Ida Shik Leonardo da Vinci’s “Old Paranoid Wall” in Surrealist Photography

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://dx.doi.org/10.18688/aa166-8-66
Title Leonardo da Vinci’s “Old Paranoid Wall” in Surrealist Photography
Author email ida.shik@bk.ru
About author Shik, Ida Aleksandrovna — specialist at Registry Department. The State Hermitage Museum, Dvortsovaia nab., 34, 190000 St. Petersburg, Russian Federation.
In the section World Art of the 20th Century and Contemporary Art DOI10.18688/aa166-8-66
Year 2016 Volume 6 Pages 614–623
Type of article RAR Index UDK 7.037.5;77.04 Index BBK 85.16
Abstract

The article analyzes the key strategies of Leonardo da Vinci’s “old paranoid wall” representation in Surrealist photography and reveals their connections with the conceptual program of the Surrealist movement. The author marks tree main approaches to that problem in surrealist photography:

1) extracting from the reality complete pictures/easy-interpreted forms showing how a wall texture participates in creation of the image;

2) representation of the surface with the rich texture and chance images as an aesthetically- valuable object, close to abstraction;

3) using the picturesque texture as a work element acquiring historical and cultural references.

The author considers that working with the “old paranoid wall” motif the Surrealist photographers can find answers in the external world to the inner requests and explore the process of artistic creation and the role the chance plays in it as well. The author concludes that photographs representing the “old paranoid wall” motif actualize such key Surrealist conceptions as the marvelous, automatism, found object, paranoiac-critical method, principle of visual analogy. The author summarizes that the application of “Leonardo’s lessons” allows surrealist photographers to show that surreality is the immediate part of reality, which is yet to be uncovered and understood.
Keywords
Reference Ida Shik. Leonardo da Vinci’s “Old Paranoid Wall” in Surrealist Photography. Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles. Vol. 6. Eds: Anna V. Zakharova, Svetlana V. Maltseva, Ekaterina Yu. Stanyukovich-Denisova. St. Petersburg, NP-Print Publ., 2016, pp. 614–623. ISSN 2312-2129. http://dx.doi.org/10.18688/aa166-8-66
Publication Article language russian
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