Music as is seen the relevance of music in visual surrealism A colloquium paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the Pre Diploma presentation Prajakta Kulkarni
Prajakta Kulkarni 2013 March, Under Graduate Diploma in Communication Design, from Maeer’s MIT Institute of Design.
Faculty Guide: Prof. Shirish Kathale External Guide: Sandeep Deshpande
The Song of Love Giorgio de Chirico (Italian, born Greece. 1888–1978) Paris, June-July 1914. Oil on canvas, 28 3/4 x 23 3/8" (73 x 59.1 cm). Nelson A. Rockefeller Bequest. Š 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome Unlikely meetings among dissimilar objects were to become a strong theme in modern art (they soon became an explicit goal of the Surrealists), but de Chirico sought more than surprise: in works like this one, for which Apollinaire used the term "metaphysical," he wanted to evoke an enduring level of reality hidden beyond outward appearances. Perhaps this is why he gives us a geometric form (the spherical ball), a schematic building rather than a specific one, and inert and partial images of the human body rather than a living, mortal being. 1
Music as is seen The relevance of music in visual surrealism
Introduction Music has never entered this world alone. It can be seen as well as heard and felt. Ever since music as an element became commercial, it has been as visual as audile, at least has tried to match the resemblance. The various forms in which music can be seen are performances, phonographic records, cassettes, stage designs, album art and many other artistic representations.
When looked at each concept some of the music portrayals are literal. They are lyric to word, lyric to facial expression and gestures and lyric to realistic nostalgic imagery. To observe towards the deeper factor, art that expresses music is in the form of surrealistic images. Very famous album artists all over the world have used surrealism as a method to display or portray the music inside.
During the 70s an American music company, Opera D’Oro, selected an architect following the surrealist movement, Rafal Oblinski, to design a series of their album cover art for the purpose of marketing. Rafal made over 100 cover arts for opera music that had surrealistic paintings. The paintings tapped into the viewers’ subconscious and stir up associations that reveal truths about opera that could not be put into words.
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Later many album cover artists emerged and used surrealism as a technique. They called it the truth beyond reality. Salvador Dali’s surrealistic music video with Walt Disney in 1946, ‘Destino’ is the most perfect summary of this entire introduction. Some other album art covers that I went through were KORN’s - follow the leader, fall out boy’s – infinity on high, Greenday’s – American idiot and dookie, Metallika’s – master of puppets, Iron Maiden, Linkin Park, Theory of dead men, Marilyn Manson’s – mechanical animals, Nirvana’s – nevermind and videos and album covers of Pink Floyd.
My study opens a chapter in the commercialization of music with the help of images and the importance of the usage of surrealism. It covers study in three major fields – psychology, neurology and philosophy. The use of visual surrealism is evident in music. The statement that remains unanswered is the relevance of music in visual surrealism.
The study hence structures itself in the three most important aspects of human belief and faith. Music and image both are a combined result of neurology, the medicinal study of the human nervous system; psychology, the scientific study of the human mind and its behavior; and philosophy, the study of fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence.
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Contents
Hypothesis
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Introduction to topic 1. Music and its importance
