Please note that this lecture involves themes of sexuality, as well as violence and misogyny. The latter unfortunately still plagues are world. During the lecture I try to maintain a certain amount of historical objectivity, while also making clear the unethical and problematic dimensions of some of these movements, notably Surrealism.
To watch with chapters “1900a,” “1924” and “1930b.”
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
Even though it says “Joan Mira,” that likely points to the famous Catalan painter Joan Miró (1893–1983). What we’re looking at here is his Relief Construction, made during late summer through fall of 1930 in Montroig. Around this time, Miró stepped sharply away from standard canvas methods. Instead, he began shaping objects in space – this sculpture captures that turning point clearly. His move into physical forms signaled a sharp break from flat surfaces.
Out past the wall it comes, Relief Construction built from wood touched by oil, held together with nails, staples, metal bits. Measuring just under ninety-two centimeters tall, seventy wide, sixteen deep – close to thirty-six by twenty-eight by six-and-a-bit inches. A wooden base carries everything, fixed so it hangs but juts forward, refusing flatness. Instead of staying put, the piece pushes into where you stand, crossing its own edge without warning.
Out of plain scraps – wood anyone might toss into a bin near a workshop – Miró built this work. Choosing such ordinary stuff on purpose questioned how fancy art usually acts about what it’s made of. What grabs you first? Nails, pointed and sudden, driven through a red disk up in the left corner, jutting out like warnings.
Out there, those sticking-out nails do more than hold things together – they push back. A tag at MoMA says their sharp ends jab forward, like an insult aimed straight at old-school art forms. That roughness shows how badly Miró wanted to kill off regular painting, reaching past flat surfaces into space where stuff actually sits.
Summer gave way to fall in 1930 while Miró stayed at his family’s farm near Montroig – those months crackled with restless trying. Not many of his wooden “constructions” from then remain, just two that anyone knows of, including this one called Relief Construction. He was poking holes in painting back then, treating canvas and brush like things to break apart rather than follow. Ownership traces add weight: Breton held it, then Éluard, both central figures among the Surrealists, before MoMA took possession in 1937.
Wood and metal shape something louder than silence here. This piece refuses flat walls, chooses space instead. Rough edges meet broken pieces, glued not polished. Old scraps find new purpose, pointing ahead without asking permission. Creation never sits still when hands keep moving. Influence spreads quiet but sure through time.
Hi Reginal
I like that Miró’s Relief Construction moves away from normal painting and becomes more physical. The nails, wood, and rough materials make the work feel active and even aggressive.
For the theme behind the dreams category is the surrealism work behind it. One of these artworks can be about Josef Hoffmann’s Palais Stooclet, Brussels, 1905-11. From the looks of the scene it looks like an average dining room, usually some people may view it as just a regular art, but for some, they may have an unnerving feeling to it, that’s what surrealism does. It just gives a setting an uneasy feeling like something is wrong and yet there’s nothing that can harm you. Hoffmann’s work is a really great example to it, there isn’t anyone on the artwork and it’s only just the furniture of the dining room. The color scheme in the work also fits well with the surrealism theme it’s giving, having the grey scheme gives more depth with the scenery, the way everything looks like it’s stuck in time, that’s the enjoyment of this work.
Dreams are also a major factor for these kinds of subliminal artwork. One of these examples is Max Ernst, Two children Menaced by a Nightingale,1924 This artwork contains various details that can’t be found from far away, you’ll need to look closely at it. Looking at the gate it overlaps the frame making it feel like a gateway to the artwork which also adds to the subliminal feel to it. What’s also to mention is that it uses a wooden material to make the gate, inspecting the house, you can also see that the house is also created with wooden material as well! The dream part fits the artwork as well. You can supposedly see the two children in the picture, one running in the yard while the other is on the supposed roof of the house, however they aren’t as colorful as the background like they’re cut out from a newspaper or a picture. Now the question is, where’s the subliminal part in this work? Some examples can be the color scheme used in this work, it’s more different than Josef Hoffmann’s Palais Stooclet, Brussels where it used more of a gray scene to create an unnerving look to it. Color can give it more of a nostalgic feel to it, maybe Max wanted to create something that reminded him of his childhood that he could remember not everything subliminal necessarily have to give you a sense of fear to it but to also give you a time where you felt that there was nothing pulling you down or anything that could hurt you in any shape or form.
In this lecture, I think Surrealism used dreams in a very different way from normal life. In daily life, people often try to make things clear and logical. But dreams can be strange, confusing, and sometimes scary. Surrealist artists were interested in this because they thought dreams could show thoughts and feelings that people usually hide.
One idea that stood out to me was the connection between dreams and the unconscious mind. Dreams do not always follow time, place, or logic. A person can be in one room and then suddenly be somewhere else. Objects can change shape. People can appear in strange ways. Surrealist artists used this kind of feeling in their work. They wanted viewers to feel unsure about what is real and what is imagined.
