A QUARTERLY OF ART AND CULTURE
ISSUE 25 LOVE
U S $ 10 CA N A DA $ 12 U K £ 7
INVISIBLE REALITY
TATIANA LOSIK
100 LOVE SONNETS
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from
where. I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I do not know any other
way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close..
— Pablo Neruda
What we call reality is a definite connection between
the perception and memories that surround us at the same
time. In our closely connected world, we have many opportunities to express ourselves, tell others about our feelings and
thoughts and explain the importance or insignificance of our
experiences. Nevertheless, the speed and quality of information exchange leave a lot of room for misunderstanding, and
now, perhaps earlier, what we really want to say is lost in invisible reality. The ability to communicate has not eliminated
a gap between meaning and interpretation, emotions
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and intentions are misinterpreted too often.
The art that I wanted to talk about in this article may
possibly be answers to questions that you don’t even know
about, and perhaps some you could not formulate. They can
reveal feelings and sensations that seemed elusive and indescribable, or they can make you remember an experience
that you have long forgotten. If you take away something
from this article, besides interesting reasoning, let it be
the realization (or confirmation) that you are a person who
is inherently inextricably linked with every person on the
planet in their ability to feel. No matter how much we want
to stand out, to feel individually, to express freedom and
experiences that are unique to each of us, we are all made
from the same material, we laugh and cry the same.
Writing this article was not just a creative process.
This made me look at the human nature in a completely
new way, and I found that the real world consists of many
objects and processes that we cannot see, but perceive
in other ways. Human feelings or even more complex concepts, like inner reality, are well-known and understandable
entities, but they do not have clear visual representations in
the real world. I hope this article helps you find some longlost parts of yourself, pleasant memories, or helps express
thoughts and feelings that you could never clearly express
before.
One day, when I came to a nightclub party, sat comfortably behind a bar and looked around, I suddenly realized that what I see very much reminds me of the famous
painting of Hieronymus Bosch “The Garden of Earthly
Delights”. A huge disco ball cosmically sparkling in the
center of the ceiling. Down on the dance floor is the
movement of men and women. And around the dancers,
at the opposite tables, are those who have already decided on the choice of a partner. Someone drinks, someone
kisses, someone smiles and flirts. The situation is really
very close to the one depicted in the picture.
About five hundred years ago, Bosch showed the
main engine of earthly human life (the image in the picture really resembles an electric motor), working on a current arising from the difference between the two poles,
two human incarnations - the man and the woman. The
center of the composition of the picture is a round pond,
where nude long-haired girls are knee-deep in the water.
On their heads they have different fruits and berries (apples, cherries) as well as birds (crows, storks). Each specific object on the head can personify the character of the
girl, or her purpose. “Good” girls are destined to love, “fatal” - to destroy. At a certain distance from them, as if in a
circus ring, a huge number of naked men ride on animals.
Girls seductively look from the pond at the gentlemen,
make inviting gestures, entice. Men, in turn, pretend that
they do not notice this, but obediently move in a vicious
circle. Each beast on which the cavalier sits can be a symbol of his “ego” - his animal (psychic) essence.
​​
It can be a
wild boar, horse, lion, camel, donkey, bear. (There is free
space on the goat. The artist invites anyone to occupy
it.) Some men with gifts: who has fish, who has berries.
Few openly glance towards the girls. By this, it seems to
me, the artist emphasizes not only shyness, but the initial
male egoism, implicated in self-love and self-realization.
However, the process of rapprochement is going on!
Further on the art work, already formed pairs are
scattered to the sides. Some spend time idly (approximately like in a nightclub): a man who instead of his head
has a split dark vessel, gently hug a girl, “entertains” her
with simple conversations. Flirt is gaining momentum
around the entire perimeter of the picture: in the distance, a fantastic tailed water monster of the male sex,
pestering the mermaid. Behind the bizarre architectural
structure an enormous crowd of these water “knights”
with berries at the ready lurked enviously. The most
protected impression in the picture is made by a couple
in love, which is in a bubble growing from a flower. It can
be seen that in this small sphere, behind an invisible shell,
for lovers the whole surrounding world has disappeared.
