, 2011, a gay couple, Michael Humphrey and Clayton Capshaw, was murdered by immolation in their home in Dallas, Texas.

Dallas Voice

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As if my finger, / tracing your collarbone / behind closed doors, / was enough / to erase myself. To forget / we built this house knowing / it won’t last. How / does anyone stop / regret / without cutting / off his hands? / Another torch

streams through / the kitchen window, / another errant dove. / It’s funny. I always knew / I’d be warmest beside / my man. / But don’t laugh. Understand me / when I say I burn best / when crowned / with your scent: that earth-sweat / & Old Spice I seek out each night / the days

refuse me. / Our faces blackening / in the photographs along the wall. / Don’t laugh. Just tell me the story / again, / of the sparrows who flew from falling Rome, / their blazed wings. / How ruin nested inside each thimbled throat / & made it sing

until the notes threaded to this / smoke rising / from your nostrils. Speak— / until your voice is nothing / but the crackle / of charred

bones. But don’t laugh / when these walls collapse / & only sparks / not sparrows / fly out. / When they come / to sift through these cinders—& pluck my tongue, / this fisted rose, / charcoaled & choked / from your gone

mouth. / Each black petal / blasted / with what’s left / of our laughter. / Laughter ashed / to air / to honey to baby / darling, / look. Look how happy we are / to be no one / & still

American.

Ocean Vuong’s “Seventh Circle of Earth” has persisted as one of the great, affective moments of poetry in my life since I first heard Pádraig Ó Toama’s gorgeous reading and discussion of it on his podcast, Poetry Unbound. I decided to pair Vuong’s poem with Mary Coble’s Untitled 2 (from Note To Self) because both works are urgently immersive into the violence and experience of LGBTQ people in the U.S., and for how each work uses text and physicality to address presence, pain, and erasure. Vuong’s poem is actually footnoted to a quote from a news article about a gay couple murdered in Texas. The page is thus blank, absent of text. The reader has to sink below the main stage, the accepted space of word and story, to find the voices of this couple and the depth of their story’s tenderness, eroticism, and utter devastation. Coble’s piece foils the structure and effect of Seventh Circle of Earth by taking what was subverted by Vuong—text and the narrative of violence—wholly to the surface. Her photograph captures her own legs tattooed without ink with the names of LGBTQ individuals victimized by hate crimes. I cannot help but think of Franz Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony,” in which prisoners’ “sentences'' are inscribed by the needle of a “punishment apparatus” directly onto their bodies. I was struck by how the curator’s note for this photograph describes Coble’s artistic endeavor here as “harrowing.” The needle in Kafka’s short story is indeed called “The Harrow”. The noun harrow is an agricultural tool that combs plowed soil to break up clumps of earth and uproot weeds and clear imperfections. The verb to harrow means to plague, and in the story’s original German the verb for “harrow”, eggen,  is also translated as “to torment”. Kafka and Coble conflate these definitions of “the harrow” in their respective works: they use a needled device, like the true noun definition, as an instrument of torment because of someone else’s idea of punishment and justice. Here, violence is brought to the surface, intimate in as much as we are brought right up to the artist’s skin and into the presence of her and her community’s pain. Together, one can see how each creator physicalizes their respective artistic space to tell the stories of LGBTQ people, of what is tender and harrowing, below the surface and written into the skin. 

— Talia Abrahams, Provenance Intern, IHCPP Mary Coble (American, born 1978). Untitled 2 (from Note to Self), 2005. Inkjet print. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 2008.10. © artist or artist's estate 

To my daughter Kakuya   by Assata Shakur  

I have shabby dreams for you   of some vague freedom   I have never known.   Baby   I don't want you hungry or thirsty   or out in the cold.   and I don't want the frost   to kill your fruit   before it ripens.   I can see a sunny place  Life exploding green.   I can see your bright, bronze skin at ease with all the flowers   and the centipedes.   I can hear laughter,   not grown from ridicule   And words not prompted   by ego or greed or jealousy.   I see a world where hatred   has been replaced by love.   and ME replaced by WE   And I can see a world replaced                                       where you,   building and exploring,   strong and fulfilled,   will understand.   And go beyond my little shabby dreams. 