2. Why the topic of visual surrealism?
3. Structure of the study
Thesis
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Research and Analysis
Neurology 1. Formation of art
2. Automatic Intelligence
3. Musical Intelligence
4. Relation of music perception and Image forming
History and Behavior - Psychology 1. Emergence of Surrealist Movement
2. Musical instances in surrealism and automatism
3. Subconscious and the influence of music on it 4
Philosophy 1. Music and Surrealism
2. “Beyond the truth” factor
3. Musical Picture
Conclusion
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Inference
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Overall summary of the draft
Bibliography
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Book References and Web
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Neurology
Formation of Art Neurologists localize symptoms rather than elemental neurological functions -
Hughlings Jackson, Neurology of the Arts (2004, Imperial College Press)
Nervous system is an exclusively sensory-motor machine that works by integrating afferent and efferent electrochemical impulses. Scientific neurology demands rigorous adherence to such matters as thermodynamics and the laws of conservation of energy and mass. In hierarchical terms, the mental aspect of art making can be regarded as an inductive process that elevates concepts to conscious awareness. This inductive process appears when a superior and controlling mental state, namely consciousness, stops working temporarily. Paul Klee, an inspired commentator as well as a one-man art movement, wrote that art does not reproduce the visible; rather it makes invisible visible. This stands as one of the most profound statement of where art comes from, but a discerning neurologist would hesitate to say where in Klee’s nervous system his words, much less his paintings or drawings arose. Visual artists or musicians may not have the verbal skills to describe precisely what they do, and we ought to be skeptical of reports by artists about the process of their own creativity. Nevertheless, first person reports provide a primary source, a direct insight into the mind of the artist. Creative people often observe that their own art making requires a certain alteration of consciousness, an exalted state of mind conductive to the creative process. Those with particular insight tell us of a type of hallucination that envelops them when they are doing something artistic. The use of alcohol or other mind-altering substances to artificially 6
produce or prolong this state has been common since the very beginning of art – an experience also well known to many neurologists. Creative process brings some ill-defined visual, auditory or verbal image from a subconscious level to a conscious level. Hence in evolutionary terms, creative state is lower than the conscious awareness. There is evidence that Georgio de Chirico and Pablo Picasso used their migrainous visual auras as a source of artistic inventions. Headache is one of the commonest disorders of the brain. To have it summed many neurotic patients have achieved great levels in art. To name a few examples, Hildegard of Bingen, famous for her music compositions, writings, art and theology and poems as well as the knowledge of botany, with a severe illness since the age of 12. Ergotism patients in 15th century, stone in the head disease and schizophrenic Bosch, Vincent Van Gogh diagnosed of epilepsy, schizophrenia, neurosyphilis, bipolar disorder, substance abuse, absinthe, delirium tremens, Meniere’s disease, lead poisoning and acute intermittent porphyria. To conclude, I have stated that creativity comes when the conscious is either forcefully or automatically reduced to have subconscious more prominent.
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Automatic Intelligence In the previous chapter I have concluded that creativity or the possibility of art comes from subconscious. It is not a part of our memory. The illness of painter Katherine Sherwood gives a perfect example. Professor Sherwood was an accomplished artist when, at the age, 44, she suffered severe dominant hemisphere stroke. Since then she has painted with her left hand and has achieved rather more acclaim and financial success after her stroke than she has before it. Neurologists compared her paintings before and after the stroke. Sherwood describes her paintings now as unburdened flowing freely from her subconscious.
Automatism happens after the intake of drugs and alcohol. According to Andre Breton, one of the founders of the surrealist movement, said that surrealism designates a certain psychic automatism, a near equivalent to dream state, whose limits are quite difficult to define.
Automatic intelligence is hence that is undefined, but it remains to be state of mind when it starts developing a picture of reality that seems unreal to consciousness and yet with a deeper meaning to the mind.
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Music Intelligence The idea that the processing of musical material in the brain was distinct from that of language gradually became dominant, leading to the design of specific cognitive model. The processing of language and music is differently lateralized, i.e. in the left and right hemispheres respectively. It is although very difficult to localize the precise organization of music processing by the brain. Neuroimaging studies proved that non-verbal auditory tones always induced a clear-cut activation of the temporal lobes. Temporal lobes are situated underneath the temples and it includes the area responsible for the understanding of speech and stimuli related to language.
In 1997, Imperial College Press, London published an extensive study on the perception by non-musical subjects of the basic components of music, namely pitch, timbre, rhythm and familiarity. This is the only study that has simultaneously assessed these four components of musical perception. It concludes that musical perception is distributed in both left and right hemispherical lobes. Specific networks for episodic memory of musical material do not exist. The basic components of music material appear to involve bilaterally located brain regions not specifically functioning for musical material.
Musical perception or thought is often related to metaphors. Light instruments like the flute or the oboe emphasize silent neurons in cerebrum. William James, an influential neuropsychologist, writes that the major principle of his psychology is that “the consciousness which itself an integral thing not made of parts corresponds to the entire activity of the brain, whatever may be there at the moment.� Music is used to control pain. The logic used in this process is that music causes sufficient level of reduction of stress 9
hormones in the blood. It works the same way all throughout the different cultures in the world. Dr. Ralf Spintge, an anesthetic, uses this therapy for control of pain. Music offers a way of reintegrating with our self. Music therapies are uses for controlling anger and violence and bringing out laughter and peace.