What is particularly admiring in Bosch: globally depicting
the universe, he does not at all exclude small everyday
plots from it, but, on the contrary, skillfully builds a common, multi-level model of life from them.
Many great artists showed the conception of the
Universe. And in the main they coincided: Paradise is the
kingdom of Light, Hell is Darkness, and between
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them, as between two polarities, Life revolves. For your
deeds, you will fall either into the command of the Light,
or to the servants of Darkness. But in Hell painted by
Bosch, people are punished for sins that are not directly
related to love passions, because they are one of the main
sources of energy. The great engine of Nature depends
on it and cannot be stopped! After all, even though the
problem of love has been subjected to reflection for
many years, the seeking mind cannot be satisfied with
its results. Often the inner content of the concept of love
is blurry, which pushes away from understanding the
essence of this phenomenon. Everyone interprets love in
their own way, sometimes introducing into understanding
trivial, mundane ideas. Throughout the historical development of philosophical thought, one can observe attempts
at both a descriptive and an essential analysis of the
phenomenon of love, both homogeneity and the inconsistency of its interpretation and understanding.
The Garden of Earthly Delights and other works of Hieronymus Bosch are the ghosts of the unconscious, and
above and opposite: Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, oil on oak panels, 205.5 cm × 384.9 cm (81 in × 152 in), Museo del
Prado, Madrid
Bosch was the first surrealist: he depicted in his paintings
the invisible inner reality of the deepest human instincts
and processes. For the satirical geniuses, to which
Hieronymus Bosch belongs, there is one step from irony
to pathos, from joke to hymn. And this hymn is Love!
Since love is that basic essential state of human being,
which is capable of turning a person to something higher
.. Outside of involvement in this, the quality of humanity, the human way of being, is essentially lost. Human
life falls away from the truth of being and being meaning, losing the quality of the human mode of existence.
According to this, the worldview and activity orientation
towards something “high”, its concrete “living” by way
of being in love, is a necessary condition for preventing
and solving existential problems, including fundamental
ones associated with life meaning frustration, with the
inappropriateness, baselessness and unjustifiedness of a
particular individual being.
The general aesthetic formulation of the problems
of artistic creation in surrealism, refusing to take into
account the real factors that shape reality, turns to the
invisible “inner reality”. Collective inner reality is a “universal fabric”, which is something transcendental, located
in the deepest layers of the collective unconscious and
acting as a quintessence, uniting the main areas of activity of rational human existence. The world synthesized
in the pictures is interpreted from the angle of view and
its definite assessment, which, in turn, sets the person
a way of action, behavior in this world. After all, we are
talking about the world in which a person lives, and living
in this world means one way or another interacting with
him, and not just contemplating it. Diving into the depths
of the collective unconscious allows us to understand the
patterns of cultural development of various peoples. The
history of art is an inaccurate science, with elements of
mysticism behind the theories of some of its most prominent practitioners. What makes some genuine works of
art great is that they contain an inexplicable “aura”. This
inexplicability is part of what makes them wonderful. The
history of art also undergoes a long process of the genesis of visual perception. The art of surrealism is a unique
movement in the 20th century, which does not completely abandon visualization, partially retains a renaissance
peering into the depth of the image. However, this look
takes on the shade of gazing “inside”, on the other side of
the directly depicted. This is such an intense process of
peering, in which the image really given to us in sensations is lost and a new reality appears beyond its limits.
So how did the surrealists manage to make the invisible inner reality visible?
Without completely departing from the principles
of visualization, surrealism in a completely new way
invites the human eye to take a closer look at the reality
surrounding us. The object given to us in sensations can
only seem to us and may not be what it really is. The
combination of content and meaning in the painting of surrealism takes place outside the picture.