This poem is featured in Assata Shakur’s memoir, Assata: An Autobiography. It details her hope for a better world that  her daughter can grow up in. This poem is positioned in the book when Shakur is facing increasing prosecution as a result of her  activism and affiliations with the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation army. Being written more than 30 years after this picture  was taken, the poem summons me to think about the trauma that many Black women face and how much of that trauma gets passed  down to their children. The black and white photo of a mother and daughter provides a nice visual to the poem. “The image of a Black  mother and child sitting on their luggage reflects the little-discussed history of segregated transportation in the northern United States. Through the 1940s, Penn Station officials assigned Black travelers seats in Jim Crow cars on southbound trains” (Brooklyn Museum). The photograph of train passengers waiting outside of Manhattan’s Pennsylvania Station especially echoes the verse “I don’t want you  hungry or thirsty or out in the cold.” The overall optimistic tone of Shakur’s poem alters our relationship to the image as we imagine  the mother pictured above hoping for the exact same things

— Zaria W, Teen Programs intern Ruth Orkin (American, 1921-1985). Mother and Daughter at Penn Station, NYC, 1948. Gelatin silver photograph, sheet: 13 15/16 × 11 in. (35.4 × 27.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mary Engel, 2011.22.3. © artist or artist's estate

Crunch.  By Kailyn Gibson 

I retch as a mass of sinew lies between my lips.  The sensation is unbearable.  Fortunately, the jar of flies has gone missing again. 

Slowly, surely, and yet never sure at all,  the quiet of buzzing rings through the in-between. 

It is a symphony wrought from blood and bone. 

Saliva drips from bleeding, hungry gums,  And the crunch of glass echoes the grinding of molars.

If I proffered a sanguine smile, would masticated shards look like teeth?  Would they gleam just as prettily?  

The flies ring,  and the rot calls. 

— Kailyn Gibson Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917). Portrait of a Man (Portrait d'homme), ca. 1866. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund, 21.112 

Excerpt from Autobiography of Red A novel in verse by Anne Carson

7. If Helen’s reasons arose out of some remark Stesichoros made either it was a strong remark about Helen’s sexual misconduct (not to say its unsavory aftermath the Fall of Troy) or it was not.

8. If it was a strong remark about Helen’s sexual misconduct (not to say its unsavory aftermath the Fall of Troy) either this remark was a lie or it was not.

9. If it was not a lie either we are now in reverse and by continuing to reason in this way we are likely to arrive back at the beginning of the question of the blinding of Stesichoros or we are not.

10. If we are now in reverse and by continuing to reason in this way are likely to arrive back at the beginning of the question of the blinding of Stesichoros either we will go along without incident or we will meet Stesichoros on our way back.

11. If we meet Stesichoros on our way back either we will keep quiet or we will look him in the eye and ask him what he thinks of Helen.

12. If we look Stesichoros in the eye and ask him what he thinks of Helen either he will tell the truth or he will lie.

13. If Stesichoros lies either we will know at once that he is lying or we will be fooled because now that we are in reverse the whole landscape looks inside out.

This excerpt comes from Appendix C of Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, a novel in verse. A translator and classicist herself, Carson mixes fact with fiction in her unconventional retelling of the myth of Geryon and Hercules, beginning with a roundabout introduction to the poet Stesichoros. Autobiography presents a captivating example of recent Queer projects that take up Classical material as their basis. A fascination with the Classical past has pervaded our modern conception of sexual identity politics, down to the very etymology of the word “lesbian.” In this fascination, I see the same desire to capture Classical imagery as cultural heritage which has also pervaded American museums, albeit with significantly different aims. The fresco pictured above comes to mind, which passed through many collectors and was even purchased by the museum before anyone pegged it as a modern piece—not an original Roman fresco. John D. Cooney, a 20th century curator of our Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern Art collection, wrote that “the unclad and somewhat winsome charms of the lady [probably] diverted objective glances.” Both in the case of the fresco and Carson’s novel, the “unclad and somewhat winsome charms” of the Classical past shape and reshape our understanding of history.

— Kira Houston, Curatorial Intern, Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern Art Modern, in the style of the Roman Period. Part of a Fresco, early 19th century C.E. Clay, paint. Brooklyn Museum, Ella C. Woodward Memorial Fund, 11.30.

Late Fragment by Raymond Carver From A New Path to the Waterfall, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989.