To conclude, music is a succession of tones and tone combinations so organized as to have an agreeable impression on the ear and its impressions on intelligence is comprehensible. These impressions have the power to influence occult parts of our soul and our sentimental spheres and this influence makes us live in a dreamland of fulfilled desires or in a dreamland of hell.
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Relation of Music perception and Image forming Music is clearly a perception that is mind-altering. It has the ability to reduce pain, increase happiness, and create nostalgia, emotions and feelings that can be completely a product of hallucination, dreaming or imagination. These experiences cause the ability of one self to peep inside the subconscious level of the mind, namely creative side or the suppressed feelings. Neurologists have found out areas in the brain that are affected, neutralized or evoked by the perception of music in the anterior parts of the brain. These parts are also responsible for the activity of relaxation of conscious awareness. We have also seen that art is best formed in the forceful or automatic reduction of consciousness.
In fact, Andre Breton himself has stated that surrealism is “the unconscious existing independently of the palpable realm. Surrealism is the psychic automatism in its purest form�
Thus combined, it can be stated that music has a certain kind of comprehensible impact to our nervous system that has an ability, which can lead to the formation of visual surrealism.
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1. History and Behavior – Psychology
Emergence of Surrealistic Movement and its Analysis The art movement known as the Dada Movement began in the early 20th century amidst the turmoil of World War I. The term “dada” has multiple meanings in different languages: It means, “yes, yes” in Russian and “hobbyhorse” in French. During this time, artists used the term to coin a new art movement, and began to take everyday objects and reassign them a new meaning. Some of the best-known Dadaists are Jean Arp, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp and Raoul Hausmann. The movement took place, albeit in slightly different forms, across Europe in cities such as Cologne, Berlin, Paris and Zurich and even New York.
The Dada movement began as a protest to what was happening in society at the time. As a response to the World War, many artists and intellectuals moved to neutral Switzerland as a way of demonstrating their disgust with the war. Through their art, they sought to convey the message that war was chaotic craziness and would ultimately destroy humankind. The Dadaists are quoted as saying, “It’s not Dada that is nonsense—but the essence of our age that is nonsense.”
The general public was both horrified and repulsed by that which the Dadaists produced; the public saw their art as both insulting and vulgar. This was, in fact, the response the Dadaists were hoping for and they found it inspiring. In short, the Dada movement was about reevaluating the aesthetic appeal of art and challenging conventional ideas about beauty. Ultimately, the Dada movement did not meet with great success and it was absorbed into the Surrealist movement.
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The real image was to reassign daily objects a new meaning. Public found it insulting and so the Surrealistic Movement started. A French writer Guillanne Apollinaire originally used the term ‘surreal’, 1917 production of Jean Cocetus’s ballet parade that featured both the music of Erik Satie and stage designs of Pablo Picasso. He said, “ it revealed a truth beyond real, a kind of sur-real’
Surrealistic paintings are claimed as poetic paintings. Andre Breton believed that truly immortal work of art could only be born through revelation. The various artists that made their mark in this movement are Marcel Duchamp (1913), Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, Andre Mason, Max Ernst, Juan Miro, Salvador Dali, Francis Bacon, Paul Nash and Marc Chagall. Francis Picabia in his paintings valued most varied reactions that occur between objects because of their form and vacancy of mental states felt by a spectator looking at the reactions between the forms. “The Happiness of Blindness” painting, “The three dancers” by Pablo Picasso are all a result of art coming out of sound and feeling.
There is a very close relation between the surrealist paintings done throughout centuries and the value of music. They are just music without any lyrics. They have a deeper thought in themselves. A superior level of subconscious that is possible by the control of conscious. These paintings express violence and aggression that bring peace to the painter.
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Rafal Olbinski's posters are an excellent synthesis of surrealistic mood and from the other side symbolism, characteristic to the Polish school of poster design. He has received more than 100 awards for his work, including Gold and Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators and Art Directors Club of New York. In 1994 he was awarded the International Oscar for the World's Most Memorable Poster, "Prix Savignac 1994" in Paris. In 1995 a jury led by Mayor Rudolph Guliani chose his poster as the official New York City Capital of the World Poster in an invitational competition. Following year he won the award for the best painting in the annual exhibition of the Society of Illustrators. The budget label Opera D’Oro made the interesting/inspired/bizarre decision to have a single artist, Rafal Olbinski, a Polishborn surrealist, create paintings to use on the covers of all their albums. One thing is sure, it was a brilliant marketing concept if their goal was to create an immediately recognizable brand — their covers pop out at you in a way few others do. Olbinski’s paintings, which take up about three-fifths of the cover, are so surreal and often so garish and often so provocative that they practically scream out at you to take a closer look, even though you may find them aesthetically unappealing. (This would be the point to lament the fact that LP covers offered a potential for artistic expression that was radically diminished by the advent of CDs.) At their best, the paintings tap into the viewer’s subconscious and stir up associations that reveal truths about the opera that can’t be put into words.
