May 11, 2025 · 12:06 am
- There is a certain satisfaction to be had in knowing for certain how to define oneself. I learned about Surrealism in high school art class back in the early 70’s. I saw and admired the works of Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, and Max Ernst. And I realized that everything I wanted to do in the Realm of Art, whether it was weird paintings, cartoons, comic book art, or bizarre puppet shows… fantasy, science fiction, or humor… it was ALL Surrealism. Surrealism saturates out culture and our very thinking. We are drawn to watch baseball by the antics of a giant pantomime chicken. Our food choices are influenced by a happy red, yellow, and white clown who battles a blobby purple monster and a hamburglar over shakes and French fries. It is only natural then, that I would want to draw bug-sized fairies who would saddle and ride a red rooster. I have embraced surrealism as a way of life.
- I have no trouble writing a poem about the difficulties of life by writing about a game of bowling where you have to roll a moose down the alley into the pins.
- Surrealism is all about creating things by lumping all kinds of disparate goodies into the same pot and cooking it up as a stew. It is important that the stew tastes good in the end, so the mixture has to have large doses of reality and realism in it. Dali painted melting watches and boneless soft-sculpture people with almost photographic realism. I am compelled to do that too.
- And what is humor, after all, if not lumping strange things together into a reality sandwich that makes you laugh because it takes you by surprise? I don’t shy away from weirdness. I embrace it. It makes life all the funnier.
- And why did I put bullet points on everything in this post? Because it allows me to mash bits of wit and wisdom together in a weird way that only seems to have no connection, one to the other, and only seems to make no sense.
- Sometimes we just have to look at things sideways.
- I was recently accused of being eclectic in my posting topics by one regular commentator. I could wear that word like a badge of honor.
- Definition from the Urban Dictionary;
This describes a combination of many different individual elements of styles, themes, mediums or inspirations pooled from many sources. It can refer to musical tastes, dress sense, interior design…many things.
She has an ecletic sense of style, today she wears biker boots, pink fishnet stockings, a pencil skirt, a military jacket, a baseball hat, a my little pony t-shirt and a dunlop bag covered in badges from all her favourite bands from ABBA to Kooks
- So, if I am going to make sense of this whole mess of words and ideas and bizarre images, let me do it with a picture that I think is surreal.
Filed under art criticism, artwork, humor, insight, Paffooney, philosophy, surrealism, Uncategorized
Tagged as art, art-history, humor, juxtaposition, Mickey, Moose Bowling, paffooney, painting, Salvador Dali, surrealism
Catch a Falling Star 
Right on! You even worked Groucho, Snoopy AND the Playboy rabbit in there!