Compare and Contrast Bethlehem Tesfaye Salvador Dalí - Autumnal Cannibalism - 1936
kikuji Yamashita – Deification of a soldier – 1967
The surrealist oil paintings of Yamashita and Dalí depict the destruction created through war in their respective decades. Created months after the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Dali’s 1936 Autumnal Cannibalism comments on the violence, alluded through the “mutually destructive embrace”1 of the ambiguous figures. Yamashita’s 1967 piece however, is responsive to the unnecessary horror of the Vietnam war and the destructive military relationship between Japan and America. As Deification of a Soldier was painted during Operation Rolling Thunder - an arial bombing campaign orchestrated by the U.S Government that killed around 180,000 people - Yamashita was witness to a traumatic time reflected in the chaotic nature of this image. Delving deeper, Yamashita’s own participation in killing a Chinese prisoner after being drafted into the Japanese Imperial military to fight in China in 1939, haunted him for the remainder of his life. Evident in the figures not being able to “look outward only inward, imprisoned by cursed memories” 2, Yamashita was eternally tormented by the atrocities of the war. The earlier work of Dalí, using soft muted tones that remain striking, depict two faceless figures cannibalising each other, surrounded by rotten food on a desk in a rural landscape set in Emporda, Catalonia, where Salvador Dalí was born. Yamashita’s tableaux, employing a grey palette, takes a “turn towards abstraction and psychological darker themes,”3 as started by the Tate. Unlike Dalí, Yamashita uses a bolder graphic style that evokes a more aggressive sense of chaos compared to Dalí’s soft and seamless portrayal of violence. Looking closely, Dalí’s rotting imagery symbolises death, linking to Yamashita’s use of ghoulish, skeletal faces. Both artists heavily embody a motif of death as a way of exploring the insidious nature of war. As a response to WW1, an exploration into the unconscious and dreams evoked the surrealist movement, which is defined as “beyond reality”4, was heavily influenced by the psychoanalytic work of Freud. Salvador Dalí was attracted to the surrealist works of Jean Arp and Max Ernst, influencing him to gravitate towards the movement that he soon became at the forefront of. Before being drafted, Yamashita studied the works of Ernst and Dalí which would then influence his own work. Dalí and Yamashita’s work both portray a dream like or a fantasy atmosphere whilst also depicting a haunting reality of war through their morbid imagery. Andre Breton defined surrealism as a “pure psychic automatism” in his Surrealist Manifesto that expressed it to be the “real functioning of thought”5. Here, it is clear that both Yamashita and Dalí both truly have a negative regard to war and therefore, create destructive images that comment on its horrific consequences.
1
Tate Museum, 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dali-autumnal-cannibalism-t01978 Linda Hoagland, Protest Art in 1950s Japan: The Forgotten Reportage Painters, 2014, https://apjjf.org/-LindaHoaglund/4203/article.pdf 3 Katy Wan, Tate Museum, 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/yamashita-deification-of-a-soldiert15021 4 Tate Museum, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/surrealism 5 Andre Breton, Surrealist Manifestos, 1924 2
Historical Narrative Papaver Orientale, Anna Atkins and Elektronischer Einstein, Herbert W Franke
Atkins and Franke both experimented with printing processes new to their respective times. However, with these artworks being created over 100 years apart, there is an obvious difference in the forms of printing as the artists were in different eras of technological advances. Atkins’ Papaver Orientale utilises the photographic printing process called cyanotype to record this specimen of plant. The process was invented in 1842 by John Herschel and it was only the following year where Atkins was the first person to be able to print British Algae Cyanotype Impressions Part 1, a photographical illustrated book and so, she was familiar with the method when this photograph was created. Mostly used by engineers for blueprints, the cyanotype method proved useful in documenting plant species for Atkins as she was a Botanist. Like Atkins, Franke used contemporary methods to produce his images. Franke’s Elektronischer Einstein is a lithograph but uses computer software which differs from the original physical technique invented in 1796. Picture processing programmes developed in the 1960s by institutions such as NASA; initially used for medical and scientific practices, due to computers becoming cheaper, systems for photographic processing where images could be manipulated became more accessible in the 1970s. Franke presents the photographs of Einstein as stills, producing manipulated slides that become more abstract, contrasting the more functional purpose of Atkins’ work.
Bibliography •
Breton, Andre, 1924, Surrealist Manifestos
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Hoagland, Linda, 2014, Protest Art in 1950s Japan: The Forgotten Reportage Painters https://apjjf.org/-Linda-Hoaglund/4203/article.pdf
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Meisler, Stanley, 2005, The Surrealist World of Salvador Dalí
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Tate Museum https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/surrealism https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dali-autumnal-cannibalism-t01978
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Wan, Katy, Tate Museum, 2017 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/yamashita-deification-of-a-soldier-t15021
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V&A Museum
Critical Reflection In Projects and Techniques I have had the opportunity to explore more methods of art and ways of construction that I was unfamiliar with or not as confident in and have also been able to practice through different mediums. Feedback in Projects has always helped me to ensure that I’m meeting the brief in all aspects of my work as well as having variety in what I produce. It has also highlighted to me areas that I prefer: being more controlled forms of drawing such as the typography project and areas that perhaps were weaker such as the observational drawing. I plan to focus on the specific observational skills learnt and practice them more to develop my abilities. CCS has been useful in encouraging me to be more proactive when learning of more artists and their work. I have also been able to spend time looking at a wider variety of art outside my specific interests which has begun to broaden my perspective and knowledge. My feedback in CCS has shown that in my writing I can easily make mistakes, simple errors that I need to be more aware of to not lower the quality of my work as the standard of writing is an area that I believe is a strength of mine. I therefore need to always look back on my work to make sure my writing is clear and grammatically correct. I have enjoyed the creativity formats has allowed me to have as the work in the A6 sketchbook was more personal. As well as this, the teamwork tasks was helpful in helping me to reflect in how I work in a group format and how I approach problem solving situations. Between these projects I have learnt to create a balance between approaching a task spontaneously and planning what to do. Whilst every scenario is different understanding what is required of me and applying my skills appropriately will help me complete the task more thoughtfully which is something I have been able to reflect on through my feedback.