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Exquisite corpse Exquisite corpse is the most famous of the surrealist games. It began to be played in 1925 and consists in the composition of poems or drawings by a number of people is then folded so, each of them in turn putting down a word or graphic element on a piece of paper, which that the other participants do not see. The outcomes of these procedures offer unexpected juxtapositions, like the sentence "the exquisite corpse will drink the new wine", to which the game owes its name.
Collage Within Surrealism, the procedure of collage was employed chiefly by Max Ernst. From 1919, Ernst assembled images from a range of varied sources, with the aim of bringing about unexpected juxtapositions. From 1929, he produced collage-novels; series of images constructed from late-19th-century prints or illustrated catalogues and connected together through the simple repetition of visual motifs. Unlike Cubist collage, whose scope was exclusively that of plastic experimentation, or the highly political photomontages of German Dadaism, surrealist collage suggests new visual; poetic and oceanic associations.
Decalcomania Oscar Dominguez first used this technique in an artistic context in 1936. The artist presses a sheet of white paper over another sheet covered in black poster paint, and then repeats the operation, so that the paint stains are transferred several times over. The final image allows the artist to free his or her imagination by interpreting the resulting shapes at will. After Oscar Dominguez, Max Ernst applied the principle of decalcomania to oil painting. 15
Automatic writing Inspired by psychoanalysis, and in particular by the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud and Lautréamont, automatic writing consists in writing so fast that rational and preconceived ideas do not have the time to exert any control. André Breton and Philippe Soupault composed the first text produced by this method, Les Champs Magnétiques, in 1919, alternately.
Frottage The pictorial equivalent of automatic writing, the procedure of frottage was discovered by Max Ernst in 1925 in the course of a specific incident. When he was adjusting the rickety floor at an inn where he was staying in Brittany, he decided to take an impression of the wood by rubbing black lead over a piece of paper laid on the floorboards. He then extended this procedure to other textures and published his first collection of frottage, Histoire naturelle, in 1926. He continued these experiments with oil painting.
Fumage In 1937, the Austrian painter Wolfgang Paalen invented the procedure of fumage: he made drawings outlined by moving a candle flame over a sheet of paper. Later, he applied this technique to oil painting. Thus he prefigured the fire paintings of Yves Klein.
Grattage Invented by Max Ernst in 1927 as an extension of frottage, grattage was chiefly taken up by Esteban Francès, a painter of Spanish origin, and brought into Surrealism in 1937. This technique consists in scratching superimposed layers of paint in different colors with a razor blade so that shapes emerge that are to varying degrees mottled and transparent.
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Surrealist object After Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades, in the mid 1920s André Breton proposed the construction of "some of those objects we only glimpse in dreams", and "whose fate seems infinitely problematic and disturbing". As with Duchamp, this meant bringing together already existing objects of little value. But unlike him, the Surrealists expected the new object to provoke an emotional reaction, even "a specific sexual feeling" in the words of Salvador Dalí. Alberto Giacometti, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, André Breton, Oscar Dominguez and Man Ray produced the most famous surrealist objects.
Paranoia-criticism Developed by Salvador Dalí in 1929, the paranoia-criticism method consists in a delirious state of interpretation, applied not just to art, but also to reality. Its aim is to go beyond the impoverishment of habitual perceptions, and thereby achieve a distilled grasp of reality.
Rayograph The rayograph procedure was invented by Man Ray in 1922. It involves producing photographs without a camera, by placing objects on a light-sensitive plate, which is then exposed.
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The chronology of the surrealist Movement is as follows.
1922 André Breton breaks with the Dada movement by publishing critical texts in his magazine Littérature, grouping around him a number of poets such as Robert Desnos, René Crevel and Benjamin Peret. They continue the experimentation which Breton and Philippe Soupault had embarked upon in Les Champs magnétiques, a text written by the method of automatic writing and published in 1919. The group called itself the "mouvement flou" (vague or flux movement) until it officially became Surrealism in 1924.
