1,000 word Review
Surrealism is an art form that explores the dream state, it shows the irrational and the
unexplained (René Magritte: Biography & Artwork, 2016). This is my favourite period of art
as it shows something deeper than a physical object or subject. Instead it depicts how an
individual's brain works. No two people on this earth see the world in exactly the same way
so surrealist art is very unique. My initial idea was to use surreal art to recreate my dreams
as it would’ve been very fun to do and also interesting to research the meanings behind
these dreams. However, when I started doing some research into surrealism and found out
that surrealist artists had an interest in anarchy and revolution after the horrors of World War
One (Josh R. Rose, 2007 par. 4), it led my mind to 2020 and the events that happened
within that year that were extreme and history in the making. After some consideration I
decided to look at the main issues of 2020 and make surrealist art that highlights these. I
chose to focus on: Black Lives Matter, Australian bushfires and coronavirus. When creating
art, the viewer is an important factor in the process, considering what kind of audience you
want to relate to your work can help to make it engaging for that demographic . My intention
of this project is to make my viewer feel something, in this specific case make them feel
angry and perhaps motivated to help change the world.
After coming up with the title for my EPQ, I split the research into four sections: researching
surrealist artists, Black Lives Matter news, Coronavirus and the Australian wildfires. I started
with looking into popular surrealist artists. The reason I wanted to find some popular ones
was so that my audience could recognise parts of my work in relation to a famous painting
they might’ve seen which is more likely to get their attention than something they’ve never
seen before. However, as I looked into artists like Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte and Andre
Bretton I found that it was only Magritte who explored similar themes and ideas to the ones I
was hoping to explore.I decided to focus solely on his work. Magritte “would challenge the
consolidated perception of the world”(Carlo Affatigato, 2018) which is what I wanted to
achieve in this EPQ. From this research I changed the title of my EPQ to: creating a series
of artwork inspired by Rene Magritte exploring rebellion within the main issues faced in
2020. Now that I had perfected the title, I started to look into some of Magritte’s most famous
work such as The Son of Man and Golconda- even though the titles seem foreign to many
people, especially my target audience, the paintings themselves are easily recognisable. I
found a great website with his paintings and explanations of their meanings called Rene
Magritte: 100 famous paintings (renemagritte, n.d). The process of researching Magritte was
incredibly interesting and fueled my passion for surrealist art even more than beforehand. I
also started to look at the three themes for my paintings. There was a national geographic
magazine about the events of 2020 (Susan Goldberg, 2020) which was a very helpful source
for BLM and coronavirus. For wildfires, I looked at online news articles taken from 2020
while the wildfires were happening for example from the BBC News website (BBC, 2020)
that mainly had facts about deaths and the scale of the fires.
After I had researched and painted some initial ideas, I asked people in my target audience
questions about the pieces. I asked them what their initial thoughts on the paintings were-
what they thought it meant, and what they liked and didn’t like about them. This was helpful
to me as it helped me build a picture of what kind of imagery and themes were best
communicated to my target audience through the artwork. From this primary research, I
, adapted the three paintings that had the best response so I could paint them onto A3
canvases. I decided to do three separate paintings for each of the themes because visually
three paintings together means the viewer looks at them all as single paintings yet they also
appear to be connected in some way. Whereas if you had an even number, like two or four,
it means the viewer is more likely to subconsciously group paintings together which can
change their perceptions of the art.
The main skills that I sought to develop throughout this project were: time management,
referencing, researching and independent problem solving. These are all skills that are not
only helpful to have when I go to University but also throughout life and in the working world.
For example, independent problem solving will help me be efficient in the workplace as I will
not have to always be seeking guidance from others if I know how to solve problems,
although sometimes seeking guidance from others is helpful and necessary. Time
management is a key skill in everyday life as it means I can be as productive as possible
and not waste time if I know how to plan it effectively. Throughout this project, I have honed
these skills and other, smaller ones such as learning how to paint onto canvas which was
something that I had never done before but thoroughly enjoyed and it is a medium that I will
continue to use in the future.
Once I decided on the three pieces I wanted to paint, I collected three canvases and made
sure I had enough acrylic paint. Out of the three, I thought the coronavirus one would be the
easiest to paint so I wanted to start with one I was most confident about. However, when I’d
painted the sky and started on the houses I realised I hadn’t done enough coats on the
background so if I needed to rub out, the canvas might show. This was the first issue I came
across. From the original mini copy I made, I changed one thing due to the feedback I’d got
on it. One of the people from my target audience thought that the businessman in the
foreground represented the government and how they feel like they can break the rules
surrounding coronavirus. I really liked this idea and thought it enhanced the ‘rebellion’ theme
within this project so instead of having multiple people spread out to show social distancing, I
had the single businessman in the foreground by himself. The houses were put into bubbles
to represent the word ‘bubble’ which shows how language has changed due to the pandemic
according to the National Geographic Magazine that listed words that had become popular in
conversation like ‘zooming’ and ‘quarantine’ (Siddhartha Mitter, 2020). I thought this was an
interesting take on coronavirus as we usually don’t think about how a massive, global event
can alter how we speak. The bubbles also show how it “might not be safe to breathe around
people” (Siddhartha Mitter, 2020) which is a horrible, dystopian thought. The idea that
humans can no longer do something that is in their nature to the point that without it they
would die. However, people in power feel like they are an exception so are prolonging the
issue for longer due to their selfishness; the man in the painting has no mouth or nose which
shows how they act as if they are not capable of catching or passing on the disease.
Young children were also affected by the pandemic in ways that people rarely think about.
Because they don’t have much of a voice yet, the problems they faced were overlooked by
many. To these children wearing masks are normal, they are used to not being able to see
the nose of mouths of people outside their household. This was another reason for the man
in the painting not having these. This was talked about in a TED Talk discussion about a
mum whose children weren’t scared of people wearing masks because “that’s all he knows”
(Benesty, 2020). Out of everything that coronavirus has done to the western world, this is