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

— Shori Diedrick Brackens (American, born 1989). when no softness came, 2019. Cotton and acrylic yarn. Brooklyn Museum, Purchased with funds given by The LIFEWTR Fund at Frieze New York 2019, 2019.12. © artist or artist's estate

Jaguar By Francisco X. Alarcón

some say                                    dicen que ahora                  I'm now almost                           estoy casi extinto       extinct in this park                      por este parque    but the people                            pero la gente who say this                               que dice esto don't know                                 no sabe that by smelling                          que al oler   the orchids                                 las orquídeas in the trees                                 en los árboles they're sensing                          están percibiendo  the fragrance                             la fragancia of my chops                              de mis fauces  that by hearing                          que al oír the rumblingc                            el retumbo of the waterfalls                        de los saltos  

they're listening                         están escuchando          to my ancestors'                       el gran rugido   great roar                                  de mis ancestros

that by observing                      que al observar     the constellations                      las constelanciones     of the night sky                         del firmamento 

they're gazing                           están mirando at the star spots                       las motas de estrellas    on my fur                                  marcadas en mi piel that I am and                            que yo soy always will be                           y siempre seré the wild                                     el indomable

untamed                                  espíritu silvestre living spirit                               vivo de esta of this jungle                            jungla

While the author of the poem speaks about animals, their words can also speak on behalf of the erasure of indigenous peoples in South America. Much like the jaguar, indigenous traditions and culture are very important to life in South America. Despite their marginalization, Indigenous peoples throughout the Andes used coca leaves to help with the altitude. The use and cultivation of coca are criminalized throughout most of South America despite it being essential to indigenous cultures. This vessel was used to contain lime which would activate the coca leaves.  Much like the jaguar, indigenous traditions are also faced with endangerment despite being woven into the fabric that is Latin America. Through the opposite man and woman figures, the vessel shows the duality that is important to the Quimbaya people which is still relevant to Colombians today.

Aunque el autor del poema habla sobre los animales, sus palabras también comunican el sentimiento común de la supresión de los indígenas en Suramérica. Con la mención del jaguar, se puede entender en el poema que la cultura y las tradiciones de las personas que son indígenas son sumamente importantes para la vida en Sudamérica. A pesar de su marginación, los indígenas en Los Andes utilizan la hoja de coca para ayudar en la altura de las montañas. El uso y el cultivo de la hoja de coca fue criminalizado (penalizado) a través de Sudamérica, aunque su uso para los indígenas era vital y esencial para su cultura. Este recipiente que se utiliza contiene limón lo que activa la hoja de la coca. Similarmente al jaguar, las tradiciones de los indígenas siempre estaban en peligro aunque estuvieran entrelazadas en las telas de lo que sería Latinoamérica. A través del hombre opuesto y las figuras de mujeres, el recipiente muestra la dualidad de lo que es importante para las personas que son Quimbaya, algo que todavía hoy es relevante para los Colombianos.

— Jeffrey Alexander Lopez, Curatorial Intern, American Art & Arts of the Americas Quimbaya. Poporo (Lime Container), 1-600 C.E. Tumbaga. Brooklyn Museum, Alfred W. Jenkins Fund, 35.507. Creative Commons-BY 

[pamviles]

Codism Manifesto

By Pamviles

Ⅰ  Background

When I was eighteen, I suffered from a mental disorder for half a year, and it was during this time that I discovered art. My philosophy also began to take form during this period of time. I had read extensively into the fields of philosophy and science (especially quantum physics), Plato's cave enlightens the imagination to unknown spaces, Descartes’ demon destroys previous structures of philosophy to rebuild a new system and Wittgenstein's mirror of the game captures the essence of philosophy through language. The centuries-long debate surrounding the nature of matter as either a particle or a wave, and its reflection on the real world has perpetuated through the theories of Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger and others. As well as the fragility of knowledge itself, all the above helped me re-understand the world. In university, I spent three years creating my own philosophy, I used ‘imagination’ as the basis of my philosophy, through the form of Dialogues (The Dialogues of Mr. Walter and Mr. Galson, a total of seven articles, included in my book ‘Drifting: an artist's madness, sex, art and philosophy’), involving questions concerning existence in reality, the possibility of god, the truth in history, the vanity of inspiration, time, and fate. All of the aforementioned are presented in my artworks. I believe an artist above all things should be a thinker, and to a certain extent, examine the dissionance of their thoughts through their own art.

My early artworks refer to surrealism. The mystery and fantasy of surrealism is what led me into the realm of art. Surrealism is a means of elaborating dreams. It can break reality and bring reality back to a fantasy realm, distorted and merged with forms of the inner desires, struggles and pursuits of an artist. To me, the charm of surrealism lies in that it can fully show the inner world of an artist. But as time passed, I was no longer content with surrealist expressions, because if I wanted my art to leave a mark on history, I had to create something that had never been done before.

Since 2018, I have been rethinking my artworks. Using my educational background of mathematics in my practice, my current artworks incorporate the form of code as a major element of my art style. In fact, my early artworks also had an element of coding, but only in recent years have I gradually formed a theory of my own.

