Posts tagged art

My friend and surreal digital artist A.W. Sprague created this unique piece to thank me for supporting his work.  Although we’ve never met in person, he did an amazing job of crawling into my head!  This is a lot more fun and just as revealing as occupying a psychiatrist’s couch.

It’s interesting to note that prior to the invention of the printing press, visual symbolism in art was widely understood.  But these days, visual symbolism is a language most of us must re-learn.  

To that end, A.W. and I have provided a detailed analysis of his symbolism. (My interpretations in regular font, A.W.’s comment in italics).

Please savor this delightful art. Two detailed close-ups are given so the viewer can “read” the fine print.  

ENJOY!

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Back in 2006 when I first wrote about her work, portrait artist Patrisha McLean was tired of her Flower Girls series, ready to abandon the project for a new one.  At the time, I didn’t think her portraits could get any better, and she may have agreed.  But she persevered with the series, proving us both wrong.

Instead, McLean explored new territory, and the results are breathtaking.  Like the masterful artist she is, McLean has plumbed the depths of the Flower Girls concept, and in doing so explored the deepest parts of our collective psyche.  

Hers is a remarkable photographic journey that begins in photo realism (the language of journalism) and ends in Symbolism, the language of dreams. Symbolist painters, such as Gustave Moreau, Gustav Klimt, Odilon Redon, and Edvard Munch used mythological and dream imagery. Often, like McLean, they created a timeless atmosphere of utter stillness and silence.

Though she began her career as a journalist, McLean’s editorial photography revolves around The Maiden’s Voyage, the mythical coming-of-age of young women.  McLean’s portraits ask “Will the Flower Girl survive her passage to adulthood, with its impending ‘de-flowering?’”  Parents have worried about this since the dawn of mankind, so The Maiden’s Voyage is a common story.

McLean’s 2008 portrait Lydia with Antique Mirror (above) sums up The Maiden’s Voyage (or perhaps The Heroine’s Journey) in one lovely stroke.  Lydia explores an unknown forest, surrounded by vegetation that seems about to consume her.  But unlike Clara with Rhododendrons (2006), Lydia doesn’t look to the viewer for help.  Reaching the center of the forest, Lydia has stumbled upon herself.  She’s traversed her own labyrinth, a one-way path to the center of her psyche.

In historical myths, a maiden was often seduced by a god in disguise (i.e. Leda and the Swan) at her coming-of-age.  In modern versions, the seduction is watered-down, and the maiden simply loses consciousness at her transition, as in Sleeping Beauty or The Wizard of Oz. The growing importance of the unconscious dream-state in McLean’s work becomes clear when it’s viewed in serial fashion:

Above (Nora with Old Roses, 2006), an alert young girl is compared to roses.  The message is simple.  Nora is a rose. This is realism.

In Riley With Old Roses, Dreaming (2006), McLean tentatively approaches Symbolism.  She depicts Riley’s dream, but we 
aren’t in the dream.  We must guess at the dream’s contents, represented by the multi-toned roses swirling around Riley’s head.

In Becca with Summer Flowers (2008), McLean has taken the plunge.  She’s immersed in her subject’s dream, and so are we.  Becca has taken control, raising her arms and summoning flying flowers to do her bidding, as one might summon the elements.  This is Symbolism.  McLean’s portrait seems to take place in aboriginal dream time, an atmosphere of timelessness, utter stillness and silence.

Although McLean’s work retains elements of her photo-journalism (who’d expect the gaunt Flower Girl above, with her world-weary stare and her choker of roses?), she now works largely in the realm of the Symbolic.

Never shy about exploring the dark side, McLean has created a stunning dualistic illustration of the Sleeping Beauty myth.  A daytime Sleeping Beauty is paired with her haunting doppelganger, a vampirish nocturnal beauty. Together, these portraits make me wonder whether Sleeping Beauty will survive her journey to adulthood, awakening in the light as a woman. Or will she remain as adults would have her, forever a little girl, in stasis and in the dark?

McLean’s most surprising new portrait may be Harper with Old Roses (2008).  There’s something unexpected in this image. With her sensuous face, claw-like nails, and explosion of roses, this is a rapturous Flower Girl who’s come of age, innocent no longer.

I think Eliza with Peonies and Pearls best sums up McLean’s new work.  The Flower Girls are at the end of their dangerous journey, no longer lost in a forbidding forest.  Some look directly and knowingly at the viewer. 

While the leash of the world still tugs at them (every girl wears a choker or necklace) the young women are now masters of their universe.  Individuation is complete.  The Flower Girls have found themselves, become whole, and blossomed.

