Free Essay Example on Slowly Towards the North

The piece of art Slowly Towards the North is a 1942 painting that was owned by more than two people. One of the owners has the painter himself then how lived with the painting for a year then afterward purchased by Pierre Matisse Gallery located in New York the following year. The painting was later transferred to the Museum of Modern Art, located in New York after a successful purchase transaction from the Pierre Matisse Gallery (Lorente, 2016). The successful purchase by the Modern Art was made successful through the Phillip Johnson fund set up in the same year. Currently, the art is managed by the Provenance Research Project, which is under the organization of the Museum of Modern Art.

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Biography

Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy was born on the 5th of January 1900 to a housewife mother and a retired navy captain who worked for the Ministry of Naval Affairs on Place de la Concorde in Paris, France is born location (Pierre 2011). And after living together with his parents for eight years, his father died, forcing her mother to go back to her native home Locronan, Finistere. He spent his entire childhood with his relatives at their native home. After turning 18 years, he joined and served the French army for four years the quit and started doing odd jobs in the French capital (Pierre 2011). One time when working on these various odd jobs, he stumbled upon a Giorgio de Chirico painting, which made him develop painting interest. This painting impressed him so much he decided to become a painter despite lacking a painting formal training. Tanguy became deeply absorbed in learning to paint while creating different varieties of artwork in his small art studio, which was only capable of carrying one piece of art. His army friend Prevert introduced him to another artist Andre Breton in the circle of surrealist; hence he quickly developed his art style, and therefore his came up with his exhibition a year later. He also provided eight paintings of Breton instead of the requested 12 units (Pierre 2011). His art was destroyed in 1930 when it was being screened in the cinema lobby of Bunuel and Dali's L'Age d'Or (Pierre 2011). In his second marriage, Tanguy went to America and got married to his wife, Kay Sage, who was a painter, and they continued painting together until his death in 1955.

Techniques and media

When drawing the painting Slowly Towards the North, Tanguy employed surrealism to give out the unnerving, illogical scenes while bringing fantastical features with high precision with strange things out of the normal. By using a real and non-fictional feature, the painter employed non-fictional techniques to portray conscience illusions. Through all these mediums, the artist gives out solutions to all the contradicting conditions by incorporating them into real things hence creating an absolute reality or surreality (Spiteri, 2019). Similarly, Tanguy manages to express his illusions by using real objects in oil on canvas medium, therefore, creating an impeccable artistic impression by clearly bringing out the fantastical dream by giving it a touch of the world. And their some unique features are shown in surrealism, which includes unexpected juxtaposition incorporated with surprise elements and non sequitur features (Spiteri, 2019). Most of the artists that involve in surrealism use philosophical aspects to express themselves as a movement seeking to make an impact on the world.

Style or Movements associated with the artwork.

Andre Breton was a famous artist who was known to be a leader of the surrealist art style and movement. He influenced Tanguy in his artistic work by instilling some aspect of surrealism style in his work. The surrealism art style is considered a visual and writing since it employes unnerving and illogical scene through a photographic precision from the mind into a paper or cloth by using created strange creature which is relatable to everyday objects. The surrealism art style becomes useful when painting techniques come out naturally in an unconscious way when artists are expressing themselves (Sylvester, 2015). Some of the implication arising from most of the surrealism culture movement comes as a result of expressing their philosophical ideologies through the artefacts which demonstrate unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur. The main aim of developing artifacts using the surrealism style is to create an assertion of a revolutionary movement by affecting visual art, music composition, and films and literature (Elder, 2015). It has a universal language that affects politics significantly through the practice of social theory and the implementation of philosophical cues.

Surrealism is considered a political force of a movement that puts more emphasis on artistic practices, which can be found unevenly across the world and in the political world. Since the surrealism style finds its influences and relations from amalgamating real-world objects to ideas in artists minds, it spark people politically to consider changing their political ideologies based on real-world to create a world fit of them hence making the movement to be considered an anarchist, Trotskyist or communist based on people's interpretation of the campaign with their ideologies (Lorente, 2016). The surrealism movement has helped in the formation of new creative acts that forms a particular type of revolt, which corresponds to the efforts of making more artists liberal in their imaginative creations. Additionally, the movement advocates for people to become grounded with ideologies that match the original dynamic dialectical thoughts resulting in a variety of art forms. Similarly, the movement helped the educated people in a society mostly considered surrealist to have a better understanding when seeking to balance imagination flight and instrumental reasoning (Sylvester, 2015). Finally, the surrealism movement has some elements of radical and revolutionary politics by helping people align themselves into radical groups and movement like Surrealism. These groups help in emphasizing on freedom of the imagination of people and setting free al the repressed archaic social structures in the society.

Noteworthy Information about the artwork

The main objective of Tanguy as an artist was to inspire people imagination to create their reality through the implementation of biomorphism and Surrealism, resulting in a revolution in any proposed manner. With the help of his friend, Tanguy met a radical artist Andre Breton how help give him a direction since he had a passion for artistic work (Sylvester, 2015). Tanguy managed to achieve freedom totality due to his past experiences from the military and his personal life experiences while living in a city by himself after leaving his native home, which is located in a rural area. And the experience of living without a father made it possible to look for is aspiration from a person well versed with their environment.

The painting Slowly Towards the North got some of its influence from the biomorphism which is similar to Surrealism in many aspects. These aspects include the burgeoning interest in psychology by using physical science to create a spark of inspiration. It further results into formation of occult symbols and signs through the real world which is bubbled up with subconsciousness of the mind making the visible to the internal cellular structure through the help to hand paintings created by the Tanguy to give them a life form (Lorente, 2016). However, biomorphism emerges from a natural, biological way and shapes that exists and influences the psychological mindset of a person; hence they create an image which is expressed through hand painting.

Subject Matter or Content, and Message of the artwork

The subject matter of the art Slowly Towards the North 1942 is the beauty of the landscape (Spiteri, 2019). Based on the real view, the artist created a picture of an actual landscape and added some beauty features which by using his creativity to create the blue landscape. And the blue landscape complements the sky and the skyline creating an illusional picture. And in this picture, the artist added shades to beautify and create a distinction between the two feature shown in the image. And the blue sky shows a distinct feature of the lioness which is seen on the foreground of the picture. And the lioness picture is inspired by Reiko Kamata who was privileged in Traditional Japanese music which involves three players.

References

Lorente, J. P. (2016). The museums of contemporary art: Notion and development. Routledge.

Sylvester, C. (2015). Art/museums: International relations where we least expect it. Routledge.

Elder, R. B. (2015). Dada, surrealism, and the cinematic effect. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press.

Spiteri, R. (2019). Surrealism, Modernism, Dissensus. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 19(1), 107-122.

Jose Pierre (2011), "Yves Tanguy", Oxford Art Online. Retrieved July 20, 2012.