I was self-taught in painting while I majored in mathematics in university. The element of mathematics may seem to have no relation to art, but for me, mathematics is the basic explanation of how things work in the universe. Art, on the other hand, is a manifestation of unique human emotions and souls, the former being the cornerstone of reason, and the latter the ultimate sublimation of emotion. Both are important forms of human understanding and expression of the world. What kind of collision can be brought about by combining the two together? Integration or contradiction? I merge mathematics and art based on my own understanding of both fields and the reflection of the past torture and encouragement from these two. I hope to bring viewers to new thoughts about math and art.

To me, painting is like a colorful shell, and theory is its soul. After two years of summarizing my own ideas of art, the time comes to solidify the first draft of my Codism Manifesto.

 Ⅱ Definition

Codism in art refers to the recompilation of common language systems into new images or symbol systems by means of mathematics, linguistics, etc. and incorporating them into works of art. The compiled cryptosystem can be symbols, lines, geometric figures, color changes, cubes arrangement, etc. It is a rigorous system with regular rules instead of random, it hides the original information to be expressed in the form of codes. This cryptosystem needs to fuse with the created artwork. They are complementary and not independent of each other. It is precisely because of a variety of patterns that different cryptosystems can show, that it can be embedded into artworks and become an inseparable part of it.

 Ⅲ Meaning and purpose

1.      Symbolic meaning

In the art of painting, you can often see the traces of symbolization, and use certain images or symbols to harness a concept or meaning. For example, people think of religion or death when they see the cross. There is also a certain symbolic meaning in my art. In addition to the specific objects in the painting, my code has become a part of the symbol. So far, I have created over ten code systems and integrated them into the artworks. Sometimes a painting is just one code system, and sometimes multiple codes are superimposed. The shape of each set of codes is different (some are lines, some are geometric, some are round deformations, some are symbols similar to hieroglyphics, etc.), because in different paintings, I will choose according to the theme of the painting, and it is because of the different forms of these codes, they have different symbolic meanings to the picture. Since these codes are formed through mathematical processing, and mathematics is the basis of all scientific and technological progress today, the presentation of these codes on canvas represents technology and science. The code itself is a hidden method, sometimes symbolizing secrets or unacceptable ideas or even a reflection of the virtual world.

I could have presented numbers or mathematical formulas directly on the canvas, and even extracted a part of my Apm theorem to add to my paintings, but I think said approach is too blunt. Trying to combine mathematics and art by selecting some random symbolic elements of mathematics and forcing it into the picture would be reckless and rather dull-witted. The works created in this way seem to me to have no meaning of mathematics but a shallow representation, let alone apply any mathematical knowledge. Throughout my works I have to capture the essence of mathematics through my own coded system, because only in this way can I be more organically connected with the subject I need to express and integrate with the picture.

The symbolic meaning of artworks is based on the artist and the audience having a common cultural knowledge background. But in pure mathematics, in a series of theorems and proofs, no symbolic elements can be found. The world of mathematics is so pure that it only has logic and reasoning. And when this cryptographic code with mathematics is introduced into art, it is to a certain extent a betrayal of symbolism, and this is also one of the processes that will gradually appear in my works.

 2.      Words and communication

Before becoming an artist, most of my work was in writing. When I started to paint, I always thought about the difference and connection between painting and writing.

Reading a paragraph of words requires clear and organized thinking and time in order to understand the meaning in the text. In contrast, processing a painting can be scattered or even instantaneous. Reading text is like a narrow stream flowing, and it is single and coherent in time. It can only be understood by reading one word after another, as this is the brain's way of clearly organizing and making a single-channel sequence. But viewing a painting is like standing on the edge of a radiant lake, and the result is immediate sensory pleasure or other instant experience. The former is the perception of understanding, while the latter is a sensory experience. Words are constrained by time, yet it is the most ideal tool for expressing thoughts, because words (or language) itself is the basic way of thinking. The painting is an instant impact, and its viewing is not constrained by time. (Of course, to understand some certain paintings still requires time, but that would be a different subject.)

My code embeds the narrative and comprehension elements of text into the painting, which makes my work, not only have the immediate sensibility as the painting itself, but also implies step-by-step understanding. The existence of the code does not necessarily suggest that the audience needs to understand the story or meaning behind it, but work as a representative of the comprehension and revelation that can be obtained by reading.

My code system brings a time-like depth of procedural understanding to the painting in addition to the visual characteristics of the painting itself.

 When a piece of art is presented, it is a non-verbal communication between artist and audience. It does not have a concise expression of information like verbal communication, and the information of the work may be transmitted unconsciously by the artist to the viewer. Since this nonverbal communication between the artist and viewer is unclear, not all audiences can receive the message.

