NCHS Computer Assisted Arts

Surreal Photography

1. Who: Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Michel Leiris
2. What: Max Ernst: Aquis Submersus: In this painting the buildings cast shadows on the sky. This makes the sky look like a wall, or a box. There is a clock in the sky, but the reflection in the water is a moon. There is what looks like a girl in the water with only her waist and legs out of the water. There is weird statue with no arms. There is a shadow casing from an object of the painting.

                                                                        Salvador Dali: The Persistence of Memory: In this painting there are four clocks. Three of them are melting. There is what looks like a disk with a melting clock going over the side of the deck, a dead tree with a melting clock on the branch, and an orange clock. In the middle there is a melting clock on some kind cloth looking thing. In the back grown there is what looks like an ocean with a rock formation to the right and a weird flat piece of glass, or something, to the left.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Yves Tanguy: Indefinite Divisibility: To the right there is a tower made up of random parts. To the right there is what looks like glass being held up by more random parts. There are bowls filled with water scattered across the area. There is this weird hole in the glass. The hole seems to be filled with water. The objects cast shadows suggesting some kind of light source.

3. When: The early 1920’s, World War II
4. Why: To resolve the contradictory conditions of dream and reality.
5. Paris, France
6. I think it’s important for our culture and our imaginations for artists to provide such imagery to the public because these things make us think. They also remind us that our since of reality can be broken.