Surrealism is an international art movement, which draws from the depths of the subconscious mind and explores the human psyche. Frenchman Andre Breton, who described Surrealism as ‘pure automatism by which it is intended to express the true function of thought’, championed surrealism in the late 1920s’. In this period of time, the world was inflicted with the two major wars, that filled humanity with horror and unimaginable terror. Some artists of this period were chosen illustrate these horrors by representing a psychedelic of images from the human mind or to seek an altered reality, which created the intellectual playground to these artists, as it aroused the philosophical argument of what is real and un-real. Surrealism …show more content…
In his long-lasting career that blossomed from the late 1930’s to the 1960’s, Gleeson wrote the first text in Australia that defined the meaning of Surrealism, and was known as Australia’s leading Surrealist artist.. While working within a subjective context, influenced by Salvador Dali, Gleeson’s overriding concept behind his work is that ‘humanity is driven by the subconscious mind’. Gleeson preferred to work in artificial light and avoided working in sunlight so that he was to paint his dreams and surreal landscapes in a more imaginative way. While the application of painting oil on canvas with luxurious textures of paint with a mixture of translucent glazes and rich encrustations, attracts his viewers, Gleeson’s works inspires the imagination of the viewer. In relevance to the quote ‘the reintroduction of a subject in a particular sense’ Gleeson’s works encourage his viewers to look through and beyond Surrealist’s artists concept of what is reality, and not only, the imagination of the subconscious …show more content…
The imagery of this painting is abstractly beautiful yet horrific, denoting a feeling of uncertainty for the viewers, and promotes a dialogue with the unimaginable. He achieves this through the use of variance in contrasting colours of earthy tones. The deep space of softened green clouds hovering over the horizon juxtaposed with the swarming mass of rocks and monsters, of diluted earthy reds and browns, allowing his audiences eyes to drift throughout the painting into the imagination of the viewer. He has used a rhythmic texture in the piece; helping to heighten and guide the surrealistic feeling of a dreamlike scenario. Instead of engaging his viewers to look at or in the painting, he creates a strange and illogical scenario to reawaken his audience to look through his altered