The Surreal in the Real—Lecture Prospectus

Surrealism: Geology In—Geology Out THE SURREAL IN THE REAL

The Concrete Irrational from Painting to Photography in 91 Years

BY JOEL SIMPSON

The notion that “nature is the greatest artist” is a cliché that true artists—those who have spent long years perfecting their technique and developing their vision—know to be false. Even the most “photographic” realists—as well as photographers themselves—know that it takes work to make an image look “natural” while clearly expressing an idea. But the conundrum is the length of the time interval between the invention of a new artistic style and the discovery of natural formations that appear to embody that style. In the case of Aaron Siskind, his rock, rust, asphalt, and torn paper abstracts arrived but a few years following the breakout of Abstract Expressionism. In Surrealism’s case, however, the interval has been much longer, perhaps 90 years, from the late 1920s to the present.

This illustrated lecture aims to show just how much surreal content may be found in rock and ice formations—if one knows both how to look and how to make it stand out. At least two prominent Surrealist artists took their early inspiration from rock formations themselves—so a dialectical process may be at work here. But let us begin with pareidolia, conventionally defined as the phenomenon by which the popular imagination finds recognizable figures in rock formations.

Part I: Introduction: what is pareidolia? Pareidolia as intrinsic to folk cultures; Predecessors in geological photography: Abstract photographers of rocks: Aaron Siskind, Minor White, Frederick Sommer.

Part II: Predecessors in depth: Siskind’s flirtation with figuration, Salvador Dalí’s tribute to the geology that inspired him, Tanguy’s undisclosed use of geological models, and a striking geo formation that resembles Yves Tanguy’s last work.

Pink granites of Ploumenac’h, Brittany, where Tanguy spent childhood summers.

Photo by Joel Simpson

Aaron Siskind, from VOLCANO, 1980

Aaron Siskind, 1948

Surreal in the Real: The Concrete Irrational in Rocks & Ice

During Tanguy’s lifetime (1900–1955) it wasn’t known where he got the ideas for his subjects. Several decades after his death, the influence of the pink granites of Ploumenac’h (where he had spent childhood summers) was pretty well establshed.

Today, we can find other sites (that Tanguy could not have known), where the rock formations resonate with Tanguy’s imaginative creations. Here is Tanguy’s last major painting, La Multiplication des arcs (1954), and my drone still of Fantasy Canyon, near Vernal, Utah (2021). I added Tanguy’s sky.

Pink Granites of Ploumenac’h

Photo by Joel Simpson

Yves Tanguy: Imaaginary Numbers (1954)

Yves Tanguy: La Multiplication des arcs (1954)

Drone still of Fantasy Canyon, Utah by Joel Simpson

Dalí’s Geology: Cape Creus, Cadaqués, Catalonia, Spain

The rocky environment of Cape Creus provided Dalí with a lot more inspiration than the figures in those rocks named by the local fishermen. Listen to him recalling his early experience there: “...day after day, I projected all the accumulated and chronically unsatisfied tension of my erotic and sentimental life.” He described it in summary as “a mass of catastrophic petrified cumuli in ruins.”

The rocks of Cap de Creus imprinted Dalí’s childhood imagination in their hauntingly seductive chaos. Already the site of traditional pareidolia figures, the profuse lapidary contortions that abound throughout the park propel him to even more unhinged fantasies, permitting him to release his perverse imagination to ever more hallucinatory lengths. He retains those geological settings in many of his backgrounds

Tanguy, on the other hand, takes the rocks of Ploumenac’h and multiplies them, riffs on them, fuses them with forms from industrial technology, scrap metal, even laboratory glassware. His results evoke strange environments, devoid of the symbolism that fills Dalí’s work, realistic but disturbingly alien.

Dalí used one particular rock formation as the framing form for his 1929 painting, The Great Masturbator.

Rock formations from Cap Creus and nearby S’Alqueria petita by Joel Simpson

Rock at Cap Creus and iron plaque beneath it with outline of Dalí’s painting.

Salvador Dalí: The Great Masturbator (1929)

Summary of GEOLOGY AND SURREALISM—The Surreal in the Real: The Concrete Irrational in Rocks & Ice

A Bow to the Surrealist Photographers

Creative photographers during Surrealism’s heyday followed the inspiration of painters into the (chemical) darkroom, where they explored the possibilities of various darkroom techniques (e.g. superimposition, solarization, reversal) to create their own visions and fantasies. Thus, under Surrealism’s aegis, they liberated photography from the literal transcription of reality, while harnassing photography’s capacity for realistic detail. Their subjects tended to be the conventional ones of photography—bodies, faces, architecture—with the addition of technology, kitchen equipment, and dolls, among other things. The lasting contribution of the melding of photography and surrealism was to reframe photography as a tool of expression and exploration, beyond its then traditional role as a medium of documentation. Here are some examples of 60 to 95 years ago.

Man Ray (1890–1976) Violon d’Ingres (1924)

Man Ray, Spider Woman (1950)

Raoul Ubac (1910–1985) Le Combat des Pentésillées (1937)

Heinz Hajek-Halke (1898–1985) Gläsernes Monument (1955)

Sidebar: Aerial Photographers

Aerial photography in the hands of a master of compostion can produce compelling abstracts as well as suggested examples of figuration. It has been a convetion among them, however, not to name or otherwise draw attention to figures that their images suggest, but to leave them to the viewer’s imagination. The art of aerial photography goes back to the French hot-air balloonist, Nadar in 1858. In our day outstanding aerial photographic artists include William Garnett (1916–2006), Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky (b. 1955), Richard Mosse (b. Ireland, 1980), and Tom Hegen (b. Germany, 1991). I recently returned from Iceland where I discovered two Icelandic masters of aerial photographic composition and dynamic abstraction: Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson (b. 1947), and Ragnar Axelsson (b. 1958), who deserve to be better known in the US and around the world.

