Surrealism Lesson 2

Adam McLean

Adam McLean’s Study Course on Surrealism
Lesson Two – The formative years of Surrealism in the 1920s
A series of 15 to 20 minute lectures exploring different aspects of the Surrealist art style.

For many years I have been attracted to surrealist painting. A few weeks ago the idea came to me that I should create a study course on the subject. I have over the years read such nonsense written about surrealism. My own approach to this art style is to see it in much the same way as I view emblematic art – I look for the common elements and the evolution and passing on of symbols and pictorial structures.
Surrealism, under different names, continues today and one clearly sees artists quoting from one anothers works. Thus we need not seek meaning in a surrealist painting but instead ask how it is structured and from what pre-existing pictorial elements it is derived.
This approach will be the core of my course, which I expect to run to about 25 lessons, similar to my courses on Alchemical Symbolism and the Artwork of Modern Tarot. These will be audio visual presentations using the same methodology as my Exploring Alchemical Emblems and course on Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, that is a spoken commentary with images.
I am sure that few people will understand or respect my approach. Most people like to speculate in a meaningless, subjective and opinionated way about modern art, and they won’t be entirely comfortable with my more objective, scholarly, and rather detached view. They will not see the point of looking at art in the way I do.

Lesson One – Introduction
Lesson Two – The formative years of Surrealism in the 1920s
Lesson Three – The evolution of Surrealism through the 1930s
Lesson Four – Lesser known early Surrealists
Lesson Five – The Early British Surrealists
Lesson Six – The Early American Surrealists
Lesson Seven – The Scandanavian Surrealists
Lesson Eight – The Czech Surrealists
Lesson Nine – The Exile of Surrealists to America
Lesson Ten – The Exiles in Mexico
Lesson Eleven – Verism, Biomorphism and Abstract Expressionism
Lesson Twelve – Some other early surrealists
Lesson Thirteen – The Temptation of St Anthony competition
Lesson Fourteen – The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism
Lesson Fifteen – The second wave of Fantastic Realists
Lesson Sixteen – The Meta-Realists

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