Patrisha McLean’s daughter entered college in 2008, and I think her maternal relief, as well as her pride in a job well done, are evident in the Flower Girls series.  There’s a touch of Botticelli’s Venus in the latest Flower Girl images, a sense of joy in presenting the world with a lovely, newly-formed young woman.  By chronicling The Maiden’s Voyage as her daughter grew, McLean has given voice to parents everywhere.

All photographs copyright 2011 by Patrisha McLean, reproduced with her permission. Image resolution has been lowered for online publication. To contact McLean or see more of her work, click here: PatrishaMcLean.com

Article copyright 2011 by Ann Marcaida.

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Sleeping is an adventure.  I never know what will play next at the dream cinema inside my head.  Sometimes I have fairytale dreams, in which I’m transported to a magical place or time, but these are rare. 

More often I have nightmares— the kind of dreams that make me question my sanity.  You know what I’m talking about.  I’m lost in my own house, which has mysteriously rearranged its rooms.  I’m at the zoo, and I accidentally release the elephants.  I imagine that my nose-hair is growing uncontrollably, only to wake and find my cat’s tail in my face.  And so forth.

I also have those universal, euphoric flying dreams.  Don’t we all crave release from our earthbound body?

My love of dreams probably explains my love of surreal movies.  Most people like movies with strong characters and an engrossing plot, but I can’t be bothered with such trivia.  What I crave is to be immersed in a movie, to be transported elsewhere.  Watching a surreal movie is, for me, sharing in the lucid (fabricated) dream of the director.

In the dream world, our unconscious mind is dominant.  Think about the few minutes immediately before you fall asleep.  Images and relationships suddenly become illogical, and the linear flow of time breaks down.  Bizarre, instinctive (archetypal) symbols, such as monsters, may appear. 

Movies are the ultimate medium for exploring dreams because they offer a combination of images and sound.  A movie camera moves through 3D space and time, so films can warp space and time as dreams do.  Most movies contain at least a hint of surrealism, and many popular TV shows (such as Six Feet Under and Numbers) used surrealism to craft their most creative scenes.  

Here are five of my favorite surreal movies.  These speak to everyone, consciously or subconsciously.  They are products of our collective unconscious. These are mankind’s universal dreams.

(Note: If you would rather watch than read, there is a link to a video clip at the end of each movie description).

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I. TWO FAIRYTALES

Beauty and the Beast: A Maiden’s Voyage

In historical myths, a virginal young woman was seduced by a nonhuman being.  In modern fairytales, this maiden’s voyage is watered down.  The sex is removed, thanks to our Freudian society, and our modern maiden simply loses consciousness at her coming-of-age (Think Sleeping Beauty or The Wizard of Oz).

Jean Cocteau’s 1946 movie Beauty and the Beast is a lovely rendering of a maiden’s voyage.  Black and white film may seem an odd medium for a fairytale, but in the absence of color, Cocteau’s gorgeous lighting, texture, and space take over.  My mind’s eye steps right into his three-dimensional sets.

The plot is simple.  Beauty’s father accidently picks a rose belonging to a ferocious beast living in a nearby castle.  As punishment, The Beast casts a spell, and Beauty must live out the rest of her life as a prisoner in his castle. 

When Beauty comes to recognize the humanity within The Beast, the spell is broken.  By admitting that The Beast is partly human, Beauty acknowledges that she is part beast.  In recognizing her own instincts, Beauty has grown up.

The magic of Cocteau’s sumptuous visual feast lies his penchant for imbuing animism into unlikely objects.  In my favorite scene, Beauty pauses at the entrance to a hallway lit with torches that are held by disembodied arms.  When she steps into the hall, the arms conveniently raise their candelabras to her eye-level.  The arm-torches become sentient spirit guides, magically lighting Beauty’s way.

French, with English subtitles.  (Click HERE to watch a 2-minute preview of Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bete).  Watch the fur coverlet on the bed come alive and slither away!).

Spirited Away: A Modern Heroine

Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki bucks mythic tradition in his magnificent 2001 anime Spirited Away.  His heroine, 10-year-old Chihiro, is on a hero’s quest, a journey traditionally reserved for males.

Chihiro is fretting over moving and changing schools when she and her parents become lost in an abandoned, haunted theme park. The colorful booths, grotesque images, and magical atmosphere of the park provide a perfect transition to the spirit world.

At the theme park, Chihiro’s parents gorge themselves and, as punishment, are turned into pigs by the spirits who haunt the place.  Chihiro is left, terrified, to fend for herself, until a gentle spirit guide named Haku comes to her rescue.  We later learn that Haku is a river god trapped in a human body because his river has been despoiled by greedy adults.

