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SURREALISM; UNDERSTANDING THE UN-UNDERSTANDABLE. « JAYJAYNE.COM. So I finally got myself together and headed out to our lovely Gallery of Modern Art to finally check out the famed Surrealism: Poetry of Dreams display that was trouncing past my sub-conscious for the past few weeks. I’ve been desperately wanting to check it out for a while now, and I finally snagged the chance last Wednesday. I assumed that you had to be in the right state of mind to go to one of these exhibitions – and it was best to go by yourself if you really wanted to take your time – and I was right. Firstly, I realised that I never really understood Surrealism and quite frankly, I still don’t particularly understand it. From what I’ve read, heard and fervently Wikipedia’d, Surrealism was formed in the spirit of revolt that characterised the European avant-garde inthe 1920s.

So, wandering about the gallery display, with a brochure in one hand and clicky-inky pen in the other, I scrawled notes frantically. Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Once again, with feeling: Like this: This Week at Eyebeam | eyebeam.org. Openframeworks @ eyebeam. OpenFrameworks. Far Out: The Most Psychedelic Images in Science | Senses. My Design Process: Everything You Need to Know. A recent How Magazine article dealing with the creative process led me to think about my own process.

From what I can remember, I never went about trying to create a creative process for myself. I simply tried various techniques over the years and have come back to the ones that have consistently worked for me. For the most part, I start every creative project with words. To me, in the end, you are trying to put certain words and concepts into the mind of the person viewing a particular design solution. After listing out the primary words based on discussions with the client, I begin to work on alternative words by using the Thesaurus. As I get more visual that usually involves a bunch of thumbnails with rough ideas and lots of notes, arrows and asterisks. When it comes to writing headlines or ad copy that flow out of the process I tend to work from two directions.

The final step is to articulate and explain the idea as it relates to the original design problem. Stanley Spencer, English artist, by Kenneth Pople. Unravelling the Art of Stanley Spencer Analytic attention to process is the British genius. Hugh Kenner, A Sinking Island. Stanley's creative impulse For most artists the creative impulse remains indefinable and the mental processes by which it becomes a picture mysterious. In the evolution of a painting the whirl of ideas surfacing from an artist's subconscious becomes integrated into an entity (defined here as a percept, concept, idea or emotion to which the thinker mentally imparts form) which is almost inexpressible in words, so much so that some artists - Bonnard or Klimt, for example - refused to divulge the inner life which prompted their art.

The resulting entities, made visual as pictures, may appear to viewers intriguing, even inspirational, inviting a wish to share the artist's thinking behind his painting. But to love fully is to understand fully, 'understanding' in this sense having no need of explanation. And what concept-systems they were when rendered in paint!