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Surrealism affirms the active position of the viewer as an
interpreter, as a bearer of all kinds of meanings and interpretations. According to Gillian Rose opinion:
“Fantasy is located between the conscious and the
unconscious; it is where the transactions between these
two zones occur (Burgin, 1992). In fantasy ± daydreams,
for example ± the unconscious is given some sort of temporal, spatial and symbolic form by the conscious. Certain
lost objects are dreamt about, given a particular spatial
arrangement and placed in a particular narrative. Thus
fantasy is often described as a kind of staging. This sense
of a fantasy being staged is also appropriate because the
subject often feels, in part, that they are looking on at the
fantasy: they are its audience.” 1
Sometimes it seems that the paintings do not imply
any viewer. They seem to exist for themselves, exist as
a closed system of cultural codes. In them, the world is
revealed through quasi-substantive materiality. Deliberate
objectivity as if speaks for itself. Flowers, birds, fruits
exist as if by themselves, reveal their inner potential,
asserting themselves like a human. However, the connections between them are devoid of the usual logic, and
more often they are deliberately illogical. The surrealistic
artwork is far from being a “window” into the surrounding
reality, not a continuation of the infinity of the world and
not a spiritual contemplation of the ideal. The gaze rushes
beyond materiality, the gaze “through” appears, which
breaks through to another reality - the space of meanings,
associations, various cultural codes and interpretations.
Nelson Goodman says:
“Whatever a picture refers to or stands for in any
way, overt or occult, lies outside it. What really counts
is not any such relationship to something else, not what
the picture symbolizes, but what it is in itself-what its
own intrinsic qualities are. Moreover, the more a picture
focuses attention on what it symbolizes, the more we are
distracted from its own properties.” 2
Many art historians sought to understand and explain
the emergence of surrealism, which became not only
a trend in the field of painting, but also an artistically
expressed model of perception of the world in the 20th
century. Gillian Rose, in her book “Visual Methodologies”
mentions:
“The subject matter or meaning was, for Panofsky,
to be established by referring to the understanding of
the symbols and signs in a painting that its contemporary
audiences would have had. Interpreting those understandopposite: Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, oil on oak
panels, 205.5 cm × 384.9 cm (81 in × 152 in), Museo del Prado, Madrid
ings requires a grasp of the historically specific intertextuality on which meaning depends.”3
But to understand the art of surrealism, it is important to understand and determine the origins of its
formation. The main predecessor to surrealism can be
considered Dada. Dadaism set a path for the development
of the art of the future, and threw the crude idea of “not
​​
art” into the space of culture. This direction most vividly
seeks to affirm “not art”, calls for a complete rejection of
traditions and calls for a revision of the view of familiar
aesthetic values and
​​
tastes. Dada seeks to involve the
whole person, not only mind or feelings. The Dadaism
rethought the meaning of the symbol in its key. The symbol has become elusive directly; for its understanding,
intellectual search has become necessary.
However, despite the fact that many elements of surrealism go back to Dada, surrealism transforms the legacy
of Dada in its own way. So, if Dadaism as a direction
was focused on the pure shock of the public, the clash
of recipients with the pure paradox of what they
saw, then surrealism chooses the intellectual way
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of influencing the audience. There is a hint of symbolism
in the art of surrealism, but it does not manifest itself
openly. Its main appeal to artists was to make “psychic
reality” an object of art instead of “sociality”. The fact is
that surrealistic painting does not completely resort to
abstraction, nevertheless it preserves the “form-content”
scheme, spatial formality, but also widely uses alogism,
dreamy unconscious images. This combination allows us
to talk about the ambiguity of surrealist painting. Surrealism is based on serious philosophical ideas. It puts
forward its philosophical concept, offers its own method
of cognition, approves a whole system of vision of the
world.
