I’m an emerging artist and I recently stated on my New Blood Art profile that my work is inspired by the spirit of surrealism (as well as the lives and work of the abstract expressionists). This is the closest I’ve come so far to openly connecting myself with established western art movements, and it’s not something I feel entirely comfortable doing. I find with labelling comes the danger of over-conceptualising so that the living reality of the person or thing labelled becomes lost to us. However, I think it’s useful to use art terms and other concepts because it provides a starting point for conscious investigation into our lives.
André Breton published the first Manifesto of Surrealism in Paris in 1924. Its point was to introduce a new movement, which Breton stated was a way of life rather than a tendency to make a particular style of art. A ‘way of life’ is born out of the way a person processes the world through their individual understanding. A ‘way of life’ represents and is established through all the decisions made by a person leading up to the most current version of themselves. Surrealism intended, therefore, to challenge the ways a person made decisions that substantially affected their lives.
In the first manifesto, Breton talks about the importance of imagination. He does more than hint at the danger of an over-reliance on reason when he talks about the ‘reduction of the imagination to a state of slavery.’ This is one of the elements of surrealism that I feel connected to, especially where my work has moved from figuration towards abstraction and distorted observations, for example in the following drawings in progress:
But of course, it’s not all about the work itself, it’s about life! I seek in my own life to undo learned assumptions and biases and to find a renewed understanding of how this world functions. My work represents ways of processing that dare to engage the power of imagination.