The most direct way to convey information is to through language. At this functional level, art is unable to match. And there is no need to compare, because an artist, to a certain extent, is hiding information rather than to exposing it, especially in contemporary art, the information that the artist wants to express through various forms of presentation lets the viewer explores its meaning like a maze, layer by layer. Perhaps one of the charms of contemporary art stems from this. Organizing and hiding a message is to give it a sense of mystery to arouse the viewer’s interest, and allow the viewer to experience the pleasure it brings little by little when solving the mystery of the message. Therefore, in addition to visual enjoyment and stimulation, for the viewer, art also has a bit of pleasure in the decryption process, although this information itself may be rather bland. As Oscar Wilde once said, "the commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it." At some point, art is a fantasy lie with psychedelic color, and it is through this lie can the viewer more fully experience the preciousness of the truth lying behind.

My artworks that conceal the information in the form of codes symbolize the process of constructing this lie of art.

 3.      The Mirror of Math

Mathematics is a law that exists in all things in the universe. It exists at the beginning of everything, and will exist until the end of time. It is a pure world that can be independent of the physical world. It is not swayed by any biological or physical events, but at the same time it is the basis of the law of everything physical. Mathematics can exist beyond time, and is the only thing that never changes. In the modern society, it is also the basis of today's technological progress and represents the glory of our times.

In my work, as the elements of mathematics have been embedded, the eternal side of mathematics is introduced. In the form of cryptography, the data and information in science and technology is given a contemporary aspect, representing the development of the modern world and the possibilities of the future. This is also expressed in some of my paintings. They depict not only a current state of time, but also a trend or possibility into the future. Nowadays, humans have created all the glory in technology, but perhaps in the near future, with the development of AI, technology would have promoted the evolution of humanity itself or even more radical changes, as the intelligent life form that existed at that time, what would they think about the origin and pursuit of the human beings that existed and their own?

 For me, the creation of the codes is an attachment to the conservation laws of all things in the universe. When I see various lines or different shapes in a picture, it is like seeing a series of random numbers. I always want to find the pattern in this chaos that explains it and gives it a sense of meaning in a regular form of order. And in our lives, aren’t they similar? Both spiritual and material pursuits give us a meaning in life, and maintain its continuation through inherent laws such as a stable social system, morals, etc.

In addition to the code with the sense of order in my artworks, it is also accompanied by elements of randomness, and this reflects the events or emotions in our lives that are unpredictable or controlled.

So in a way, my work is not only like a cryptographic map with hidden information, but also a microcosm of life and a world in the form of symbols.

Therefore, when I use the math to create different code systems for my art creation, I am attempting to construct a completely new world in its purest form, a mathematical form mirrored by the physical world that we live in. In this new world, there is no trace of tangible living things. Instead, exist abstract expressions of feeling and reason, and the merging and struggles between them. Within these artworks, the use of code symbolizes the constant laws of our physical world and the various inherent methods of comprehending our reality.

 Ⅳ Overview

Codism is the product of the collision between math and art. It has a very characteristic symbolic meaning in the performance of art, and organically integrates related elements such as written word and communication, math and logic, data and information and various other concepts into art. The emergence of codism will hopefully add a different movement in art history.

First draft: 2019.12.31

[arrogant-hair]

Stories I have told: Jan Švankmajer

The marionette was then my favourite toy, even my passion - other toys gave me no pleasure. But even then I believed - and this strange belief is not yet dead in me - that objects were sensitive, living.

Michel de Ghelderode.

The subversive quality of my work comes from the fact that the audience see ordinary objects which behave very strangely, so their relationship to them is called into question. That is the difference between Surrealism and the art of the fantastic.

Jan Švankmajer

The Czech Surrealist animator Jan Svankmajer delves into the realm of the uncanny with his remarkable blend of puppetry, model making, animation, trompe l'oeil and live action. A blend that both invites the audience into, and alienates them from, the world of objects. For Svankmajer objects are not inanimate, docile 'things', but have a materiality that transcends 'thingness' and endows objects with their own personality. Svankmajer does not simply anthropomorphise objects, giving them human characteristics, but attempts to reveal their nature as connected to their materiality. Although he often allows objects some human characteristics (for example the Arcimboldoesque heads in Dimensions of Dialogue or the child's suit in Jabberwocky) he also creates grotesque and fantastic devices that move beyond the human to a unique fusion of the objects 'innate' properties (for example the doll knife in Jabberwocky or the sock caterpillar of Alice).