1924 The movement became official in Paris with the publication of the Surrealist Manifesto, a text that André Breton had initially envisaged as the preface to a collection of automatic poems, Poisson soluble (Soluble Fish). It defines Surrealism as "pure psychic automatism whereby one's intention is to express, either verbally or in writing, or in any other way, the real functioning of thought". With this Breton draws out the artistic consequences of psychoanalytic theory, primarily from Freud's interpretation of dreams. La Révolution surréaliste replaces Littérature and a "Bureau of Surrealist Research" is opened: "its initial aim is to gather together all possible communications relating to the forms which the unconscious activity of the mind is liable to assume". The painters André Masson and Joan Miró join the movement.
1925 The first exhibition of surrealist painting is opened at the Galerie Pierre in Paris, at midnight on 13 November. It brings together works by Giorgio De Chirico, Hans Arp, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Man Ray, André Masson, Joan Miró, Picasso and Pierre Roy. 18
Max Ernst engages on his first frottage. The first experiments are made with "exquisite corpse", an expression of poly-vocal thinking. Louis Aragon publishes Le Paysan de Paris (Paris Peasant). In Brussels, a group formed by the writers Paul Nougé and E.L.T. Mesens, around the magazine Correspondence, aligns itself with the French surrealists. The Belgian painter René Magritte produces his first surrealist works and becomes the leader of this Belgian Surrealism.
1926 André Masson produces his first pictures "made almost exclusively of pasted sand" which emphasize matter and chance. In Paris in March, Jacques Trual and André Breton open the Surrealist Gallery with the exhibition Pictures by Man Ray and Objects from the Islands (of Oceania) that for the first time establishes a link between surrealist creativity and primitive works of art. The newspapers are scandalized by what they regard as the indecency of an Oceanian statue chosen by Man Ray for display in the gallery window and the cover of the catalogue.
1927 In January, André Breton joins the Communist Party. In June, the first solo exhibition of the painter Yves Tanguy is organized at the Surrealist Gallery. His paintings, which are indebted to the universe of Giorgio De Chirico, show a world, which seems to float between the underwater and earthly domains. André Breton writes Nadja, the portrait of a young woman with whom he was in love, and who sank into madness. The work ends with the now famous statement: "Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or it shall not be".
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1928 In February, Surrealism and Painting is published, a collection of articles by André Breton on Picasso, Giorgio De Chirico, Max Ernst, Man Ray, André Masson... Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel make the film Un chien andalou, thanks to the patronage of Marie-Laure and Charles de Noailles, who during the same period also finance another now famous surrealist film, Jean Cocteau's Le Sang d'un poète.
1929 n February, André Breton sends out a letter to individuals involved in Surrealism asking them to assess "their degree of moral competence", which puts him at odds with Bataille, Leiris and Masson. This initiative culminates in the theoretical refinements, which give shape to the Second Manifesto of Surrealism, published in December. Max Ernst produces his first collage-novel: Perturbation, ma soeur, la femme 100 têtes. By using old engravings from popular imagery, Max Ernst shows a dream world at the whim of the unconscious. Salvador Dalí's first Paris exhibition is held at the Galerie Goemans from 20 November to 5 December. His work extends an invitation to practice paranoia-criticism, a method for grasping reality while doubting the unequivocal nature of its meanings.
1930 As a retort to the Second Manifesto, in January Georges Bataille publishes a tract titled Un cadavre, in which he denounces what he regards as André Breton's moralising principles. The principal co-signatories of the tract are Michel Leiris, Robert Desnos, Raymond Queneau and Jacques Prévert. The first issue of Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution (Surrealism in the Service of the
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Revolution) appears in July, replacing La Révolution surréaliste - its new title suggested by Louis Aragon. In December, Dalí and Buñuel's second film, L'Âge d'or, is screened at the Montmartre cinema, Studio 28. Members of the League of Patriots and the Anti-Jewish League wreck the cinema.
1931 The surrealist artists are exhibited for the first time in the US, at Hartford (Connecticut). This event brings together works by Salvador Dalí, Giorgio De Chirico, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, Picasso and Pierre Roy. Alberto Giacometti produces his first sculpture-objects, "mobile and mute objects" made of organic forms that can be set in motion.
