Idea Post #1: Surrealist Collage

"Surrealistic impulse is still very much alive in contemporary art, and there's a good reason: whether or not it reveals mystic truths, the free play with disjunctive, contradictory and paradoxical images, materials and forms has a way of relaxing conventional restrictions on creative imagination."

-Johnson, Ken. "ART IN REVIEW; 'Surrealist Collage' - New York Times." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 15 Feb. 2002. Web. 02 Feb. 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/15/arts/art-in-review-surrealist-collage.html.

"The assembling of materials from various registers and sources challenges traditional notions of heirarchy in a process which treats the fragments without discrimination."

- Adamowicz, Elza. "Chapter 2: Cutting." Surrealist Collage in Text and Image: Dissecting the Exquisite Corpse. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.

Anno Bib:

Adamowicz, Elza. "Chapter 1: Beyond Painting." Surrealist Collage in Text and Image: Dissecting the Exquisite Corpse. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.

Adamowicz talks about the opening show of Max Ernst surrealist collages. The show was not reviewed positively by critics but Breton and other Surrealist found the work profound. This chapter tries to define collage. Surrealist collage uses text, pictures, high art, and bus passes all equally as building blocks for the final piece. Every scrap of paper and every work of art is equal in a Surrealist collage. Also, Surrealist collage has a tapping into the unconscious mind for it to be created. Surrealist also use this process to create poems and other works of art.

Relation to my work:

Paul and I talked about how to use my cutouts in a more tactile way. To show their flaws and inaccuracies. This will ultimately be the way of showing the degradation of memory. From the work that I showed Paul he said that the work reminded him of collage. A collection of scenes and characters pasted together to recreate my memory. This was a very fresh way of thinking of my own work. Both Paul and Tom have suggested to actually paste/draw on top of my final prints. Each time I disagree for different reasons. However, I feel that I might try it to see how my prints would function with a disturbance on them.