I think this can make Surrealist art interesting because the viewer cannot understand everything right away. The viewer has to stop and look longer. A strange image may not have one clear meaning. It may remind different people of different memories, fears, or ideas. This gives the artwork more space for personal thought.
At the same time, the lecture also made clear that Surrealism had serious problems. Many Surrealist artists talked about freedom and breaking social rules. But some of their works still showed women in unfair or harmful ways. Women were often treated as symbols of desire, mystery, or fear instead of being shown as full people with their own voices. This is important because an artwork can be creative and still have ideas that are sexist or unfair.
I think this problem becomes stronger when we look at the way some male Surrealist artists used the female body. They often broke the body into parts, changed it into an object, or made it seem strange and unreal. This can make the viewer feel uncomfortable. Sometimes that may be the artist’s goal. But it can also make women seem like they only exist for the viewer to look at.
Dreams can be a place where people feel free, but they can also show power and fear. A dream image may look playful at first, but it can have a darker meaning. This is why I think Surrealism should not only be seen as art about fantasy. It is also about control, desire, fear, and the way people see other people.
In this course, dreams are explored in relation to the subconscious and repressed thoughts. Dreams reflect emotions that people suppress in reality; often chaotic and disordered in nature, they serve as a form of expression—a defense mechanism or a disguise—for what is experienced in waking life. Through this course, I have gained a profound understanding of the connections between dreams, artistic expression, and Surrealism.
Sigmund Freud posited that dreams arise as an outlet for repressed instincts and emotions. Why do we dream? It often happens because ideas that are socially unacceptable or at odds with societal norms cannot be voiced or understood; when the resulting long-term stress finds no other release, dreams emerge. Human consciousness is divided into two parts: the familiar surface consciousness and the subconscious, which harbors inexpressible concepts or emotions. The imagery seen in dreams is often chaotic, requiring interpretation to reveal the true meaning the subconscious seeks to convey. While the subconscious cannot be directly “seen” or “heard” by our conscious mind, it can project itself through dreams, bringing certain truths to our awareness. Indeed, in today’s society, people even pay others to interpret their dreams, seeking to understand the messages within and how they might impact their lives and emotions.
Surrealism was directly influenced by Freud; it involves painting based on “instinct” rather than rational thought, allowing the subconscious to flow naturally. Some artists went further, directly depicting the content of their dreams—bringing the dream world into reality—as a way to give vent to subconscious thoughts. A prime example is Salvador Dalí’s *The Persistence of Memory*, which depicts a desolate beach where a withered tree branch sprouts unexpectedly from a clean platform on the left. Most striking are the three pocket watches draped softly over the platform, a human-like face, and the tree branch; they have lost their original forms, appearing like melting cheese. Such melting clocks cannot exist in reality; they defy rigid, objective physical laws, symbolizing how time—within dreams and memories—is subjective, distorted, and elusive. Through this work, Dalí expressed concepts regarding the uncontrollability of time, as well as themes of death and the passage of time. Artists use the concept of the dreamscape to express desires and anxieties that are repressed in reality. They recognize that human beings are not governed solely by reason, but are complex subjects profoundly shaped by the subconscious, desire, and dreams. While the thought processes within dreams lie beyond conscious control, the interpretation of dreams and subconscious thought can be shaped by the individual.
Hi xinyi!
Your discussion about what dreams are really makes me think, were not sure what these dreams could mean, as it could be mixed with future sights, places we haven’t seen ever in our lives, or people we dont remember seeing it works in a bizzare way and reading the deep response you made gives more for what dreams can be .
Dreams and the subconscious are strongly linked to Surrealism. Familiar streetscapes that defy naming, blurred figures, and scenes impossible in reality construct the dreamscape—a layering of fantasy upon actual reality. Many artworks are born this way; just as science fiction draws settings from real cities, so too do paintings. Dreams are not meaningless hallucinations but visual manifestations of the subconscious, revealing hidden desires, fears, and memories often suppressed by rational thought. Influenced by Freud’s theories of the subconscious, Surrealist artists sought to bypass the conscious mind and tap into a deeper psychological reality.
Max Ernst’s work breaks the boundary between two and three dimensions by incorporating a miniature wooden gate and fence directly onto the traditional oil canvas. This brings the painting to “life,” extending it into the viewer’s own space. By combining real figures and pets from his childhood with objects of distorted scale, the artist gives form to a past nightmare; yet, the expansive warm tones convey an indescribable sense of foreboding. Perhaps the oppressive feeling created by the heavy frame, combined with the abundance of pale figures, instills a sense of unease—a fusion and contrast of the unreal and the real that mirrors the logic of dreams itself. In contrast, Salvador Dalí’s expresses the human subconscious in a different way. Here, familiar objects are placed within a fictional landscape, as if reality has intruded upon a dream. Everything appears scorched and melted by the sun; time is violently distorted and brought to a standstill, as if all existence has dissolved into the realm of the unconscious.