My favorite scene in Spirited Away (also the film’s turning point) is a sort of Zen meditation.  Chihiro rides a silent phantom train, Middle Road, that travels underwater as easily as above. Chihiro is accompanied by a hungry ghost, the Japanese equivalent of a lost soul.  Not surprisingly, the Middle Road ultimately takes both Chihiro and her mournful ghost home.  If you rent this gorgeous movie, I promise that you won’t be disappointed.

(Click HERE to watch a 3-minute trailer of Spirited Away).

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II.  TWO NIGHTMARES

Pan’s Labyrinth: A Modern Persephone

In his breathtakingly dark and violent 2006 fable Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro re-tells the Persephone myth in World War II Spain.  His young heroine, Ofelia, lives with her mother and cruel stepfather at a remote army outpost as they await the birth of Ofelia’s half-brother.

Ofelia is a dreamy child, prone to wandering off.  When she ventures into the woods around the outpost, a huge insect lures her to an underworld portal.  Much to her surprise, Ofelia meets Pan (the god of nature) and learns that she’s a princess who must complete three dangerous magical trials to return to her underworld home.  The sad little heroine sees no reason to remain in the real world, so she decides to return home.

Ofelia’s poignant quest to return to her underworld is seamlessly interwoven with a real-world plot to hunt and kill resistance fighters (who themselves seem to be wood spirits) hiding in the mountains.  Del Toro’s art direction is stunning and his fantasy creatures are terrifying.  In a striking comment on our treatment of children, del Toro makes Ofelia’s stepfather more monstrous than the bizarre underworld inhabitants.

The unifying theme of this movie is the mysterious forest.  To most, it’s just woods full of buzzing, shimmering insects.  But when Ofelia enters, the insects turn to faeries and the forest is full of magic and potential.  Nature is a gateway to the divine, and this movie reminds us that children understand this magic best.

Spanish, with English subtitles. Rated R for violence.  (Click HERE to watch a 2 1/2 minute preview of Pan’s Labyrinth).

Last Year at Marienbad: Lost in Our Mind

The 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad (by Alain Resnais) was one of the first movies to warp time and space in dream-like fashion.  This stream-of-consciousness film set the stage for modern time-warpers such as Memento and Vanilla Sky.  

Ostensibly a tale of seduction, Last Year at Marienbad is a symbolic, twisted journey through the human psyche.  The hero and heroine travel, entranced, through halls of endless mirrors, archways, and lush gardens with classical statues.  Their conversation leads everywhere and nowhere. 

Perhaps they met last year at Marienbad and had an affair, perhaps not.  We never find out.  But as the movie proceeds, it becomes increasingly disquieting, and the viewer feels trapped inside the minds of the characters.

Watching this movie is akin to an endless art museum visit, with classical architecture standing in for the labyrinths of our mind, its neurons and synapses.  Last Year at Marienbad is famous for its visual vocabulary of enigma and charade, which is so subconsciously seductive that it’s endured for decades in the advertising industry.  

The movie is in French, with English subtitles. (Click HERE to watch a 7-minute clip from Last Year at Marienbad.  I recommend that you watch only the last 3 minutes. The clip is not translated into English.)

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III. The Ultimate Flying Dream

 

Koyaanisqatsi (“Life Out of Balance”)  is arguably the best surreal movie ever made.  Godfrey Reggio spent years on this 1982 masterpiece, a flying dream that proffers a God’s-eye view of our planet and ourselves.

Don’t expect a plot or characters— this is a cinematic poem.  The images are accompanied by edgy orchestral music, and time seems to slow down or speed up at will.  Koyaanisqatsi’s wide-screen photography focuses on mankind’s history of blunders and destruction, set against the humbling natural beauty of our planet. 

The camera forces us to watch its parade of beauty and destruction with the steady, muted sympathy of a powerless creator.  Highways spread across the earth like arteries and cars pulse through them like blood cells.  Buildings implode and spaceships explode.  Occasionally the camera focuses on a face, dehumanized in a rush of technology or lost against a background of urban squalor. 

Koyaanisqatsi’s images have the same transformative power as the first photos of earth taken from space.  Watching this movie, I became keenly aware of just how fragile and how like a living organism our home is.  If we were all aware of the big, intricate picture painted by Koyaanisqatsi, we would take better care of our planet and each other. 

(Click HERE to watch a 2 1/2 minute preview of Koyaanisqatsi).

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Other surreal movie recomendations:

The Hero
Blue Velvet
Eraserhead
Naqoyqatsi
Powaqqatsi
Ulysses’ Gaze
Kurosawa’s Dreams
The Science of Sleep
What Dreams May Come
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

All movies are available from NetFlix.

Images: Utterly Surreal by David Stoupkakis, Untitled by Al Magus.  Other images from Google Image.

Copyright 2013 by Ann Marcaida.

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Native Australians believe that the dream world (dreamtime) is “realer” than reality. They may be right.

