Surrealism: The Art of the Subconscious

    Surrealism built a bridge between dream and reality. It can be separated into two categories: Veristism and Automatism. Automatism concentrates on the direct visualization of the subconscious mind and is often not bound by "meaning". Veristism focused on metaphor, each object depicts has a special meanings that support the overall theme. The history of surrealism traces back all the way to medieval Europe. Hieronymus Bosch was one of the earliest surrealist artists, as he was characterized by his bizarre, yet exotic creatures that represent the evil of mankind. His vision of hell influenced Salvador Dali, one of the most iconic surrealists in 20th century. His images often reflect his personal experiences. Surrealism is still very much alive today; many contemporary artists have subscribed themselves to surrealism. Inka Essenhigh and Julie Heffernan are two of the active surrealist artists. Their works are characterized by their imaginative and energetic compositions. Along the long journey of surrealism, the previous artists created one after another exotic and mind blowing images using different media. Surrealism, as its name, reflects the reality of the subconscious world; it is the art of the psychological state. This project explores the concepts of surrealism by studying past artists, and incorporates their techniques and characteristics for improving my own works. Throughout the thesis, I learned from Bosch's and Dali's creativity, and was able to create various exotic creatures in each painting. I incorporated Essenhigh's idea of composition for creating a strong visual flow, and techniques of Heffernan on color relation for combining different objects into a painting. I explored both veristism and automatism, and created paintings in both categories. By combining ordinary objects, I was able to create a surreal composition using enlarged scale and to explore the idea of automatic surrealism. To understand the idea of veristism, I incorporated objects as symbols of my personal experience.