The art of surrealism can also be considered as an
artistic embodiment of the dream concept of the Austrian
doctor Sigmund Freud. He owns the discovery of the
unconscious, as a repository of fragments of past experience, unrealized opportunities, erotic prohibitions and
dream images. The power of dreams and imagination of
man, according to Freud, is in opposition to a rationalistic,
logical understanding of reality. Freud defined the subconscious mind as a pure phenomenon that plays a leading
role in human behavior and life. Images, thoughts, secret
desires go into the realm of the unconscious and manifest
themselves in dreams. The art of surrealism is permeated with the energy of becoming, the unfolding of being.
During this period, a new language of expressiveness is
emerging, which, inventing new methods and means,
seeks to break out of the bonds of traditional art. The
game principle, metaphoricality, reincarnation, dynamic
creation of meanings and images comes to the fore.
A human’s personality finds itself in a limitless, constant “creating” world, full of endless interpretations. A
person is faced with a pure absurdity, which reconstructs
it and forces it to seek new ways to comprehend the
world order. The created new reality may seem too far
from the actual reality. The tense, unstable picture of the
world of surrealists involves the search for new solutions
and answers.
We form our ideas on the basis of information coming from the outside world through a narrow window of
perception, but then ideas work like leanses, focusing on
what they want to see. We live in a world in which, in a
sense, almost everything that we see can be interpreted
in different ways. Attention can be seen as what you
allow your eyes to look at. 4
As an example, to analyze the methods used in
surrealistic artworks, we can focus on the construction of
space and spatial relationships between objects. Space,
as a form of representation of reality, can become the
“main” instrument, the focus of semantic loads and one
of the main ways of expressiveness. Surrealists destroy
all possible limits of perception, bring the philosophical
category of space to a new level of understanding. The
space of the picture that the viewer sees doesn’t belong
entirely to itself. It captivates the viewers with its unusual
forms, invites them to “its” reality and asks for abandoning the rational perception of reality. It is like a kind of
integrity of images, color solutions, geometrically located
objects carries the main semantic and aesthetic load.
It is necessary to turn to the work of outstanding
artists of this style in order to see with their own eyes
that surreal reality that appeared as a model of world
perception and a form of painting in last centuries. If we
look at the plot of the left panel of the Hieronymus Bosch
triptych, “The Garden of Earthly Delights”. On the sash in
front of us is a picture of Paradise. Here you can see how
the artist using only space, shows the relationship of the
heroes. Adam and Eve do not touch each other, they do
not even look at each other. But we see that Adam touches God with his feet, and God in turn holds Eve by the
wrist, thus connecting them together. We can say that
they love each other through God. And since the relationship between people is an intercultural thing, the idea of ​​
touching as a manifestation of love can work as a symbol
for people of any culture.
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This kind of love is a special way of being that reveals
the authenticity of human existence. This is that
living, effective force, that truth, which, having
mastered the inner being of human, leads their beyond
the threshold of an unworthy being. Many people seek it
all their lives, and a few eventually find it.
This kind of love is a special way of being that reveals
the authenticity of human existence. This is that living,
effective force, that truth, which, having mastered the
inner being of human, leads their beyond the threshold
of an unworthy being. Many people seek it all their lives,
and a few eventually find it. In the South African language
there is an untranslatable word “Ubuntu”. This important
South African philosophy has various interpretations, but
anyone who knows the word recognizes that we humans
are connected to each other in ways that we cannot see.
Another way to express it is: “I find my value in you, and
you find your value in me.”
above and opposite: At the beach / Na praia, Manuel Amado, 2010,
81 x 130 cm
Love is one of the fundamental categories of the phenomenon of spirituality, acting as the most effective means
of revealing the human essence. Love as a means of realizing
the spiritual has a very important aspect of implementation:
it acts as a function, a person’s purpose (the ability to sacrifice oneself, limit the needs of one’s own ego, recognize the
unconditional existence of another, the ability to love and the
desire to be loved.).