In the real world, we are realistic.  We solve practical, everyday problems using our conscious, logical minds.  But when we dream, our unconscious minds take over.

In the dream world, we are surrealistic.  The linear flow of time breaks down, and images and relationships become illogical, often bizarre.  While our conscious minds deal with waking reality, our unconscious minds give vent to our more instinctive thoughts and feelings.

Good artists in all media know how to access their unconscious mind.  It’s the wellspring of human creativity, and its language is universally understood.  This is why I agree with aboriginal Australians that dreamtime is at least as real as waking reality.

SURREALISM AS A CULTURAL MOVEMENT

The language of the dream world is also the language of art and myth.  Although surreal art is as old as mankind, Surrealism as a cultural movement is much newer, dating back to the 1920’s.

The founding Surrealist artists and writers, such as Salvador Dali and Andre Breton, regarded their work as a philosophical movement, establishing new standards for art and literature.  Surreal artists desire, above all, a free flow of material from their unconscious mind to their art.  The hallmark of their work is a jarring juxtaposition of ideas and/or images that resembles those in dreams and nightmares.

SURREALISM IN THE VISUAL ARTS

In surrealism, ideas often manifest as archetypes (universal symbols), making it possible for surreal art and literature to be understood by everyone.  Deep psychological truths and connections may be revealed in symbolic form.

Salvador Dali suggests this connection in what may be the best-known of all surreal paintings, The Persistence of Memory (above).  The clue to this jarring image lies in the title.  As suggested by his melted clocks, the past is gone forever, except in our memories.  

But when we sleep (as suggested by the sleeping walrus-like creature) our mind makes sense of our memories by ordering them and converting some into archetypal symbols.  A clinical study recently demonstrated that, while asleep, we replay our dreams many times, gradually reducing the emotional content and increasing the symbolic content. 

SURREALISM IN LITERATURE

French writer Arthur Rimbaud (forefather to the Surrealist movement) takes a simple plot— a boat-ride down a river— and turns it into a lucid nightmare.

In his poem The Drunken Boat, crew members die at the onset, but this doesn’t concern the narrator, who wants his boat to drift so he can explore uncharted waters.  Logic and linearity are discarded, a clue that we are entering surrealism.

As the narrator sinks deeper into his unconscious, his boat also sinks, and he is left floating on the sea in a death-trance:

And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
Devouring the green azures… entranced in pallid flotsam.

Rimbaud’s wildly creative language amazes me, even in translation.  There’s no way that these words originated in his conscious mind.  Notice how he uses only two words (which aren’t normally used together)— “pallid flotsam”— to conjure up a floating, moonlit corpse.

If you’d like something more modern, try these lyrics by Australian poet/songwriter Steve Kilbey of The Church:

“They’re going to send you away” she said
Psychic angels spread on the top of her head
And in the compartments of my dread
The rush hour crush travels home to bed

“You never seem to hear” she smiled
Statues tiptoe for a glimpse of the child
The lawns are always lush and wild
Spacious floors bejeweled and tiled

“How are you getting home” she laughed
Mermaids drowned but I clung to the raft
It’s just the water in the bath
An interlude for the busy staff

Drowning is a theme here as well, but it’s only part of the story.  This is an evocative picture of a psychiatric hospital visit, complete with a look inside the heads of both the visitor and the patient.  Kilbey’s point of view is deliberately enigmatic— the anxious visitor may see a deluded woman, while the patient seems to see the hospital as her palace and her bathtub as a sea inhabited by mermaids.

SURREALISM TODAY

What about traumatic events (and their resulting dreams) that cannot be reduced to symbols and/or archetypes?  In my experience, these are particularly difficult to resolve. 

When society experiences important events that cannot be understood as existing archetypes, it’s up to artists to create new ones. Above, David Bowers does just that in his portrayal of global warming as a femme fatale.  This artist suggests that global warming is a lethal event driven by our greed and lust.

Surrealism is a particularly relevant art form in times of turmoil and social upheaval. What is the current state of our governmental gridlock if not surreal?  I think Derek Nobbs (above; notice the background pattern) agrees with me, as he portrays one of the most frightening archetypes I can imagine— a cruel and nihilistic ruler, in this case with his head emptied of all knowledge.

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Photo credits: 1. Virgo Paraiso, A Taste of Paradise; 2. Untitled by Maura Holden, 3. The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali, 3. Untitled by David M. Bowers, 4 and 5: Artists Unknown 6. A Hole in the Head So All Knowledge May Pass by Derek Nobbs.

Artist web sites: Virgo Paraiso, Maura Holden, David Bowers, Beinart Surreal Art Collective 

Copyright 2013 by Ann Marcaida.

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Copyright 2011 by Elizabeth Evans and Magi the Magical Poet.

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