Neosurrealism
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Neosurrealism or Neo-Surrealism is an artistic genre that illustrates the complex imagery of dream or subconscious visions in irrational space and form combinations.
The term has been given to the reappearance of well-known surrealism movement in the late 1970s. Initially, the movement focused on relating surrealism with pop-art, but lately modern artists have been exploring extra directions similar to fantastic, visionary, and fantasy art within the present genre. Neosurrealism frequently called "modern surrealism" due to a noticeable visual resemblance of these two genres. However, the main distinction between them is that Neosurrealism does not imply the original surrealist idea of a freedom from rational control or psychic automatism declared by André Breton, in his “Manifeste du surréalisme” (Surrealist Manifesto).
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[edit] Neosurrealism in arts & media
[edit] Movement
Any art movement is defined as a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time. This definition may be applied to Neosurrealism but it does not have a particular founder or group. The movement is still not clearly defined, but it develops rapidly adding more professional and amateur art enthusiasts every day. As it was suggested above, the field of neosurrealism is a highly intricate and fiercely contested one, and there is no universal consensus on precisely what constitutes neosurrealism. The name itself remains very unstable, shifting in meaning according to who uses it, when, where, and in what context. Whether or not this merely multiplies problems of definition is a debatable point, but it certainly reflects the dynamically conflicted, constantly developing, and heterogeneous nature of the movement itself. Neosurrealism and Realism in art are visual dramas diametrically opposite in intent. Neosurrealism expresses interior poetic states of being, envisaged in irrational space and form. Realism, illuminated by objectivity and directed by rational representation, appeals to recognizable truth.
[edit] Visual arts
Neosurrealism is a combined imagery of dreams, fantasies, and subconscious mind visions in fine art painting, digital art graphic, and photography. In the mid 1980s, modern computer technologies brought tons of additional depicting power to contemporary artists. The arrival of desktop publishing and the introduction of software applications introduced a generation of artists to computer image manipulation and 3D image creation that had previously been unachievable. There are thousands of artists, digital and traditional fine art media, who create neo-surrealistic, surreal fantasy, and fantasy realism artworks comparable to Neosurrealism.
Artists associated with modern surrealism include:
[edit] Internet
Neosurrealism is a philosophical, conceptual, artistic movement that acts as a revival of surrealist thought in relation to the new culture of the Internet. The Internet is seen by some as a connection to, (or even the fabric of), a global subconscious mind which promotes unintentional juxtapositions of words and phrases while also imposing a new mental block that neo-surrealists are overcoming with internet automatism.
The movement has been taking place at universities in Florida between philosophy, psychology, and art departments. It is still in its early stages of growth and many people are becoming involved in dialogs about the future of the movement. It can also include a culture of revival, this is where people go back in time and use the style of art in the modern world today. (For example, the art Deco)
[edit] Neo-surrealist
There can no longer be a surrealist literature or text. The revolution of imagination heralded by Louis Aragon and Andre Breton, which manifested through literature and art an image of the sublime unconscious as a representation of the "Real", is impossible to recreate in our modern world, whose imagery and modes of representation have been capitalized in a market mechanism that regularly links psychological behavior with the visual and the written. In our mediated reality there is nothing so solidly human or cultural that can be grasped. The person walking down the street is rarely faced with an object that has not been previously subjected, and exercising ones capacity to manipulate the visual space is a transgression easily contained in legal repercussions or a pre-conceived artistic, social, philosophical structures. The pessimistic revolution of surrealism, which heralded the birth of a society that would soon compromise both the physical and psychological realms, cannot be repeated as its dreamers were the last vanguard of a nostalgic reality slipping out of grasp.
However, there is the possibility of a neo-surrealist situation. The images of this world cannot exist in the arcades and boulevards of the present, but must position itself more internally, literally within the complex of a building or other confined space that contains all the resources of a past world. This environment must move one step further into the subconscious, beyond Freudian marks of desire toward a Lacanian birth that situates a dialectic at early childhood. Within the confined space of literality, reversion to childhood, the re-conjuring of memories, and the re-historicization of the self are the psychological premises that can reconstitute the surrealist image. The neo-surrealist, if they are to exist, must literally submerge themselves into this world as a paradigm, find themselves wholly sufficient within this environment in regard to a need for imagery. Information and food may exist outside this paradigm, but the imagery that enables the neo-surrealist thinker to slip into the necessary psycho-cultural space must be present in all its manifestations at every moment in a juxtaposed montage, and in an abundance that spans a broadly representative historical time range.
[edit] See also
- Fantasy art
- Fantastic art
- Fantastic realism
- Visionary art
- Neo-romanticism
- Magic realism
- Simulated reality
[edit] References
Ffrench, Patrick (1997). "Tel Quel' and Surrealism: A Re-evaluation. Has the Avant-Garde Become a Theory?". The Romanic Review 88.
Rabate, Jean-Michel (2002). "Michael Riffaterre and the Unfinished Project of Structuralism". The Romanic Review 93.