Love as an active creative act allows you to achieve
the spiritual order of being, to realize the whole “complex”
of higher absolute values -​​ Good, Beauty and Truth. The
phenomenon of love makes it possible to adequately detect
the true being and content of “objective” spirituality in a
concrete, individual personal being, enables a person to
contain absolute content in their real form, thereby becoming an absolute person, on the path of love, a person gets
the opportunity to see for granted to save this from the
eclipse and the person in this process is not only a necessary
participant, but also its object (both loved and directly loving).
Thus, in achieving the true order of being - Good as the value
equivalent of the Truth, as the only right way of human
life - the main purpose is the creative act of love.
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Throughout the history of art, there are many artists
who have attempted to portray this mystical phenomenon. One of them is the painting by Rene Magritte “The
Lovers”, which generated a huge number of interpretations, each of which has the right to exist. It is interesting
that Magritte commented on the rest of his paintings,
and left this one without any explanation. On his artworks
we see pictures that do not hide anything ... they cause
a secret and, indeed, when a person sees one them, this
simple question is asked: What does this mean? It means
nothing, because a mystery means nothing, it is unknowable.
Perhaps you can look at this picture and analyze it in
terms of pure art, because the followers of ideas about
pure art looked at symbols from a different perspective.
For them, it is really important not what meaning the
symbols convey in the picture, but the picture value as
an independent work, its own internal qualities. And the
more symbolic the picture, the less the viewer has the
opportunity to appreciate its independent artistic qualities. Thus, any symbolization in the picture not only does
not make sense, but also causes “anxiety”. Truly pure art
avoids symbols, and refers to nothing. And an artwork
should be taken only for what it is, for its visual uniqueness, and not for the distant relationships between the
symbols that are depicted on it. 5
This approach to analysis can allow us not to dive too
deep into symbolism, not to get lost in the interpretations
of the symbols themselves and the interconnections between them, which is especially important when the symbols describe spheres that are quite subtle and related to
internal reality. Of course, it is important to note that the
very idea of pure art, art without symbols, in essence can
be considered impossible since any work, even if it does
not represent anything, has its own internal properties.
They are divided into internal and external, or “formal”.
But they don’t exist separately, since for example external
properties such as color and shape connect objects with
the same feature to each other, and thus these attributes
become internal. 6
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Magritte takes his characters from the confined
space of the room, and their own small world is
full of colors in the vast world that represents
the landscape behind them. The faces of men and women
continue to be covered with fabric, but face the viewer,
and their postures become more calm and relaxed. And
it seems as though through a thin veil you can see their
smiles. Love itself is so self-sufficient that it does not
need eyesight. People in love do not have to see each
other and the world around them. They are able to feel
intimacy even through a double layer of thrown fabric.
In this way, the artist conveys to us the idea that true
feelings do not know any material barriers.
Marc Chagall showed the same idea in “Over the
town”. A feeling of mutual love. When you don’t feel the
ground under your feet. When you become one with your
beloved. When you don’t notice anything around. When
you just fly with happiness. With the flight, everything is
more or less clear. But you may wonder why the lovers do
not look at each other. Perhaps because the artist wanted
opposite: The lovers, Rene Magritte, 1928; Paris, France, 54 x 73.4 cm,
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, NY, US
above: Over the town, Marc Chagall, 1918; Liozna, near Vitebsk, Belarus,
45 x 56 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
to portray the souls of happy people, not their bodies.
And in fact, the bodies cannot fly, but souls may well.
But souls do not have to look at each other. The main
thing for them is to feel unity. So we see it. Each soul
has one hand, as if they had indeed almost merged into
a single whole. He, as the bearer of a stronger masculine
beginning, is written more rudely. In a cubic manner.
Bella is feminine elegant and woven from rounded and
flowing lines. And she is dressed in soft blue. But it does
not merge with the sky, because the sky is gray. The pair
stands out against the sky. And it seems as if it is very
natural to fly above the ground. The lovers fly over the
town and like we see all the signs of the town, or rather a
large village, which was 100 years ago Vitebsk. There are
the temple and the houses . And even a more pompous
building with columns. And, of course, a lot of fences.
But still, the town is not a usual one. The houses are
intentionally stacked, as if the artist does not know about
perspective and geometry. This makes the town more
fabulous, toy. These facts enhance our sense of love.
Indeed, in this state, the world around is significantly
distorted. Everything becomes joyful. And a lot is not noticed at all. The lovers do not even notice the green goat.
Why is the goat green? Chagall may show that everything
that happens in the picture is a little true, but a little fairy
tale as well. Goats grazed on the streets of Vitebsk at that
time, but was it possible to meet a green goat? With the
same probability as flying lovers!
The fences in the picture are also surreal. They do
not surround the house yards, as they usually do. But they
stretch in endless strings, like rivers or roads. In Vitebsk
there were actually many fences. But they, of course,
simply surrounded the houses. But Chagall decided to
arrange them in a row, thereby highlighting them. Making
them almost a symbol of the city.
If you have a look at the painting from the point of
view of psychoanalysis, then we can see that perhaps
the fence symbolizes some sorts of limits and restricted
areas that are inaccessible to an average person. Soaring
up, it becomes possible to circumvent these restrictions.
But already from the height of love that inspired the
lovers, we can see that these restrictions are essentially
worthless and what they hide no longer represents any
interest for the lovers.
We cannot but mention this shameless man next to
the fence. It seems that at first you look at the picture
and you are covered with feelings of romance, love. Even
the green goat does not influence this romantic impression. And suddenly, a look stumbles upon the person in
an indecent but natural pose. The feeling of idyll begins
to disappear. Why does the artist intentionally add this
element to the picture? Because Chagall is not a fairytale
teller. Yes, the world of lovers is distorted, it becomes
like a fairy tale. But this is still life, with its ordinary and
natural moments. And in this life there is a place for
humor. It’s harmful to take everything too seriously. And
art allows us to break out of the traps into which
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our perception and consciousness fall, where everything
is organized or predetermined.
But for example, in “Pygmallion” Paul Delvaux we
can see a different interpretation of love. In Delvaux’s
variation of the famous myth, the heroes exchanged
roles: he, the artist, became the statue, and the woman
became an outwardly living body, but only a form, an
empty form. A metamorphosis took place, however, it
turns out that there is a whole series of transformations,
an endless wheel of transitions from one form to another.
However, these forms do not change the essence of
communication, the essence of connections, which is
impossible. Dorothea’s harmony and beauty is a closed
world, like Pygmalion’s adoration, and although they
are embraced, it has a somewhat sloppy and familiar,
automatic look, because people are not allowed to break
through each other ... We also can notice these stones
and the eternal desert of this world where people cannot
find real understanding of each other. And the fact that
the artist-sculptor-statue has no hands. There is no need
in them. Pygmalion has already done his job. The Delvaux
female doll, and they are almost all the same, does not
have qualities, it is precisely a human being without qualities, one without character. Because in contemporary
society with its intensity of life and work, the fullness of
events - all this does not provide any character: for this
there is no place, no time, no opportunity. The sculptor on
the pedestal is the idea of ​​the whole picture, because the
myth tells us how the statue came to life, it tells of a living stone, of art that breathed life into matter. Right there,
on the contrary, a person turns to stone and appears on
a pedestal - the opposite myth. However, it is important
to understand what exactly he revived and in the name
of what. This doll, which looks pointlessly into space, is a
symbol which shows the actual symbol is not in it, but in
the sculpture. And our dreams and opuses equally remain
in us and exalt us: there is some gentleman on the right,
in the opposite direction the modern version of Botticelli’s
Allegory of Spring follows. Everyone is self-sufficient, and
the thoughtful Pygmalion understands that, in essence,
all that an artist can do is recreate their personal feelings
or dreams in an artwork.
But on the other hand, it’s important to remember
that the symbol in the artworks refers not only to the
mind, but also to the feelings of a person, their
10 subconscious, generates complex associations
and often depends on the era, religion, culture of the
people. If the symbol is ambiguous, then one must take
from its meanings that corresponds to the era, time, general order, spirit of the picture in order not to contradict,
interfere or destroy the symbol.