Svankmajer's aesthetics come from the merging of the long tradition of the Marionette theatre in Eastern Europe, the grotesque high mannerism of Arcimboldo, and of course the Bretonian influenced Czech Surrealist movement. Michael O'Pray explains:

His work shows the influence of two major trends - Surrealism, which has survived in Czechoslovakia since the early 30s, and the overwrought and technically exuberant Mannerism which found one of its greatest expressions in the bizarre paintings of Arcimboldo, who was resident at the court of the eccentric Hapsburg emperor Rudolf II in Prague in the late sixteenth century. 1

Further than these influences I would argue that Svankmajer's use of Freudian psychoanalysis adds to the meaning and integrality of his films. Surrealist theory has long included a discourse with psychoanalysis, this discourse is illuminated by Švankmajer’s manipulation of psychoanalytic theory to include not only elements of infantile sexuality but also the uncanny.

According to Freud the uncanny (Unheimliche) often shares meaning with its opposite, canny (Heimliche). Inasmuch the uncanny is the known or familiar (canny) that has 'become alienated from it only through a process of repression'. 2

For this uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien but something familiar and old established in the mind which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression. . . the uncanny is something that ought to have remained hidden but has come to light. 3

This repression is necessary to the integrated subjectivity of the individual, in effect sharing the role of the primary repression of the id state, and the repression of the feminine. The strongest feelings of the uncanny come from a 'regression to a time when the ego had not yet marked itself off sharply from the external world and from other people.'4In Svankmajer's films one can see that these propositions of repression are indeed linked. In Alice it is Alice's childlike (id) gaze that enables the uncanny fantasy realm to unfold before the adult viewer. An uncanny moment of memory (of childhood, of Carroll's familiar book) is made unfamiliar by Svankmajer's additions (and subtractions) to the Wonderland mythos. These processes of alienation in Svankmajer's work point to an essential tenet of the uncanny. In as much as the uncanny is somehow familiar, it is also that which is simultaneously other. Freud wrote:

Uncanny effect is often and easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced...when a symbol takes over from the thing it symbolises...a feature closely allied to the belief in the omnipotence of thoughts. 5

Freud also posits that the uncanny is something familiar that has become estranged to the subject not only through the process of repression, but also through additions to the canny that add a dimension of the alien. Svankmajer's films are populated with such additions and also with substitutions. These substitutions are present when objects - often familiar household objects - become fantastic avatars for the uncanny and grotesque. By virtue of these exchanges, Wonderland in Alice becomes an extension of her home, writing desks are magic gateways and children's building blocks become inhabitable spaces. These transformations through Alice's eyes are produced through her childhood belief in the omnipotence of her thoughts. Far from placing Svankmajer's work into the fairytale tradition that is immune to uncanny effects, these metamorphoses actually heighten the uncanny experience by extending the natural world and making it alien - in effect adding the fantastic to the mundane and revealing their hidden or repressed meanings.

These effects of alienating addition can also be attributes to the influence of the grotesque. Wolfgang Kayser writes 'the grotesque is the estranged world' and further:

The alienation of familiar forms creates a mysterious and terrifying connection between the fantastic and the real world which is so essential to the grotesque. 6

Michael O'Pray argues that Svankmajer's use of the grotesque situates his work as an exploration of the materiality of objects.

The grotesque qualities of Svankmajer's work and his use of effigies are both intimately connected with the materiality of his filmic universe. If any one process or any one kind of image dominates here, it is the animation of objects themselves - the magical transformation of things which gives an overwhelming sense of their textures and 'thingness'. 7

Further his argument defining the grotesque includes a reference to it that places the grotesque well within the Surrealist revolution: 'The grotesque is a sign of resistance, a symbolic destruction of official culture. . . Surrealism, as his films admirably display, is not simply a matter of 'irrational' fantasy: it also involves a particular relationship to the real and its properties'. 8

The circuitous path that Svankmajer takes to Surrealist revolution involves the use of puppetry to question the nature of self and other. His puppets are often styled using traditional puppetry methods (like the marionettes in Faust) but more often he uses a grotesque array of skeletons, dolls, clay and bodily fluids. Svankmajer's puppetry can be termed as abject; as it is precisely the left over, expelled parts of the human or animalian subject that he exploits to create his uncanny effects. In Alice the creatures of Wonderland vacillate between cardboard cut-outs (made by his partner Eva) and corporeal creations that are reanimated remnants of past life. Svankmajer creates visceral 'exquisite corpses' - creatures of marvellous vicissitudes that problematise the distinction between animate and inanimate, life and death.