I think today’s lectures shares a fascinating connection and overlap with the “Primitivism” topic discussed on June 9, as both center on Freudian theory. While Primitivism views the art of the mentally ill as a source of raw, unrefined creativity—where imaginative inner worlds give rise to unique works—Surrealism turns inward to explore the landscape of dreams and unconscious associations. Artists constantly seek forms of expression unconstrained by rules or societal norms. Today’s topic delves further into the idea that whimsical imagination is often the most sincere reflection of the human subconscious. Much like a child’s imaginings about clouds or the stories woven around unfamiliar objects, these flights of fancy mirror the inner worlds of the mind, serving as both a window into the human spirit and an outlet for its expression.
Throughout the lecture and the readings, a theme that I noticed and found to be interesting was the discussions about the unconscious mind with Freud’s theories about how the human mind is separated into multiple sub-sections, as well as Breton’s view of what surrealism is, with it being pure psychic automation. In the 1900, Freud’s views of dreams and the subconscious are shown off to be something interpretable instead of something with a clear definition. The reading goes into detail about how modern artists use this idea in their art with how such topics like anxiety, fantasy, repression are often left up to interpretation rather than being directly visible and told to the viewer. In the 1924 reading, the major theme being shown is how art should try to bypass conscious control so that thought, image, and language can emerge more directly from the unconscious. The reading shows how dream, hypnosis, free association, and spontaneous writing are ways of turning mental life into a productive artistic procedure.
Another theme that I noticed and found to be interesting was the belief that nobody is truly fully rational and how surrealism doesn’t fully represent that with its design philosophies at the time. In the 1924 reading, Breton heavily critiqued the current state of surrealism at the time, talking about how it’s still too neat and organized for the viewer and not truly illogical/irrational enough.
Dreams…hmm. That’s a powerful concept. Depending on the context, the essence of dreams is amplified. Random sentiment aside, I find myself shocked again by how relevant these theories and ideas from historical figures still are today. Of course, there is the natural progression of man, problems, politics, and all the other stuff that influence our development, but for its time, Freud’s ideas were really accurate. I sound like a broken record at this point, but I find myself continually surprised by these “echoes” of “human ambition,” and I prefer to comment on how these ideas apply throughout time and even til this day.
Just to start, the symbolic act of the Octopus circumsizing the guy in the Jurispaudence painting was interesting. It’s interesting because of a correlation that might have no influence over the paintings in surrealism, but still connects to some of the ideas, specifically, the erotic aspect. A little before this century, Japan opened its borders, and the world was introduced to Ukiyo-e prints. The world was captivated by these due to the erotism, and it’s relevant to note that the octopus was used a lot in these erotic scenarios portrayed in the Ukiyo-e prints. It might just be a coincidence, though.
As far as Freud’s ideas, it wasn’t mentioned as thoroughly through the lecture as I hoped, but I want to touch on his theory on women as the source of anxiety and their connection to the fear of losing control. And a bit of a disclaimer, if my comments sound misogynistic, that’s not the intention. I find this idea a bit primitive, however, men can be just that.
There is almost a primitive unconscious nature that men keep buried away, along with fragile egos. And this idea can be seen historically, and in the modern era. When I think about it historically, my mind jumps ahead to women fighting for equal rights and men not making it an easy battle for them. As if they had the same rights as men, the primitive thought of a man would be that women shouldn’t have the same authority in the world as men.
Today, there is the red pill community. A lot of their topics involve how women can “take away” things from men. They challenge the authoritative position through the use of their bodies. They talk about how a women can deplete you of resources, energy, and hold you back from your “true self.” The anxiety aspect comes to light when they tell their viewers what to do to prevent this from happening. The men then move in indecent ways, looking at women as something other than human. Not to mention, certain bromides that sprouted, such as “happy wife, happy life,” suggest the essence of control and influence a woman can have over a man. So, these are just examples of Freud’s accuracy.
i think a better title for this section should be introspection as the concept with dream only applies to the latter portion of the art movement. the reason i say this is because early movement lead by artist like Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka are less so inspire by Sigmund Freud concept of the unconscious but rather born from a dissent of various societal conceptions and operations. Art pieces Jurisprudence and medicine criticizes both the medical and judicial practices. while the painting shares a similar illusory visuals they done with a purpose and message in mind. In comparison surrealism seeks to explored the human mind and various unique visuals to exist within the human unconsciousness. the visual can range from realism to the abstract it would lack comprehension and coherence as it ultimately is made from a place of lack of understanding from even the artist themselves.
