“The object was a collage in three dimensions” Surrealist artists used materials that were not normally considered suitable for art, often in combination with conventional paints. They used debris and waste products of society, items from lost property departments and Flea Markets – box of glass eyes, a mouldering stuffed eagle gorging on its prey, a fibreglass leg and false teeth. Artists such as Man Ray e

Surrealism placed sexuality and desire at the centre of its concerns and symbolically placed ‘woman’ as the focus of its dreams. Suggestiveness was used frequently in the art works. For some Surrealists, “the woman took on an almost sexual, mystical power.” However, not all Surrealists had this point of view. The exploitation of the woman’s body is most evident in Dali’s The Venus de Milo of the Drawers. He devastates western culture by creating an object that is fraught with anxiety over entry into the body of a woman – Dali offers a series of drawers as access. This is to say that even the Venus de Milo is subject to such physical access.

 Hughes, Robert, The Shock of the New: Art of Century and Change, Balding and Mansell, 1980

Some topics in this essay:
Andre Breton, Functioning Symbolically, Breton Surrealists, Object Grill, Artists Ray, Independents’ Exhibition, Breakfast Oppenheim, Milo Drawers, Joseph Cornell, Robert Hughes, found object, politically socially philosophically, venus de milo, found objects, de milo, politically socially, socially philosophically, philosophically aesthetically, socially philosophically aesthetically, surrealist object, symbolically functioning object, thames hudson, oppenheim’s fur breakfast, catholic church, dreamt object,