Yes, I admit it. I am a Surrealist. I also hope that it is not too terrible a thing to be. Because I truly think that everyone who was raised by television, and lived through the revolution where computers took over human life, is one too.
a 20th-century art form in which an artist or writer combines unrelated images or events in a very strange and dreamlike way
Full Definition of surrealism;
the principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature, film, or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations
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.
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
Sitting nude amidst the flowers, while being a plastic doll.
As a writer and an artist, I am basically a Surrealist. But do you know what I mean by that?
Salvador Dali was a Surrealist. As was Paul Klee, Greg Hildebrandt and his brother Tim, Larry Elmore, Boris Vallejo, every other fantasy artist, and every science fiction artist. It means being an artist who can paint or draw something extremely unreal in a way that makes it seem entirely real.
I have been that since childhood. Childhood trauma, a vivid imagination, and a need to live mostly in my own head has forced me to be that.
Radasha, my faun, whom only I can see and talk to.
Surrealism is taking things that do not go together in real life and forcing them together in Realistic Art.
If you do a realistic painting of a tiger withlagle wings, you create a surrealistic image. Al Capp’s Lil Abner newspaper cartoon strip was surrealist every day. Almost all cartoon strips were or are. Calvin and Hobbs perchance? The talking cartoon bee on the cereal box in every Honey Combs or Honey-nut Cheerios commercials? In the modern world we are increasingly surrounded by Surrealism. AI-created art is nothing but surrealistic images slammed together by a randomizimg AI mind responding to the wicked thoughts of users. A girl in a bikini with a canine chihuahua head? Or more likely, a girl without a bikini and a chihuahua’s head.
A Telleron frog-boy from outer space.
The movie, The Birds, by Alfred Hitchcock is Surrealism. Having an orange-faced criminal for a president like the current President Pumpkinhead is definitely Surrealism. As the world becomes increasingly nonsensical, it becomes more surrealistic. And hence, the need for Surrealists like me.
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is Surrealism.
Catch a Falling Star 