This powerpoint presentation discusses several Surrealist artists who use imagination, dreams, and the unconscious in their work. It profiles Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Frida Kahlo, Joan Miro, Meret Oppenheim, and others. Their works disrupt expectations and create alternative realities through hallucinatory imagery, juxtaposition, symbolism, automatism, and hybrid combinations of objects.

1. In this powerpoint, I have collected together a number of
Surrealist artists who use imagination, dreams and the
unconscious. Their works disrupt the viewers’ expectations
and create alternative realities.
JOURNEYS – IMAGINATION

2. The most famous of the Surrealists, Dali created hyper-real, hallucinatory
worlds. Much of his imagery concerns reflections and doubled objects,
molten, morphing objects and religious icons.
SALVADOR DALI

3. Magritte uses subtle, almost banal imagery to create memorable works – his use of
juxtaposition and contrast is highly controlled. In the central image above, the
combination of day and night, along with the very flat, inexpressive paint technique
and the dove motif, is very typical of his style.
RENE MAGRITTE

4. Ernst pioneered the use of ‘frottage’, taking rubbings from textured
surfaces in order to look for accidental images and forms. The two
landscapes on the LHS use this technique.
MAX ERNST

5. A Surrealist photographer, Man Ray used a number of different techniques
in order to combine images and ideas. These works would have seem
much more surprising and avant-garde at the time they were made!
MAN RAY

6. Although not strictly a Surrealist, imagination is central to Kahlo’s work.
She uses dreamlike images, personal mythology and her ancestral culture
(Mexican) as source material for her compelling self portraits.
FRIDA KAHLO

7. More paintings by Frida Kahlo, again showing her use of repeated symbols, in
this case the threads and ribbons, to illustrate family ties and links, both
emotional and physical. The use of red (blood) and the wounds she suffers in
her art echo the repeated operations she underwent during her lifetime, after a
tram accident during her teenage years. Kahlo was never able to have
children because of this and spent a good deal of her life bedridden, in plaster
casts.

8. Miro approaches imagination in Art in a different way, creating abstract images,
shapes and forms which are more closely connected with automatism and
doodling. This contrasts with the ‘waking dream’ approach of artists like Dali and
Magritte, who use realism and absurd juxtapositions in their work.
JOAN MIRO

9. Another female Surrealist, Oppenheim creates striking and memorable
combinations of objects (juxtapositions) which suggest the idea of hybrids. On this
page, a teacup appears to have grown a fur coat, a table stands on birds legs and
high heeled shoes are trussed and bound like a roast chicken.
MERET OPPENHEIM

10. SALVADOR DALI

11. These paintings by Pierre Roy use something of the visual language of painters
like Magritte; the sense of a fantasy world is created by the controlled, theatrical
arrangements of unrelated objects which may or may not have some personal
meaning for the painter. See also Louise Nevelson or Joseph Cornell.
PIERRE ROY

12. DOROTHEA TANNING