So what is Surrealism and what is Expressionism in art? Surrealism was defined by André Bretonin the Surrealist manifesto of 1924 as “Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.” Surrealism focuses thus on an intuitive processes of creation not meant to be an accurate depiction of the world and is not concerned with what is regarded as beautiful but is centred around the functioning of thought. Surrealism often relies on alternative realities and dreams, and the psychoanalytic. Expressionism can be explained as follows, “Expressionist artists tried to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality. The artists manipulated their subjects’ appearance to express what cannot be easily seen.” Here I look at three South African femme artists who might fall into these classifications. I discuss why they might fall into these classifications, as well as whether these classifications are still of relevance today.
Marlene Steyn is a Capetonian artist who obtained her Master of Fine Art degree in 2014 in London from the Royal College of Art. Her immersive installation focused work creates an experience nurturing an eagerness for her constructed surreal worlds. Her idiosyncratic motifs morph through unnerving established notions surrounding themes such as historical art narratives, psychoanalytic theory and popular tokens from modern culture. With repetition and irregular combinations, Marlene creates eerie themes surrounding her work. Her symbolic visual language consisting of fried eggs, braided ropes of hair and the androgynous figure, molds into one as the key element of her practice.
Marlene has a peculiar ability to make violence playful in her work. When looking purely at the visual aspects of her art it can be described as disjointed body parts, animated features separated from faces, frying pans, fragments and distortions. The human body is depicted in her work as vulnerable, nude and disfigured with a strange beauty. This body represented in her surreal world seems to be provoked by various objects and sinister beasts. At the same time the work evokes a sense of happiness.
Some examples of pieces that display these mutilated bodies is ‘Ponytails Continued’ – a set of legs without a torso and a floating head with no neck as well as ‘In My other half’s other half’ – a single large blue eye skewered through a large sculpture peering up at the eyebrow above.
Marlene’s work can be considered to be surrealist in nature as she works with symbolism, a dreamlike, constructed reality and is concerned with psychoanalytic theory.
The next femme artist that falls into my list is Tash Brown. Tash is a Johannesburg-based painter who is currently completing her studies at WITS. I had an interview with her to see where she fits into the framework.
Tash expresses that her work can be regarded as surreal but that it is her reality. She prefers not to have her work tied down to a specific classification. Her preference is to let other people interpret her paintings, “A classmate once looked at a piece of mine and said it felt like a man had just killed someone but that was okay because his mom made him feel like it wasn’t his fault. I find that statement far richer than I could ever find my paintings.”
Tash has been known to venture from the traditional canvas to Perspex. Her colour pallet consists of pastels with exaggerated use of yellow and pink, “it is easy to turn them from something little-girl-pretty into vomit and vagina skin.”
As subject matter these grotesque haunting figures represent the artists, her lover, her family, her celebrity crushes and her dog. It is both strange and interesting that Tash would consciously choose to portray her loved ones (except for the dog, he always looks good) with such harshness. Tash’s surreal world is frightening, I dare say, but at the same time it depends on how you look at it. Tash doesn’t care if you believe that her work is self-indulgent trash. She doesn’t make work as a social commentary and in fact seems to just make art for herself instead of having some deeper meaning in mind.
Tash explains that the titles of her works come to her in the sense of automatic writing, when she finishes a painting she writes down whatever comes to mind. “I want the titles to be as vague as the works.”
When asked about the voyeuristic tone of her work Tash expresses that she couldn’t help but add a bizarre sexual undertone to her paintings. She believes that it explains why her work has a tendency to make people feel uncomfortable, yet fascinated. “I like to change a boy into a girl and cut off their lips and put it on a spoon and make the spoon have sex with a sardine and then force people to face it like maybe that is a spoon having sex with sardine, but maybe I like it.”
Her favourite work, ‘Everything you’re not supposed to be’, belongs to a larger series that was derived from screenshots of films she admires. “On the day it was painted I had just finished watching Tom at the Farm, a strange French sexual thriller. This painting is Tom and it’s also me watching Tom.”
Despite the fact that Tash doesn’t like to classify her work it is evident that it has surreal as well as expressionist tendencies. Surrealism can be seen as she creates an alternative warped reality with haunting figures and her work flows rather automatically. As was often associated with the Surrealist movement, Tash explains her work in a peculiar nonsensical manner, yet another characteristic. Her work leans to expressionism as she is clearly depicting a certain emotional and psychological state within her works.
Our last femme under the magnifying glass is Johannesburg artist Yolanda Mazwana, whose paintings depict the everyday, human elements in her life. Yolanda has confirmed that neo-expressionism is an influence for her raw, enthralling portraits.
Yolanda’s work is centered around mental illness, popular culture, phobias, relationships and storytelling. The figures in her work are sometimes disjointed as you can see a bodiless head floating in one of her paintings. It is clear to me that Yolanda has an interest in capturing the emotional states of her subjects in her work and that her work is not an accurate depiction of reality. Instead, appearances have been altered to show what cannot be seen with the naked eye.
Marlene, Tash and Yolanda’s work all share the common trait of either broken up human bodies or strange hybrid human forms. Marlene and Tash’s work are centered around an alternate reality. Marlene’s work is the closest to surrealism to me as she often makes use of symbolism in her work. All three these artists share very similar colour pallets in their work and are not interested in giving an accurate depiction of the world. Tash and Yolanda are both interested in the psychological states of their subjects. Tash’s work could be considered to fall in between both surrealism and expressionism, while Yolanda’s work is much more expressionist. Are these classifications important however? Perhaps. Perhaps not. As both Surrealism and Expressionism are definitely not practiced as it was intended with their formations. People sometimes refer to neo-surrealism and neo-expressionism now. I do however feel like we are living in a time where artists no longer feel a need to be bound to a specific classification and choose to work more freely.