Svankmajer's use of more traditional puppetry methods is not without excursions into the uncanny. The swapping of the Alice character between the live girl and the animated doll is a self-conscious attempt to question the nature of the human subject. Svankmajer uses these interchanges in a somewhat obvious way - the doll is dressed and styled to represent Alice, and although she appears a simulacra, she is also a decisive, divisive other.

And when the object does take human form, sometimes reproducing anatomical features quite extraneous to its integrity as a puppet, it often does so self consciously, as if the attempt to camouflage its otherness were in fact a subterfuge for displaying it. 9

This interchange between self and other that is present in the puppet both attacks and reassures our position as subjects. It is an uneasy interchange for the gaze of the audience doubling the function of the screen as mirror.

Sharing in the trickery of the automaton is merely another way to define ourselves as human, that is, as both being and nothingness, presence and absence: the automaton is, in a way, our mirror . . . or our evil eye.10

Svankmajer's use of the uncanny effects of puppetry is done with the Surrealist sentiment to disrupt and disturb the paradigmatic order. He calls into question not only our position as subjects but disturbs our notions of the 'identity of things' by making our world simultaneously familiar and alien, our selves individuated and fragmented, and always reminds us of the doppelgängers of our existence.

1 Michael O'Pray. 'Between Slapstick and Horror'. Sight and Sound vol. 4, no. 9. September, 1994. p. 20

2 Sigmund Freud, 'The Uncanny' in Collected Papers, v.4, (Hogarth Press, London, 1959) p. 363

3 ibid., p. 364

4 ibid. p. 358

5 ibid. p. 367.

6 Wolfgang Kayser. The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Peter Smith, London, 1968. pp. 184 and122.

7 Michael O'Pray. 'Surrealism, Fantasy and the Grotesque: The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer'. in Donald (ed.) Fantasy and the Cinema: A Reader. bfi, London, 1989.

8 ibid. pp. 2 and 6

9 Roman Paska. 'The Inanimate Incarnate' in Feher (ed.) Zone 3. Zone Books, New York, 1989. p. 412.

10 J. C. Beaune. 'The Classical Age of Automata'. in Zone 3. op.cit. p. 437.

[tomasorban]

THE DREAMING SELF: HOW MUCH DO WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT DREAMS?

Time has revealed dream phenomena as paradoxical realms that are highly resistant to empirical investigation. Despite attempts to probe, encroach upon, uncover, and map territory traditionally exalted under philosophical inquiry, they remain enigmatic and ineffable.

           Dreams fascinate, mesmerize us, and pique our curiosity, namely because they appear so diametrically opposed to waking conscious experience in terms of both form and content. They violate Aristotelian homogeneity without shame. In fact, the hallmark mental characteristics of dreams–the dearth of metacognition, severe disorientation, amnesia, confabulation, misperception, reflexive recourse to hyper-associations, and the loss of an analytical anchor–more closely resemble episodes of psychotic decompensation than anything we might experience in self-regulated conscious states.

Well, what happens in a cinematic and surrealistic dreamscape is that… our gelatinous legs won’t carry us to safety after our brains issue the motor command; we see no issue with giving a public speech whilst concurrently disrobing; we strangle strangers in our rage on impulse without remorse or fear of punishment; and our best beloved transmute into theriomorphs and then reassume human form–and there’s nothing at all anomalous about that. Sometimes the Eiffel Tower is in our backyard, and sometimes we instinctively know who somebody is despite their deceptive Protean disguise. It’s all arbitrary, nonsensical, and paradoxical, at least when equated with the self-referential processes of diurnal arousal, yet it all makes perfect sense when subjectively appraised from within the perceptual context it occurred.

Examining the phenomenon from a sociohistorical perspective, one cannot deny the eminence and exalted position dreams held in antiquity. During the Greco-Roman period individuals with an ailment might pilgrimage to the temple of the god Asclepius where they would slumber in the abaton, hoping that explicit details of a cure might be revealed to them in an extraordinary dream.  A protracted period of intellectual somnolence ensued during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Age of Enlightenment, however interest in the topic was reignited with the publication of Freud’s seminal work on the topic, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). While his theories of dreams as an unconscious embodiment of wish fulfilment may not be as empirically veracious as he would have liked, Freud was instrumental in broaching the topic as a mental phenomenon worthy of philosophical consideration and scientific exploration. Jung began where Freud tapered off, interpreting dreams as a vehicle for the expression of archetypal raw material irrupting from the collective unconscious. The imbuing of dreams with meaning had a snowball effect, and more and more thinkers were now joining the coterie eager to unlock their deepest and most profound mysteries. As one might expect, the philosophical interest in causality generated an emerging counterculture as well with Harvard University psychiatrists like Hobson and McCarley opting for a more reductive physiological approach which presupposes that the brain is a “dream-state generator” and dreams random byproducts of nocturnal brain activation.

