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Examine the painting. What do you see? What do you think the painter is trying to say? Be specific.

Examine the painting. What do you see? What do you think the painter is trying to say? Be specific

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Page 1: Examine the painting. What do you see? What do you think the painter is trying to say? Be specific

Examine the painting. What do you see? What do you think the painter

is trying to say? Be specific.

Page 2: Examine the painting. What do you see? What do you think the painter is trying to say? Be specific

What is Surrealism?Cultural movement that began in the 1920s

Aim is to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality”

Surrealist works feature:Element of surpriseUnexpected juxtapositions and non sequiturExpression of the philosophical movement

Page 3: Examine the painting. What do you see? What do you think the painter is trying to say? Be specific

Surrealist Manifesto Andre Breton, leader of Surrealist movement, asserted

that Surrealism was a revolutionary movement

Dictionary: Surrealism, n. 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.

Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.

Page 4: Examine the painting. What do you see? What do you think the painter is trying to say? Be specific

What is Existentialism?Late 19th and 20th century philosophers believed that

philosophical thinking begins with the human subject – not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living individual

The Existential Attitude: individual’s starting point A sense of disorientation

and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world

Examples in art: Fight Club, The Matrix, Toy Story, Groundhog Day, The

Shawshank Redemption, Ordinary People

Page 5: Examine the painting. What do you see? What do you think the painter is trying to say? Be specific

What is Expressionism?Originating in Germany in

the early 20th century, its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas

Artists sought to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality

Page 6: Examine the painting. What do you see? What do you think the painter is trying to say? Be specific

Franz KafkaBorn in 1883 to a well-to-do middle class Jewish

family

Educated in German language schools of Prague and at the German UniversityGraduated with law degree, but

decided to focus on literature

Only published a few short works during his lifetime“The Metamorphosis” in 1915

Page 7: Examine the painting. What do you see? What do you think the painter is trying to say? Be specific

Kafka’s LifeLived as a lonely outcast in many ways

A German-speaker among Czech-speakers A Jew among Christians Had an overbearing, selfish, businessman father Didn’t live alone until he was 33 Lived in poverty and cold weather, so his illness got worse and

worse

SAMSA = KAFKA

Died in 1924 (at 41) of tuberculosis and ordered that his manuscripts be burned

His friend (and fellow writer) Max Brod instead published Kafka’s works posthumously

Page 8: Examine the painting. What do you see? What do you think the painter is trying to say? Be specific

“Kafkaesque” An unsettling, nightmarish world that is at once

both fearful and menacing in its ambiguity and complexity

“Kafka’s haunting, disturbing, and sometimes grotesque images, combined with his struggling but ultimately defeated heroes, defined an age wherein alienated man – the anti-hero – grappling with meaning and justice in an inscrutable world, is denied answers to both.”

Page 9: Examine the painting. What do you see? What do you think the painter is trying to say? Be specific

The Metamorphosis“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning

from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”

Metamorphosis: A change of physical form, structure, or substance. A fundamental change in form and often habits of an animal accompanying the transformation of a larva into an adult

What is The Metamorphosis really about??

Is it literal or figurative?

Page 10: Examine the painting. What do you see? What do you think the painter is trying to say? Be specific

Themes of The Metamorphosis

Alienation at Work

Father-Son Antagonism

Betrayal

Isolation and Self-Sacrifice

Escaping

Seizing Power