"In Santiago Ribeiro´s paintings we are surprised to meet a "wondrous (new) world" - or perhaps not - wich he recreates, using his small figures (male and female) in a constant, restless search, where colour balance is the key.
When looking at his paintings, one feels puzzled struck by mixed feelings of duality."
text - Isabel Garcia
translation - Lídia Mendes
Art has an important role in the development of relationships among men!
Santiago Ribeiro
e-mail: santiagoribeiropainting@gmail.com
Surrealism
Surrealism is a philosophy, a cultural and artistic movement, and a term used to describe unexpected juxtapositions.
Philosophy. The philosophy of Surrealism aims for liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative faculties of the "unconscious mind", thus bringing about personal, cultural, political and social revolution. At various times surrealist groups aligned with communism and anarchism to advance radical political, as well as social and artistic, change.
Cultural and artistic movement. The Surrealism movement originated in post-World War I European avant-garde literary and art circles, and many early Surrealists were associated with the earlier Dada movement. Movement participants sought to revolutionize life with actions intended to bring about change in accordance with Surrealism philosophy. While the movement's most important center was Paris, it spread throughout Europe and to North America during the course of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Some historians mark the end of the movement at World War II, some with the death of André Breton, while others believe that Surrealism continues as an identifiable movement.
Unexpected juxtapostion. The word "surreal" is often used to describe unexpected juxtapositions or use of non-sequiturs in art or dialog, particuarly where such juxtapositions argue for their own self-consistency. This usage is often independent of any direct connection to Surrealism the movement, and is used in both formal and informal contexts.
The term Surrealism was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire to in the program notes describing Parade (1917), a collaboration of Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso and Léonide Massine:
From this new alliance, for until now stage sets and costumes on one side and choreography on the other had only a sham bond between them, there has come about, in 'Parade', a kind of super-realism ('sur-réalisme'), in which I see the starting point of a series of manifestations of this new spirit ('esprit nouveau').'
Impact of Surrealism
While Surrealism is typically associated with the arts, it has been said to transcend them; Surrealism has had an impact in many other fields. In this sense, Surrealism does not specifically refer only to self-identified "Surrealists", or those sanctioned by Breton, rather, it refers to a range of creative acts of revolt and efforts to liberate imagination.
In addition to Surrealist ideas that are grounded in the ideas of Hegel, Marx and Freud, Surrealism is seen by its advocates as being inherently dynamic and is dialectic in its thought. Surrealists have also drawn on sources as seemingly diverse as Clark Ashton Smith, Montague Summers, Fantomas, Bugs Bunny, comic strips, the obscure poet Samuel Greenberg and the hobo writer and humourist T-Bone Slim. One might say that Surrealist strands may be found in movements such as Free Jazz (Don Cherry, Sun Ra, etc.) and even in the daily lives of people in confrontation with limiting social conditions. Thought of as the effort of humanity to liberate imagination as an act of insurrection against society, Surrealism dates back to, or finds precedents in, the alchemists, possibly Dante, various heretical groups, Hieronymus Bosch, Marquis de Sade, Charles Fourier, Comte de Lautreamont and Arthur Rimbaud. Surrealists believe that non-Western cultures also provide a continued source of inspiration for Surrealist activity because some may strike up a better balance between instrumental reason and the imagination in flight than Western culture.
Some artists, such as H.R. Giger in Europe, who won an Academy Award for his stage set, and who also designed the "creature," in the movie Alien, have been popularly called "Surrealists," though Giger is a visionary artist and it is speculated the he doesn't claim to be Surrealist.
The Society for the Art of Imagination has come in for particularly bitter criticism from a self-characterised Surrealist movement (although this criticism has been characterized by at least one anonymous individual as coming from "the Marxists [sic] Surrealist groups, who maintain small contingents worldwide;" he has also pointed out what he considers the hypocrisy of any Surrealist criticism of the Society for the Art of Imagination given that Kathleen Fox designed the cover of issue 4 of the bulletin of the Groupe de Paris du Mouvement Surrealiste and also participated in the 2003 Brave Destiny[2] show at the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center. Though some presented Brave Destiny as the largest-ever exhibit of Surrealist artists, the show was officially billed as exhibiting "Surrealism, Surreal/Conceptual, Visionary, Fantastic, Symbolism, Magic Realism, the Vienna School, Neuve Invention, Outsider, Naïve, the Macabre, Grotesque and Singulier Art.)"