Knowledge – part 3

Intuited Knowledge through

Surreal Art and Abstract Expressionism

Intuited knowledge is the internal realm of the mind and the metaphysical world.

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy based on first principles,

underlying a particular study of inquiry which includes

ontology, cosmology and intimately connected with epistemology.

Ontology studies the nature of existence or of being.

Cosmology deals with the origin and general structure of the universe,

space and time.

Epistemology investigates the origin, nature, methods and limits

of human knowledge.

Salvador Dalí

Swans Reflecting Elephants 1937

Surreal Art explored the unconscious, especially through dream imagery.

Sigmund Freud was an influential source through his writings of psychoanalysis and the

understanding of dreams, the conscious and the unconscious; the ego, super ego & the id.

Surreal Art

Salvador Dalí

Surrealism

Raphaelesque Head Exploding

1951 The Embarkation 1942-43

Philippe Halsman

Dalí Atomicus Film still 1948

Dalí experienced with Philippe Halsman, Luis Buñuel, Walt Disney and others film makers.

On Utube – view a 6-minute late 1940s collaboration between Dalí and Disney titled Destino

Salvador Dalí

Fifty Abstract

Paintings

Which as

Seen from

Two Yards

Change into

Three Lenins

Masquerading

as Chinese

and as Seen

from Six

Yards Appear

as the Head

of a Royal

Bengal Tiger

1963

Surrealist, René Magritte aimed to change

your habitual way of thinking about

imagery and words.

The Treachery of Images

1928

Attempting the Impossible 1928

René Magritte

The False Mirror 1929 William Golden

CBS Television logo 1952

Many artists and graphic designers have appropriated Magritte

and the idea of the all seeing eye, be it conscious or unconscious.

René Magritte

The Human Condition 1948

Influenced by Sigmund Freud, Magritte aimed to explain the meaning of Plato’s Cave.

Son of Man 1964

The Listening Room 1952

René Magritte

What do your think these apple

representations mean? Look at the title too.

Jackson Pollock

Blue Poles 1952

Abstract Expressionists practiced Existentialism, a new philosophy which stressed

absolute freedom of choice in art and in life as a human commitment. It could be a

way to gain self-knowledge through the process of making art.

Lee Krasner

Right Bird Left

1965

Helen Frankthaler

Nature Abhors a Vacuum

1973

Abstract

Expressionism

Abstract Expressionism was a way to lose yourself in

the process of “action painting” as a technique.

This style became known as Color-Field Paintings.

Creating fields of color to be

tranquil or contemplative.

Allow the color to envelope you.

Robert Motherwell

The Blueness of Blue 1974

Mark Rothko

Blue Orange Red 1961

The Critique of Learning

A few artists may look critically at human knowledge.

As humans, we aim to accumulate and struggle to acquire and preserve

human knowledge, yet books and their contents can disintegrate.

All human endeavor is cyclical like nature;

it is subject to periods of decline and entropy

that eventually lead to regeneration.

Knowledge is a critical basis for an understanding

politics and social constructs.

Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something,

which can include facts, information, descriptions or skills

acquired through experience or education.

Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes:

perception, communication, association and reasoning;

while knowledge is also said to be related to

the capacity of acknowledgment in human beings.

José Clemente Orozco / Social Realism

Anglo-America & Hispano-America

Panels 15 & 16 – An Epic of American Civilization, Dartmouth College

1932 -1934 fresco 126” x 176”

José Clemente Orozco / Social Realism

Gods of the Modern World

Panel 17 - An Epic of American Civilization, Dartmouth College

Orozco warns against the academic who is completely occupied with sterile research or learning

that has no value outside of academia. Sterile education passing for knowledge, but actually

keeping the young busy without giving them any real wisdom or understanding.

Anselm Kiefer

Breaking of the Vessels

1990 17’h

Lead, iron, glass, copper wire,

charcoal and aquatec

Old books are not always storehouses of knowledge.

They may make knowledge inaccessible or books

may rot and fall apart.

The title symbolized the introduction

of evil into the world.

It also refers to the atrocities of

Kristallnacht (the Night of Crystal or Broken Glass),

when the Nazis vandalized and terrorized

Jewish neighborhoods in Germany and Austria

in November 1938.

Enrique Chagoya

Against the Common Good II

1983

A smirking President Reagan, as King Ferdinand VII, in an appropriated Francisco de Goya print.

He is equipped with bat wings and reads the new constitution which was considered

a dangerous canker on the politics of Europe, not dissimilar to Reagan’s effect on American policy.

Enrique Chagoya integrates diverse elements from pre-Columbian mythology, Western religious iconography,

ethnic stereotypes, ideological propaganda from various times and places, American popular culture, etc.

The art becomes a product of collisions between historical visions, ancient and modern, marginal and dominant

paradigms; a thesis and an anti-thesis that end in a synthesis in the mind of the viewer.

Enrique Chagoya

Illegal Alien's Guide to Critical Theory 2007

Chagoya’s latest works have been a series of paintings exploring issues of illegal immigration,

racial stereotypes and xenophobia (the fear of strangers or foreign people) in a post 9/11world.

Sandra Wascher

Memes 2011

Inkjet on archival paper

61” w x 14” l

Memes are like genes. Genes are duplicated through our DNA.

Memes are transferred through culture by behaviors, beliefs and ideas.

The term was coined in 1978 by Richard Dawkins in the Selfish Gene.

Each letter here represents one category – cultural, religion, political, media & scientific.

Sandra Wascher

Semantic Loops

2010 Inkjet on paper

Media Loop

↓Propaganda – Reification –

False Consciousness – Power

↑Facts – Truth - Self-Empowerment

Political Loop

↓Fear – Confusion –

Aggression – Cognitive Dissonance

↑Liberty – Truth - Self-Determination

Religious Loop

↓Guilt – Faith – Immortality – Ignorance

↑Rationality – Truth - Self-Realization

Which loop are you on?

The exterior loop (moving downward) or the interior

one (moving upward)? See arrows on each loop.