Nature has endowed humans with five basic sensory
organs (touch, smell, taste, hearing, vision), thanks to
which they can perceive the surrounding reality. Vision
reveals the shape, extent, color saturation of the world,
affirms and constitutes it. The ability of a person to visual
perception is paradoxical. On the one hand, this is an innate natural ability that is inherent in every person, aimed
at the objectification of reality. The formation of a special
perception is directly related to social experience, which
is transmitted and formed in a certain historical environment. On the other hand, vision is a subjective form of
opposite: Over the town, Marc Chagall, 1918; Liozna, near Vitebsk, Belarus, 45 x 56 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
above: Pygmallion, Paul Delvaux, 117 x 147.5 cm
interaction with the environment of an individual. It is
human nature to create “one’s own” reality.
So, it turns out that the ability to see is both a
subjectively individualized experience of a person and an
orientation toward the objectification of reality inherent
in a person as a genus. This paradox of visual perception turns out to be directly related to the two-person
“artist-spectator”. The focus of our attention is the ability
of the visual-perceptual embodiment of reality within the
framework of a work of art. However, not only the artist
is involved in the game of optical illusions. The whole history of art is essentially a dialogue between a painter and
a spectator. The picture embodies the artist’s personal
attitude to the world, their sensual experience of reality.
The essence of the picture is revealed in the ontological
duality of its being. For one thing, a picture is a thing
among other things. On the other hand, it takes the
viewer to a completely different space, accommodates
figures and objects much larger than her in size, tells the
story of historical, mythological or everyday events of
different times. Before the viewer, the surface objectivity of the picture is erased, behind which a completely
different reality is hidden. The miracle of visual perception lies in the fact that non-subjective, spiritual,
social reality is also extracted from optical images.
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However, the artist conducts a dialogue not only with
their contemporaries. The figure of the viewer turns out
to be variable in relation to the artist-picture-viewer. The
picture is, at first glance, the final activity, a ready-made
text for reading and interpretation. But the existence of
the picture is multifaceted: it appears as the fullness of
the creative idea, on the one hand, on the other hand, is a
spectator of different times.
We can say that the symbol distinguishes between
two worlds: the world of things and the world of ideas.
A symbol becomes a kind of conditional sign that unites
these worlds in the sense that it generates. There are
two sides to any symbol - the signified and the signifier.
This second side is turned towards the invisible inner
world. And therefore Art is the key to the secret of knowing oneself and the world.
The expansion of the definition of a symbol removes the separation of form and content and solves the
general problem that pure art comes down only to form
and tools: it’s not the object that matters, but how it’s
depicted.7
In all the above paintings, one can observe a special
vision of reality, like peering on the other side of things,
an attempt to grasp the elusive, the desire to discern the
given thing beyond its objective being, to establish the
internal vibrations of world energy. All these ideas found
artistic expression in the paintings of surrealists. Those
antagonistic contradictions that are not resolved in reality
appear in works of art as internal problems of form.
But the aesthetic attitude can be considered broader
that the defining field of art, rather this is an area of
human experience where art finds its place. 8
Also, the symbols that artists use are not unchanged, although sometimes they may have a false
sense of permanence. They develop and sometimes
die, you can use several characters instead of a thousand words, they help us create a form - they give us
the opportunity to express an opinion, express love or
disappointment, change someone’s opinion. Surrealistic paintings rise above the material world thanks to
objectivization, which seems to erase the object-subject
scheme and tries to reveal the pure reality of the world,
to capture the process of the birth of an artistic image,
to catch the thought itself. For as Ernst Gombrich says:
“For though what we call reality is too rich and too varied
to be reproducible at will, symbols can be learned and
recalled to a surprising extent.” 9
Surrealism plays a double game. On the one hand,
pure automatism, pure ideas, instant capture of the born
images becomes a priority. On the other hand, surrealism, “rushing headlong” into the chaotic course of the
world absurdity, tries capturing the very moment of the
birth of this chaos, to reflect the process, to catch the
moment of the illogical origin. Therefore, to get beyond
the illogical, to penetrate into its very essence. Knowing
that, it makes sense why the metaphor has become one
of the favorite techniques of surrealist artists. Surrealism as an intellectual art strives for secrecy, setting up
several levels of semantic content. A metaphor hides one
object, replacing it with another.
