"I feel like I just found out that my favorite love song was written about a sandwich"

If you're wondering about the title, I'm just having a God-awful day, and well the title captured my feelings, PERFECT, but this being my blog about art, lets cut the crap and get to it.

Surrealism.

Go to think of it, it's probably the most conceptual and brilliant style of art. Language has metaphors and similes, art has surrealism. To paint a possible chain of events that take place somewhere in your subconscious(your dreams, your thought process..), is the surrealism nowadays, but to think and look at a particular thing in the way of a surrealist, to paint the reality of how you see the world with surrealist eyes, that is original surrealism. For example, this quote by Frida kahlo: "I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality. " Frida refused to be categorized as a surrealist, which is what I was trying to say earlier, she truly believed that it IS THAT what reality is, and not what she has made up. It is a point of view, not an interpretation, or a representation. It is reality. Kahlo's work honestly has awe struck every time I look at it, it's not just the quality of her work that is astounding, but it's also the reality in her view, her self portraits are what I admire deeply as they have such a vivid essence of her character, the look of it is so exotic and raw, delivering her character to the reader perfectly. Also, her last painting, painful, yet so detailed and intricate, she has had the best paintings in her worst years. Be it love or physical pain, she painted through it all. 

Another surrealist I think was genius, is Salvador Dali (And you have GOT to admit, the flowers in his mustache are LEGNEDARY .Dalí was a colorful and imposing presence in his ever-present long cape, walking stick, haughty expression, and upturned waxed mustache, the man could pose.) His character never came through as comical to me, he seemed rather dark and almost like he was masking a lot of what he was. His work was clear of that though, it was rather direct and honest. What not a lot of people seem to know is Dali had his hands in graphics too, well thats one way of seeing it, in 1969 he designed the "Chupa chups" logo, which was an important moment in his career, not a defining one though. Fun fact : Dali also created the advertising aspect of the 1969 Eurovision song contest. Now thats more graphics than one thought he knew ! He also created a range of illustrations through out his career span. He also collaborated with Walt Disney to create and animation cartoon character ! His appreciation for art did not end at fine arts and paintings, it ranged over photographs, lithographs, cartoons (Destino- walt disney collaboration) sculptures, and illustrations.

In 1920, he was deeply influenced by Sigmund Freud's writings on the erotic significance of subconscious imagery. The next post will focus on the subconscious imagery and Dali in more detail.

Some surrealistic fun for now ? 

Below are the paintings by Vladimir Kush, a very talented Russian painter, I would say one of the best surrealists of our time. His vision is very Dali-inspired, hence I picked him to be the artist of the day :) His work definitely has a very fresh and vibrant feel to it, yet it has such a direct and clear connection to Dali's "dream" inspired work, it's impossible to miss the connection.