Surrealism Part Two: The Unconscious Revealed – Bea Aaronson

Surrealism Part Two: The Unconscious Revealed

Tuesday, March 3, 2020
3:00 pm and 5:00 pm
Please specify which one

Bea’s Studio

64 San Jorge
San Antonio

300 pesos per person

Reservations: bea_aaronson@hotmail.com

As we saw last week, Freud was a key catalyst for surrealist art, a liberating force which excited, inspired and convinced many poets and artists that their creative force had to thrust itself through the other side of the mirror, to grasp a little more understanding about what it means to be human.

Through a thorough though brief  biographical and historical contextualization, supported by numerous illustrations of paintings, sculptures, poem objects, photographs, movie clips and more, come and discover, or re-discover, the disturbing anti-Nazi dolls of Hans Bellmer, the warlike aggressive sexuality of André Masson, the alien aquatic mindscapes of Yves Tanguy, the decalcomania of Oscar Dominguez, the synaptic psychic abstractions of Robert Matta, Joan Miro’s magical realism (as he called his brand of surrealism), the surreality of pain in Frida Kahlo’s exorcizing haunting images, the apocalyptic power of Max Ernst, the mysterious totemic works of Victor Brauner, the photomontages of Man Ray, the mesmerizing critical paranoiac visions of Salvador Dali, and last but not least, the cinematographic enchantments of Jean Cocteau.

Whether abstract or figurative, these artists will startle you with their visions. Some may even frighten you, or disgust you. There is definitely a morbid dimension in most of them, particularly in the exacerbated sexuality they project. Remember, we are dealing here with the dark, unknown territory of the unconscious, with the hidden pulses of what Freud called the ID. And with the horror of the Second World War, the dead bodies, the blood, the exploded faces, the camps… Need I say more? Yes indeed, truly frightening. But some will make you dream and feel as if you were going back to your childhood. Some will make you wish you were able to travel inside of your psyche, swim and fly in a world where there is no logic to incarcerate you. In any case, I promise you a fantastic visual journey through the kaleidoscopic labyrinth of the mind.