Now to talk about the concept of dreams at hand or the human subconscious. there are many ways this is interpreted. Freud interpretation of the unconscious as consisted of repressed feelings and memories. This interpretation of the unconscious suggested a very much personalized view and that is reflected within the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico or Max Ernst. in the both painting Two Children Menaced by a Nightingale and The Child’s Brain we see familiar imagery to both artist that comes from personal experiences. this playing into to the Freudian approach of course however there is separate approach to surrealism that deviates from the this perception that is tackled by artist like Salvador Dali or Joan Miro that is far less personal. In Joan Miro’s The Kiss there is this exploration of the birth of life and human conception and in Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory we see the idea of time or the human perception of time explored. all experiences that is not unique to a individual but rather the human experience This echoes a different idea of the unconsciousness, more precisely the carl Yung idea of collective unconscious. Carl Yung’s idea of collective unconscious suggests that there are certain collective behavior in humans that is shared everyone that exists outside of our notice. In both painting we see some of those concepts such as the human concept of time and the primal nature to breed. It is interesting how this differing philosophy creates more abstract leaning surrealist art.
One of the more fascinating topics in this lecture about dreams was about the conscious and subconscious. Visually speaking, the image of the iceberg represents both. It’s a great analogy to compare the world we live in (the tip being the conscious) and what truly lies underneath each and every one of us (the subconscious being the bottom of the iceberg). I’d like to relate it in a sense to how we see people in our everyday lives. We see the exterior; we see what that person decides to portray to the world. However, underneath that it’s a bit more complex. People have motives, they have trauma, backstories and like discussed in the lecture there may be underlying unresolved issues and repression. It’s interesting to see how Freud talks about bridging the gap between our conscious everyday lives and the unconscious. When speaking about the subconscious, Freud states that dreams say something about ourselves and desires. He speaks about a split between our physical world and the dream world. In the physical, we follow authoritative rules, but in the subconscious, we are more free. What we see in the real world may be a portrayal of how we’d like to be perceived by our peers, but maybe deep inside we have other desires, fears and complicated matters that live inside of us unknowingly. Those matters tend to come out when we are in a more relaxed state and when we are no longer in control, which is where our subconscious comes to play. It’s interesting to see how the word desire was used to describe an experience as painful or punishing, rather than wishful. Imagine someone having the same dream every night? Wouldn’t that just be a nightmare? In our dreams, there are unresolved matters and I believe that most dreams have to do with problem solving or things that bother us in our everyday lives that are neglected. Which makes me wonder, if we lived our lives and addressed some of the matters in our subconscious. Would we feel more free? Would we live life to the fullest? Not everything in our dreams make sense, but some things do. I could personally speak about a dream I had. In this dream, the world I lived in made no absolute sense as I was jet skiing in a giant swimming pool track that resembled a Mario kart obstacle. All I remember was the feeling of adrenaline and pure freedom. When I woke up, I was a bit disappointed, but I truly felt like I was holding back on myself. I was not living life in exciting and exhilarating ways and maybe that was what my subconscious was trying to tell me. To possibly let go, go out and live life and not worry too much about what other’s thought about me. This relates to the visual of the iceberg because from the outside in, sometimes you have to conduct yourself in a more repressed way, when deep inside, I seek adventure and living a more spontaneous lifestyle.
I can see why the section was called dreams. I initially thought that it would talk mostly about the interpretation of dreams into physical art, which I guess for the most part I was correct about. Dreams can be viewed through many different lenses. Some believe that they are a gateway to forces beyond our mortal beings, others see them as just the mind running while our body rests. I tend to side more with the latter, because it seems more plausible to me. There are certain systems such as breathing that are intrinsically automatic to use so it’s more plausible that dreams are a way for our brain to continue functioning while giving our bodies a respite. Though this thought process brings to light the question, what are dreams exactly? The lecture talks about dreams possibly being different emotions and desires that were depressed by ego coming to the surface. This could be true but dreams can also be very strange in the fact that they aren’t very forward in their meaning. No one can truly understand what a dream could be telling them but that’s probably why art is a good medium to represent them.
Surrealism as Breton describes, a pure state dictated by thought is where my mind goes to when hearing the word. A mix of reality and a dream-like state of being. Something that feels reminiscent of living while at the same time being something completely new. Living along with surrealism is just chance, that every moment of our existence is just chance. This is another thought shared by Breton, which I believe is true. Our existence along with our relationships are all happenstance. We work to cultivate our careers, interests and relationships with one another but having them to begin with was all up to chance. I think that the way it’s presented in art, by choosing which aspects of reality to exaggerate in order to impose specific feelings onto a viewer, is really interesting. How do you determine what aspects will elicit the same feeling for everyone seeing it? Or does the artist expect everyone to get a different sensation upon viewing the piece? I guess in the end as long as it gives off a feeling of surrealism then it completes its objective.