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 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.

Yves Tanguy: Hands and Gloves (1946)