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.

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?

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.