Surrealism in Geology—The Surreal in the Real: The Concrete Irrational in Rocks & Ice

Surrealism in Geology THE SURREAL IN THE REAL

The Concrete Irrational in Rocks & Ice

BY JOEL SIMPSON

A lecture-slide-show that can take 60 or 90 minutes. Text summary plus selection of slides

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.

by Joel Simpson

Photo

Yves Tanguy: Hands and Gloves (1946)

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

During Tanguy’s lifetime (1900–1950) 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 spent childhood summers) was pretty well establshed.

Yves Tanguy: La Multiplication des arcs (1954)

Drone still of Fantasy Canyon, Utah by Joel Simpson

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

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

The rocky environment of Cape Creus provided Dalí with a lot more inspiration than that coming from the figures named by the local fishermen. In fact he recalled 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.”

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

Could there be any more convincing evidence of the profound relationship between rock formations and Surrealism? between geology and the human imagination, even the unconscious?

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

Abstraction to Figuration: Aerial Photographers

Aerial photography goes back to the French photographer, 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. The work of these photographers consists primarily of provocative abstracts, however, many of their images have suggestive figurative content as well, though they tend not to draw attention to it.

Edward Burtynsky: Salt Ponds (2019)

Ragnar Axelsson: Sprungur Glacier from Jökull (2018)

Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson: Yfirsyn, cover (2011)

William Garnett: Aerial Photography, cover (1994)

The Role of Visionary Nature Photographers to Mediate Between the Earth and Humanity

In his preface to Sigurjónsson’s magnificent book Yfirsyn, Icelandic novelist and critic Guðmundur Andri Thorsson (b. 1957) is so moved by the exquisite compositional sensibility and stark originality of Sigurjónsson in his medium of aerial photography that he writes te following:

“Man doesn’t have the imagination to think of shapes that don’t exist in nature.

“Yet while nature possesses all conceivable shapes and colours within itself and while man cannot imagine more than a fraction of all the colours and shapes and combinations which exist in the universal space, man’s perception of nature comes from within. the shapes seem to have parallels in man’s inner life…

“It is the role of visionaries, such as photographers and other artists working directly in the visual media, to open our eyes to a new way of seeing familiar phenomena: the ocean is not just sea, water is not only wet, the sky not only blue, a mountain not simply a variation on a vertical curve but a world of infinity.”

Rivers near Skaftafell, Iceland, at 1000 feet, by Joel Simpson

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 painters, especially that of Ernest Meisonnier (1819–1891), who was very popular during his lifetime, but less respected after that. However, Dalí looked to him and his “style pompier” as a model of painterly accuracy—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

Due to the influence of Surrealism, my renditions of pareidolia are more fanciful than traditional versions, extending into suggested figurations that evoke humor, fear, eroticism, popular culture, and scientific images. Here is a selection of them that fall into a number of different categories. I’ll tell you where they’re from and answer any questions during the lecture. (All photographs from her to the end are by Joel Simpson.)w

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

5. Heavenly Bodies

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

6. Erotic References

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 Art Works & Artists’ Styles

Thank you.

Questions and discussion.

Jackson Pollock, Mural , 1943

(Piet Mondrian)

(Max Ernst)

(Joan Miró, et al.)

Afterword

Now, when we wander along the beaches, ice floes, glaciers, and rocks, let your imagination expland in the company of your analytical mind. Make all corners of your visual memory accessible. Let them dialogue with each other. Take photos and share your experiences, and let this enhance your pleasure—as well as your connection to your surroundings and to each other. You may see more in the environment than you have ever seen before, as many people have told me after looking at my photographs.

—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)

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)

Sawin, Martica, Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997)

Sigurjónsson, Sigurgeir, Yfirsyn-Ísland (Reykjavik: Forlagið, 2011)

Duration of presentation: 60 or 90 minutes

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

1-908-875-8741