1932 In November, André Breton publishes Les Vases communicants (The Communicating Vessels), a work that aims to establish the existence of close connections between dreams and the waking state. In it he critiques Salvador Dalí's "symbolically functioning objects" which he considers to be over reductive of desire. He sends a copy to Freud.
1933 Albert Skira publishes the surrealist review Minotaure (1933-1938) whose first issue is devoted to Picasso.
1934 At the Musee Royal in Brussels, the Belgian Surrealists organize the first large-scale 21
exhibition of surrealist works from all over Europe. This too has the title Minotaure. The German artist Hans Bellmer joins the Surrealist movement with the publication in issue 6 of the review Minotaure (December 1934) of photographs showing one of his surrealist objects, The Doll.
1935 Alberto Giacometti is excluded from the group. He impugns his surrealist work and announces his wish to go back to working "from life". In November, the first Paris exhibition of the artist Victor Brauner is organised at the Galerie Pierre.
1936 In Paris, in May, an exhibition of surrealist objects at the Galerie Charles Ratton brings together for the first time natural objects, found objects and objects constructed by surrealist artists. The art historian Herbert Read organizes the International Surrealist Exhibition in London, with an introduction by AndrĂŠ Breton. In December, MOMA in New York shows the exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism.
1937 AndrĂŠ Breton becomes editor-in-chief of the review Minotaure. He publishes L'Amour fou.
1938 A new International Surrealist Exhibition is held at the Beaux-arts Gallery, Paris, with the 22
involvement of Marcel Duchamp as its designer. This exhibition brings together more than 60 artists from different countries, showing around 300 paintings, objects, collages, photographs and installations.
1939 Salvador DalĂ is excluded from the group. The war scatters the Surrealists, of whom a large number seek exile in the United States; the model they represent will be decisive for the nascent artistic movements and those to come, such as Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Dadaism and Pop Art.
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2. Philosophical Justification In this last part of the research I studied through various beliefs stated by people in their work. Few of them belong to Socrates and Plato. There are also a few other areas of studies.
Music captures forms or feelings and does not convey emotions or affects emotionally. Socrates stated that there are modes of music perception; Ionian and Lydian mode for indolence and softness and Dorian and Phrygian mode for courage and determination. Paul Vitz claimed that higher notes could evoke a positive effect in the listener. Lauren Harris quotes claim to the effects that composers are dependant on powerful spatial abilities, which are required to posit, appreciate and revise the complex architectonic of a composition. He even stated the influence of music on intelligence leads to dreamland comprehension.
As a young man, he had studied in an academy in Germany, and after his return, his paintings like Hurdy Gurdy were very much in the Impressionist manner.
By 1919, the delicate pastels of Impressionism were replaced in pictures such as Return from Church, by the thick primary colors and heavy brushstrokes of Post-Impressionism, and after that the change was even more rapid and dramatic.
Within a few years, the rich, Post-Impressionism colors had in turn given way to more muted tones, while objects were reduced to simplified shapes and swelling lines, which are somewhat similar to Jackson's work at his time.
However, he would soon move to a stark severity of color and simplicity of a form, which is far more extreme than anything Jackson would ever do. Harris turned to Theosophy as it was espoused by Kandinsky and light became more and more important in the pictures. 24
Kandinsky in his book Towards the Spiritual in Art, set forth the idea that the world we see around us is merely a shadow of the true universe. If you dig down through the outward appearance of things, you will pass into deeper and deeper levels of reality until you find God. In keeping with that tenet, Harris pared away the details of things in a search for the underlying essentials of creation. By the mid-30s, he had moved into total non-objective abstraction.
On an economic note, the move to non-objective subject matter completely cut off Harris from the buying public, and he didn't sell a single non-objective painting to a public gallery until 1969. Fortunately, his economic well-being was not dependent on the sale of his paintings. Harris was one of the beneficiaries of the Massey-Harris farm machinery fortune.