           Founded on logical operative cognition, the operative neuroscientific tools of today–PET scans, MRIs, and EEGs–have been inept at capturing the phenomenal essence of dreams. Subjective self-report is the only known window into dream phenomenology, and this is bound to stir at the very least discomfort and at most feelings of anathema in those with dogmatic adherence to the assumptive worldview of eliminative materialism.

How does one render the dream amenable to objective measurement when people struggle to recollect explicit details after waking? This, in fact, is a very valid question. Scientists will argue that subjective accounts are mutable and empirically unreliable–if we can’t reach a unanimous appraisal on a consensual public mugging, then what hope is there of giving a veracious account of a nebulous dream narrative unfolding at a time when memory processes are in complete abeyance? Here lies the conundrum…

           Despite the gaping conceptual chasm, there is some agreement amongst cognitive scientists regarding the interpretative nature of physiological investigations. Animal studies with maze-running rats, for instance, have shown that the prima materia of the dream is real-life experience. Dreamscapes are jumbled, reassembled, and reordered waking experiences–a nonphysical dimension and perceptual space where past templates are utilized as predictive devices to determine how future events might unravel. Neuroimaging studies generally show increased activation in mesial temporal lobe and prefrontal lobe structures during dream states, and hence corroborate this conjecture. Dreams are purportedly salubrious, exerting a positive influence on mood and a regulatory effect on the body’s biochemical and immunological functions. This much we do know.

           In hindsight, we see that there are purely psychological and more physiological-evolutionary explanations able to theoretically couch and account for dreaming cognition. Which of the two should we preference, if any? Or should we try to circumvent the impediment of an internalized either-or philosophy predicated on the Kantian-Cartesian epistemological box and take a more integrative approach to dreaming cognition?

           Recently I encountered an article by Graveline and Wamsley (2015) entitled Dreaming and Waking Cognition. In it the authors make a decisive argument against higher order interpretations which tend to imbue dream imagery with symbolism and allegorical meaning. Moreover, they scrutinize the interpretability of dreams in clinical settings. While I do not detest nor repudiate the idea of dreaming and waking cognition as commensurable phenomena with shared neurobiological and phenomenological correlates, I do wonder about their appraisal and treatment of an altered conscious state, one that lies on the furthest boundaries of the human consciousness spectrum, as if it were a homogenous and monolithic neurophenomenological entity.

If waking conscious awareness can manifest with variabilities in form and content (i.e., relaxed state, hypnoid state, hypoarousal, psychosis, delirium, coma), then there’s reason to believe that the same heterogeneity also exists in dreaming states. “Shared” correlates implies latitude for phenomenal variability and anomaly; nothing is absolute. The underlying unconscious assumption of a binary system with discrete functional units is an intellectual trap in consciousness research, one which we should avoiding making at all costs.

In and of themselves theories must remain unbiased and accommodate all observed and reported data, not just the preferred data sets. Currently, the hegemony of the Western mind sciences does not permit conceptualizations of the nonphysical mind as distinct from the brain, a phenomenon which has precipitated the dismissal of precognitive dreams as a respectable domain of scientific investigation. Historiographical accounts of polymaths, scientists, and creative luminaries converge on the dream as an illumination phase of the creative process. Emerging as instances of historical novelty, profound scientific discoveries and truths which initiate radical shifts from conventional dominant paradigms or shatter them altogether are frequently epiphenomena of dream states.

Kekule came up with a simple structure for benzene after experiencing a hypnogogic vision in which carbon atoms congregated in the form of an ouroboros, a snake biting its own tail. The celebrated Indian mathematician Srinivasan Ramanujan claimed the Hindi goddess revealed mathematical formulas, equations, and conjectures to him in the dream state. For Rene Descartes, a series of dreams served as inspiration for the development of the scientific method. How these profound illuminations occur in an input-deprived cortex starved of logical operative cognition eludes understanding and cannot be feasibly explained by any existing neurophenomenological model of the human mind and consciousness.

Indeed, scientific progress in this field may be illusory and may continue to be under the auspices of the reductionistic agenda. As the philosopher Colin McGinn eloquently asserts, humans suffer from “cognitive closure” and have invented scientific tools that are essentially products of logical operative cognition; they cannot detect, let alone investigate, quintessential nonphysical phenomena on the other side of that boundary. In the final analysis, we may have reached a stalemate when it comes to our spirited investigation of dreams, one likely to persist until there is a radical shift in the ontological and epistemological axis of science.