Art Movements: Surrealism Part 1

I wanted to take a break from Romanticism studies and learn more about another movement influencing modern art. This study won’t look at work that is surrealist in intent, but work that has surrealist characteristics.
Special thanks to my friend, Aroonsri, for helping me with research for this larger study!

EXPECTATIONS

One element of surrealism is directly subverting expectations with the opposite of reason. Examples from Rene Magritte:

Modern examples of subverting reason:

Scale is also an element subverted in Surrealism. What’s big can be small and vice versa. More examples from Rene Magritte:

The Red Shoes and The Mikado also feature plays on scale with surrealist clouds.

PHYSICAL CONTRADICTION

The next concept will go over breaking the laws of dimensionality and reason. A characteristic of some surrealist work is creating art which cannot physically exist in our reality. Examples from Rene Magritte and M.C. Escher:

A modern example is the Dreamworks logo converts light into physical shape:

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water shows a room that is both deep and flat:

In Infinity War, Dr. Strange interacts with the background plane as if it were in the foreground:

It didn’t hit me until much later that the closest reference to the Infinity War scene in reality (FB and BG interaction) are leaning tower tourist photos, which itself is a surreal play on scale and depth planes: