Robert Smithson

Robert Smithson: Corner Mirror with Coral

The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 270
Smithson's three mirrors in a corner create a structure both lucid and elusive: as each mirror reflects the space around it, it multiplies the reflections in the other mirrors, creating an image with the symmetry of a crystal. Mirrors appear often in Smithson's art, as do fragments of the natural world—here, there are pieces of coral piled in the angle where the mirrors meet. Smithson also combined mirrors with heaps of sand, gravel, and other rocks, matching nature's brute rubble with its precise visual twin. (The delicacy of the lacy pink coral is unusual in his work.)

The pairing of matter and reflection corresponds to another duality:

on the one hand, unshaped shards of stone or reef; on the other, art,

culpture, and the indoor space of the gallery.

One of the earthworks artists of the 1960s and 1970s, in other pieces smithson manipulated the natural landscape, sometimes simply and temporarily, through mirrors, sometimes drastically, with a bulldozer. Corner Mirror with Coral relates to his "Non-Sites," indoor works containing substances from an outdoor site elsewhere. Both cerebral and powerfully material, his art shows a fascination with entropy, the tendency of all structures and energies to lose their integrity. In this work a perfect form—the mirrors make three sides of a cube—is made illogical and illusory, for the coral seems to float in midair.

Surreal Landscapes

Surrel Landscapes

Link to Robert Smith and Land art video - how the jetty was constructed



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTx4Pp4aPXA

Robert Smithson's monumental earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970) is located on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Using black basalt rocks and earth from the site, the artist created a coil 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide that stretches out counter-clockwise into the translucent red water. Spiral Jetty was acquired by Dia Art Foundation as a gift from the Estate of the artist in 1999.
http://www.spiraljetty.org/


http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/land-art.htm



Although this is an inspirational piece questions could be raised about the pollution in the water and the effect that the jetty had on marine life and the ecological system. Nature normally changes itself over a long period of time where the impact of change on the environemnt is slow and absrobed through the process or through natural disaters which cause drastic changes to a place or space which can have a detrimental effect. By creating such large pieces of land art it is certain to effect the natural process of things.


Whilst undertaking a recent project about surrealism I was experimetning with changes in the landscape and was looking to create images which could be linked with the aftermath of destruction or devastation due to fire or nuclear fall out. Using photoshop to manipulate the images I was able to change the environment thjat I had photographed without actually causing any major destruction to the naturally beautiful place.

This series of images are meant to interpret new life coming from devastation and the clear blue water is meant to symbolise fresh start.


This image is similar to that of Smithson who photographed the effect that the spiral jetty had caused in the water. The pollution was caused by the stones which coloured the water red.







My surreal landscapes are inspired by by both Robert Smithson and Simon Norfolk http://www.habitusmag.com/index.php?id=41&section=article

Max Ernst

Max Ernst was a German artist who lived in France. He was a Surrealist who created works which were large scale and featured places and landscapes which were surreal using a number of different techniques including collage, assemblage and frottage. ( a technique which included rubbing textures onto paper etc with pencil of charcoal).

Frottage, which realizes the surrealistic principle of 'psychological automatism' ERNST.

I like this work because it is so strange and creates an illusion of fantasy and escapism.

http://www.abcgallery.com/E/ernst/ernstbio.html

Frottage, which realizes the surrealistic principle of 'psychological automatism',

Neo Surrealism

I found this website on neo surrealism which I have added a link to.

http://neosurrealism.artdigitaldesign.com/modern-artists/

The fact that the artist has created a building on a ship creates a sense of place even though the dead can't go home. This is a very dark image which creates a sense of fear and entrappment in a inescapable place. Silent and eerie.

Title: Flying Dutchman Phantomdescription: According to folklore, the Flying Dutchman is a ghost ship that can never go home. The Flying Dutchman is typically spotted from afar, sometimes glowing with ghostly light. The most famous Ghost ship in fiction, a ship crewed by the not living.

Title: The Sand Castledescription: Most castles, from the earliest times, followed certain standards of design and construction. Many early castles and certain later ones were nothing more than simple towers. The tower houses of Britain and England are an example of this type.

This image evokes good memories of sandcastles on the beach and holidays, a place where families go to relax and have fun. It gives a sense of neutality!

However the dark brooding skies could be a message that perhaps all is not what it appears!!

Surrealism - Man Ray

Surrealism


Surrealism is an artistic movement and philosophy that first gained popularity in the 1920s. Initially, surrealism was an offshoot of Dadaism, which posited that traditional art should be replaced with anything "anti-art" and triumphed the ridiculous, the absurd, and a basic disregard for form. Andre Breton was the initial proponent of surrealism in literature and the visual arts. Much of his emphasis was on accessing the unconscious, as viewed by psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. Surrealism was a reaction to the philosophy of rationalism, which many felt had caused, through the Industrial Revolution, the disaster of World War I.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-surrealism.htm

Surrealsim had a great effect on me because I then realised that the imagery in my mind wasn’t insanity. Surrealsim to me is reality. John Lennon



Man Ray



Solarised images
of the female form - creating a surreal body which takes on the persona of a metal object, silver and unreal .... he makes people look as though their faces are of aluminium. They become sort of sleek and metallic like the mascots on the front of those rather swish, fast cars. They become these super-people, also slightly inhuman, slightly robotic." (Mark Haworth-Booth, Photo-historian) http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/ray.shtml

Man Ray sought to create a Surrealist vision of the female form and began to utilize such photographic techniques as solarization, dynamic cropping, over enlargement and over development in an effort to create a dreamlike effect in his artwork.

His use of the Rayograph helped him to create a new, profound look to his photography, stressing the importance of light and shadow rather than the object itself. These camera-less images created by placing objects on light sensitive photographic paper and then exposing the paper to light assisted Man Ray in the creation of his visual poetry.

quote.... http://www.manraytrust.com/Pages/bio_manray.html

Links to information on Man ray

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/surrealism/Man-Ray.html

Underwater Images

Here is another example of surrealism in a space very familiar to me.

Here are two shots, solarised and normal. i quite like the effect it gives off as the light reflects through the bubble.

This was actually a little difficult as having air in your lungs and trying to sink to the bottom is very difficult, so with the help of my mate Troy, who held me down with his foot to get me on the bottom for the shot. He also took this picture, this as a 'directed self-portrait'.

Within this image I was experimenting with creating an image which was powerful in subject matter as well as the surreal and un natural effect that is achieved throug the use of solarisation. My body has taken on a metallic sheen and the black background is a spacelike deep dark void where I am floating weighless and eternally - deep dark silent space..

underwater

These are images taken by the artistJun Nguyen-Hatsushiba highlighting the plight of the fishermen and bicycle taxi drivers in Vietnam. Both modes of work where struggling to survive in the countries rapid social and economic climate.

I particularly like these images because i am extremely at home under the water where the only form of communication is visual.