I have just uploaded the latest part, number 13, of my study course on surrealism onto my youtube page. youtube/c/AdamMcLean The course now amounts to over five hours of video and is about one third complete. I find this way of working using audio video presentations, at the moment, quite a useful addition to my publishing efforts. It does, however, take up masses of my time. I dont think people have any idea of the effort one has to put into producing this material. There are many, many videos on YouTube with the title surrealism, but most of them are just a slide show of the creators favourite images set against an audio background of a piece of music they happen to like - a pointless waste of megabytes. A few people have attempted to give a spoken commentary, but these are often merely their personal impressions of the works they are showing - again pointless. A few others have attempted some analytical commentary, but often this is flawed by their lack of insight into the material. Sadly, this leaves only a few dozens of perceptive meaningful YouTube videos, usually by professional gallery personnel or art historians. So I dont expect my offering to receive much attention against the mass of YouTube babble. Each of the lessons requires many hours of research and also a clear plan of what I am intending to present. Only when I have this can I choose which images to show. It is not just a matter of presenting the images I like best, as I am trying to represent the various phases of an artists work and the influences upon them from other artists. I have adopted a historical perspective and try to identify the sources for the imagery in specific paintings and the influences on an artist. People often have the naive idea that surrealist painting is about dreams and the spontaneous eruption of unconscious contents onto the canvas. This is just nonsense. Carrington, Dali, Ernst, Brauner, Varo, Seligmann et al, were intelligent, well read people who had a deep grasp of western art history. They were not painting in a vacuum, but their work is informed by many references. They sat and thought deeply as they created their paintings. If you need convincing of this just take a look at my recent upload on the Temptation of St Anthony Competition. youtube/watch?v=ZCgEoKlokbM I have now covered the initial period up till the late 1940s in some detail and I will now move on to look at the ways in which surrealist painting evolved through many different artists and groups up to the present day. The surrealist style of painting is still vital and active in our time.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 10:29:02 +0000
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