Edward Burtynsky: Salt Ponds (2019)

Ragnar Axelsson: Sprungur Glacier from Jökull (2018) Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson: Yfirsyn, cover (2011)

William Garnett: Aerial Photography, cover (1994)

Summary of GEOLOGY AND SURREALISM—The Surreal in the Real: The Concrete Irrational in Rocks & Ice

Salvador Dalí’s “Concrete Irrational”

Dalí realized that to achieve his vision in painting, he would have to develop a technique of nearly photographic accuracy in depicting his subjects. He studied the art of early 19th Century military “style pompier” painters, especially that of Ernest Meisonnier (1819–1891), along with Old Masters such as Vermeer, Dürer, and Breugel.

Perfecting that in his own painting eventually enabled him to depict his utterly novel and often shocking dreamlike visions, which he characterized as the “concrete irrational.” (Note the geological landscape elements in the paintings, below.)

I realized that “concrete irrational” literally characterizes the kind of figuration that I find in rocks and ice, especially since I have studied Dalí’s work and that of other Surrealists extensively. It is my personal version of pareidolia.

Ernest Meisonnier: Les Cuirassiers de la Garde à Friedland (1861–1875)

Salvador Dalí: The Persistance of Memory (1931)

Salvador Dalí: Premonition of the Civil War (1936)

My Concrete Irrational Pareidolia in Rocks and Ice

Unlike the classic Surrealist photographers, I create unaltered, unlayered photographs directly from nature, rather than using the medium’s technical prowess to express my fantasies. However, since I approach the natural world of rocks and ice imbued with 90 years of the Surrealist imaginary, I can discover the literally concrete irrational in the geological and glacial medium—creating my own personal pareidolia—fundamentally projections of my unconscious. (All photographs from here to the end are by Joel Simpson.)

1. Fanciful Mythological Creatures

Summary of GEOLOGY AND SURREALISM—The Surreal in the Real: The Concrete Irrational in Rocks & Ice

2. Ancient Ruins

3. Masks and Faces

3. Fictitious Fossils

Summary of GEOLOGY AND SURREALISM—The Surreal in the Real: The Concrete Irrational in Rocks & Ice

4. Grotesque Homunculi & Horror Figures

5. Heavenly Bodies

Summary of GEOLOGY AND SURREALISM—The Surreal in the Real: The Concrete Irrational in Rocks & Ice

6. Erotic References

Summary of GEOLOGY AND SURREALISM—The Surreal in the Real: The Concrete Irrational in Rocks & Ice

8. Imaginary Buildings and Monuments

9. Natural Sculptures

Summary of GEOLOGY AND SURREALISM—The Surreal in the Real: The Concrete Irrational in Rocks & Ice

10. Abstracts

11. References to Other Artists’ Styles

Jackson Pollock, Mural , 1943

Piet Mondrian, Abstract Painting (1939)

Max Ernst, After Us Motherhood, 1927

Joan Miró, Morning Star, 1940

Afterword

Now, as you wander along the beaches, cliffs, ice formations, rocks, and deserts, let your imagination acccompany your analytical mind. Make all corners of your visual memory accessible. Take photos and share your experiences, and let this enhance your pleasure. The environment should become more vivid and emotionally charged than before (as people tell me after looking at my photographs) as you season your awareness with a contemporary version of the experience of our pre-scientific ancestors.

—Joel Simpson

Works Consulted

Ice Cave, Vatnajökull Glacer, Iceland, March 2023

Anfam , David, Abstract Expressionism (London: Thames & Hudson, 1990)

Anfam, David, ed., Abstract Expressionism (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2017)

Axelsson, Ragnar, Jökull (Glacier), (Reykjavik: Pennin Eymundsson, 2018)

Bozo, Dominique, et al., Yves Tanguy Retrospective 1925-1955 (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1982)

Breton, André, Le Surréalisme et la peinture (Paris: Gallimard, 1965)

Burtynsky, Edward, African Studies (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2022)

Dalí, Salvador, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, trans. Haakon M. Chevalier (London: Vision Press, Ltd. 1942)

Dalí, Salvador, Oui (Paris: DeNoël, 1971)

Friedman, B. H., Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1995 (1972))

Garnett, William, Aerial Photography (Berkeley, CA: U. of California Press, 1994)

Gibson, Ian, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997)

Klein, Mason, Alias Man Ray, (New Haven: Yale UP, 1989)

Krauss, Rosalind & Jame Livingston, L’Amour fou: Photography & Surrealism, (New York: Abbeville Press, 1985)

Monahan, Thomas, Matta: On the Edge of a Dream (Milan, Italy: Skira, 2015)

Mora, Giles, Aaron Siskind: Another Photographic Reality (Austin: U. of Texas Press, 2014)

Raffles, Hugh, The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time (Portland, OR: Verse Chorus Press, 2020)

Duration of presentation: 60 or 90 minutes

Number of images: 132, of which 118 are original photographs by Joel Simpson

©2023 Joel Simpson jssphoto@verizon.net

www.joelsimpsonart.com

1-908-875-8741