Like, totally surreal man.

A line that sticks with me from  the surreal manifesto is the following:

“Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.”

It’s an interesting idea.  Breton mentions “The Monk”, and one can see how it applies without too much stretching of the imagination.  The Monk is a classic work of gothic fiction, but incredibly fanciful, yet grim.  It does, however, adhere to that all-powerful ideal of the sublime, and I think surrealism is likely the nature extension of that.

I could hear echoes of that in the surrealist show tonight.  The overload of images, they very WEIRDNESS of the exhibits, reached for an overwhelming sensory experience.  I especially liked the exhibit (forgive me, I forget its title and its author) that placed by the door, showing images on a computer screen with heavy breathing over the headphones.  Don’t ask me why, I’m really not sure. But you could feel what it was reaching for – surrealism can be incredibly effective at placing the viewer in a more visceral moment.

 Thinking again about what I was speaking to in my earlier post -  I wonder how many of the exhibits tonight emphasized an ‘individual’ experience over a ‘community’ experience.  I hate to disprove myself, but I think there was a fine balance.  Pieces like the “Collections” (random items pinned to the wall), I think, speak to a ritualistic, highly personal pursuit.  Others, like the servers in costume, depended on a person-to-person interaction.  probably a subject best reserved for class discussion next week.

 Overall, enjoyable night for sure.

Gogol Dancing

I’ll be the first to admit that I grappled with the Gogol readings.  They were the first, in my mind, to broach that surrealist border that we encountered tonight (at the Surrealist art show, which was really enjoyable.  Loved the George Bush paintings!).

I guess I say they were surreal because of those “magical realism” elements to the stories – that acceptable, commonplace freakyness that few seem to question (ghosts wandering the streets? noses traipsing around the city like Ferris Bueller on his day off?).  I have to wonder what prompts this adventures into surrealist territory.  I say that the stories were reminiscent of magical realism, and they were – probably for that reason.  I remember from one of my all-time favourite novels, 100 Years of Solitude, that the characters in that novel are, as the title implies, lonely.  Why is surrealism ultimately concerned with aloneness?  I think it must have something to do with the subjectivity of the work, but it still seems odd to me that while surrealism is so concerned with responding to COMMUNITY that it also emphasizes singular characters.  I’ll respond further to this in my surrealism post, I guess.

But Gogol.  Excellent stuff.  I think the method of narration threw me a bit, the shift that takes place at the end of The Nose.  I didn’t find myself responding to the main characters, however, unlike Jason said he did in his post.  Maybe it was because they so willingly isolated themselves?  I don’t know, I just find modernism fascinating in how it can play lonliness and community off of each other, and expose thier myriad faults.