Comparisons

• Magritte, The Assassin
• Kahlo, Roots

The two paintings stand at polar ends of the Surrealist label, showing that this movement could be stretched to include almost anything of which the artists approved. Magritte’s work is ambiguous and hostile; although it suggests a narrative, nothing is certain other than the fact of powerful suited males and a passive female victim. Kahlo, on the hand, powerfully asserts her feminine connection to nature and her native Mexico, clearly conveying her hope to replenish both her broken body and her culture through artistic association.

Key Topics

The attempts of artists worldwide to portray states and ideals that can have no physical form.

• Primeval forces: the perennial concern with the spirit world and relationship with the earth seen in the art of peoples such as Aborigines, Yoruba and Native American tribes.

• Dreams and desires: late-nineteenth-century artists began to explore, through expressionist art, the significance of dreams and the role of the subconscious in everyday life.

• Unreason and chance: Dada and Surrealist artists tapped forces beyond their conscious control.

• Reaction: these new tendencies in art were condemned as “degenerate” by Nazis, leading to the flight of the artists to America.

• Questions: World War II prompted an exploration of existentialism as artists approached the question of humanity’s place in the universe.

• The return of representation: Pop artists rejected the spiritual anxiety of abstract artists, embracing representation and the semi-ironic glorification of the consumer society.