Surrealism in Art

Dear Parents,

We were making some practice paintings of basic forms, like rectangular prisms and triangular prisms and cubes in order to practice using brushes to make large and small works.

Then we  focusing in on the work of Rene Magritte, Salvadore Dali and Man Ray in the last week or so to see what inspiration they could add to our basic paintings.

Together in class, we've come up with some success criteria that these artists used that we can apply to our own work as well.

I asked students to pick one of the following to play with, but when we talked about the Magritte and Dali paintings, they saw that each artist played with all three.

--Be Playful:

•Play with SCALE (make it look big or small)

•Play with TEXTURE (melting, put holes in it)

•Play with CONTEXT (Add eyes or lips or something else that really doesn’t belong, make it dream-like)

--Make sure your additions look as realistic as possible

--Focus on either foreground or background

--Make your viewer question what is real and what is made up

Memory of A Journey--Rene Magritte

The Burning Giraffe ---Salvadore Dali

The False Mirror--Rene Magritte

The Listening Room--Rene Magritte

Here is a small selection of student work samples:

Sincerely, 

Lisa Goegan