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Conclusion to thesis
In conclusion to all the facts and theories that I researched I would like to add a perspective of my own to this argument. By neurological experiments its can be proven that human body, cut down to pieces would still respond and react to music. Music has a power to spiritually affect any person hearing to it. It is now evident that music also produces a certain kind if imagination in anyone’s mind that is surreal. It is a language that speaks to our subconscious. Subconscious captures elements in our daily life that are suppresses and down trodden. That is the reason why these images are widely disliked or unaccepted. The conscious that builds up a society of acceptance and reality, naturally suppresses the unaccepted. It is also psychologically evident that music produces unseen or left out scenes in our mind that has a deeper though to its real existence. Throughout this entire voyage of finding a better answer to my faith in logic, I found a ray hidden deep inside all the theories and virtual philosophies.
There is more to this depth. They say, that when you go searching deeper and deeper inside yourselves is the time when you seek divinity. Its not really divinity that you find. It is the basic answer to the unanswered. There is peace. The connection between music and surrealism is kept in a part of that corner. Music, by nature is surreal. It is the truth beyond reality. As humans, if we are able to unveil these suppressed truths behind the meaning of music that comes without the lyric, we will be able to find the meanings behind those surrealists and their paintings. Unless you break the rules that are inside you, you will not be able to break the rule outside. The phenomenon is very simple. Although after all it is just a theory and it can be altered by time and experience.
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Music as is seen Relevance of music in visual surrealism – by Prajakta Kulkarni
On a breezy summer evening, I sat with a melody playing in my head. There was no music around me; just the wind humming around my ear and I kept feeling something good. Music is such an undefined exceptional expression of emotion.
As I researched through the various aspects affecting music and surrealism, I came down to a few theories that can secure the statement about the relevance of music in visual surrealism. Neurology, philosophy and psychology are intricately woven into people’s consciousness and there is a deeper thought behind it in actuality.
Brain develops art ; a form of expression that originates in the right hemisphere, where creativity takes place. This creative process requires an alteration of consciousness. In neurological terms, it means that the stress hormones need to be released and, emptied from the pituitary gland, that control the real behavior of any person till the point a person starts feeling “light headed”. At this point creative thought process starts in the brain where the subconscious images in the brain start occurring on a large amount, which we call imagination and a graver form of which causes hallucination. The visual believability of imaginations is proved to be unreal or in a deeper term ‘surreal’. It does not have a conscious awareness to it. Artists use this state to create surrealistic paintings either by forcefully keeping themselves in this state or naturally. The same is even said by philosophers that surrealism is but the liberation of mind.
Music has an opening in everybody’s heart since birth. Music, being an overpowering element in one’s experiences, has the ability to control motives and emotions to such an 27
extent that aggravating emotions can be neutralized. It is stated in both neurology and psychology that music releases one’s thoughts and brings them either to a blank state – meditation, or to the beginning of imagination. This is where music brings out the surrealism in surrealist painters. That it has no limitations is the basic magical property of music that surrealistic painters use in their paintings. This theory also improvises on the ability of music to show surrealistic visuals to all humans in general.
A counter argument can be made to the above by some surveys and journals written to state that many people lack ability to relax their consciousness. Their conscious is so dominating that it refuses to go deeper and allow subconscious thought. Also it cannot be scientifically proven that music necessarily brings surreal images out. Only through observations and psychological experiments is the theory formed.
As I tried to conclude this experience of mine into appropriate words, my thoughts flew deeper inside my mind and brought about a totally different view of the thought. I went through hundreds of surrealistic paintings and forced myself to think beyond reality, sitting and easing my mind for hours, and I realized that all these surreal images surround us. Our conscious is just tamed by reality so our subconscious politely takes them in and releases them in the form of our dreams and imaginations. In the case of music, with lyrics, it makes us nostalgic and without, it makes us dream. It is evidently possible for a human to interpret, appreciate or dislike certain musical illustrations. If people put an effort to understand the deeper or the surrealistic statements present in music, they will be surprised to find themselves endowed with the ability to understand surrealistic paintings as well. It follows the similar path and a very high and advanced potential to think towards the inner truths that envelop us in the world beyond reality.
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Bibliography Books The Music of Painting by Peter Vergo Arts Entwined by Marsha Norton and Peter L schmuck Neurology of the Arts by F.Clifford Rose Manifestoes of Surrealists by Andre Breton Essential Surrealists by Tim Martin Frames of Mind by Howard Gardener Musical Meaning Pulp Surrealism
Web References Olinda.com
Britishcouncillibrary.com
Google. Books
Imperialpresslondon.co.uk
Vancouver art galley website
Centrepompidou.fr 29