If we return briefly to the idea of using
​​
space as a
symbol to show complex emotions, experiences, the
inner world based on the examples of the paintings
above, then we can come to another indirect conclusion
related to the idea of the pure art and the possibility of
its existence as such. As already mentioned above, the
pure art tries to move away from symbols and implies a
complete rejection of them in an ideal situation. A particular case of the failure or impossibility of this approach
may be the following reasoning. The paintings in the
style of surrealism analyzed above showed us that such
relationships between objects, whether they are touches
of lovers or their size compared to other objects, allow
the viewer to catch any feelings, thoughts, sensations,
as they are one of the basic and simple to understand
symbols, in connection with its versatility and interculturalism and almost a detachment from the era. If we
continue the argument and look at it more abstractly,
then the relationship between any objects in the picture,
for example, relative position, size, intersection, are practically symbols and can be interpreted. And even
if only one object is represented in the picture,
12
then its relationship with the picture itself will also be a
symbol. Such manifestations of symbols, although often
quite difficult to analyze, remain symbols, which lead us
to the idea that the pure art, the art without symbols at
all, is theoretically impossible.
Returning to the topic of love, its phenomenon
itself does not have a clear and unambiguous definition,
like any other phenomenon of human existence, which
determines the essence of human existence, therefore
surreal art that accepts visible and imagined reality as a
whole, thereby has more opportunities to depict the inner
human reality. In surrealist paintings, the visible and the
invisible reality merge together, forming a special mystical space, balancing between sleep and reality. Despite
the emergence of a new expressive language, surrealist
artists do not seek to destroy and completely abandon
traditional forms of art. They remain true to compositional and promising ways of building an illusory reality.
Surrealism creates a new ambiguous reality, filled
with symbolic images, mystical visions. Artists create a
special reality, the comprehension of which lies beyond
the boundaries of visible images. The picture opens the
way not only to a new mysterious space, but captures,
hypnotizes the viewer and continues to exist and reveal
itself in the fullness of its meaning in the mind of the
observer. Each person can find in it elusive details for
others, and reflections of their personal experiences.
1. Gillian Rose, “Visual Methodologies”, An Introduction to the Interpretation
o f Visual Materials (London: Sage, 2002) p. 125
2. Nelson Goodman (1978) Ways of Worldmaking, “When is Art” (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978), p. 59
3. Gillian Rose, “Visual Methodologies”, An Introduction to the Interpretation
of Visual Materials (London: Sage, 2002) p. 144
4. Jonathan Crary, “Introduction” in Suspensions of Perception, attention,
spectacle, and modern culture (Cambridge Mass: October Books, 1999) p. 10
5. Nelson Goodman (1978) Ways of Worldmaking, “When is Art” (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978), p. 65
6. Nelson Goodman (1978) Ways of Worldmaking, “When is Art” (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978), p. 62
7. Nelson Goodman (1978) Ways of Worldmaking, “When is Art” (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978), p. 50
8. Nelson Goodman (1978) Ways of Worldmaking, “When is Art” (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978), p. 66
9. Ernst Gombrich,“Visual Discovery through Art”, in The Image and the Eye,
Further studies in the psychology of pictorial representation (London: Phaidon,
1982) p. 36
opposite: The kiss / O beijo, Manuel Amado, 2009, 73 x 100 cm
opposite: The Kiss, Edvard Munch, 99 cm × 81 cm, Munch Museum,
Oslo, Norway