The Surrealist Experience

          For this last project, all I have to say is that it was definitely a surreal experience. We were prompted to choose an artist, write a short report, present a presentation, and create an original work inspired by the works of our chosen artist. It was definitely a heavy task but, nonetheless, worthwhile. For my project, I chose surrealist painter and thinker, Rene Magritte. Surrealism has always been something that has intrigued me and I sometimes even use it to describe my style and personality. It’s outward and different in a good way.

       For my original work, I was inspired by elements of Magritte’s style which included the obscuring of people’s faces and the fusion of two random objects together. I coupled these elements with elements of hip-hop and hip-hop culture because I wanted to communicate what I consider an important part of my personality and background. I’ve grown up listening to hip-hop having high regards for greats like the Notorious B.I.G, Heavy D, Run DMC, Missy Elliot, Jay-Z, and Eminem. I believe Hip-Hop to be one of the greatest vehicles for promoting positive social changes in communities, freedom of self-expression, and the communication and the interconnection of lives, stories, backgrounds, traditions and cultures, faiths, and ideas. It’s amazing what Hip-Hop has done for the world but it's sad that some people cannot see it for what it really is. They think its nothing but loud music and Lil Wayne, sex, drugs, and violence. Hip-Hop is none of that. It is a movement that has moved many. So, I wanted my piece to be something that reflects both my view of hip-hop and the world’s view as well. I began my process deciding to try to combine the fusing and obscuring of objects that were from Magritte’s with elements or symbols of hip-hop. In all honesty, this was probably the most frustrating project I’ve had yet because I wanted so much for my piece to stand out and somehow include hip-hop with surrealism. I went through multiple ideas from wanting to create a sculpture, to making clothing (for some strange reason) that reflected hip-hop and surrealism, to creating a large scale painting or illustration with 3-D elements. I sketched a good deal but I was never satisfied. Finally, I decided that I was going to take a large piece of cardboard to make my base for my painting and throw on anything and everything that reminded me of hip-hop and the society’s view of it, then, like Rene Magritte, I would place the objects in such a way to create a series of fusions and obscuring of facial features. I chose red as the background color for my piece because red is bold and powerful color that seems to help the piece and its other elements stand out. On a rather darker note, it’s also a symbolic color for gangs, blood and violence, pain, and pride—all elements that have been associated with hip-hop music and lyrics or have been depicted in rap videos. I then added more light and bright colors like sunshine yellow, aqua blue, light green, and electric orange as well as white puffy paint to depict my positive look on hip-hop. I also used these colors to obscure the red to an extent to sort of translate the message that people should see more of the positive rather than negative things about hip-hop because in reality, it’s music, not malice. I then added black and white etched pictures of people so that it wouldn’t be too much color. Then I went crazy. I added many 3-D elements (using cotton balls) like a Styrofoam boom box that was the head of one of the characters, gold cds, splashes of rainbow colors, and even trash (which was meant to represent some people’s view of hip-hop aka “lyrical garbage”). Even putting this together was frustrating and quite painful considering that I used a lot of hot glue to put it all together. It was also very frustrating because everything little detail and placement of objects required some thought and I kept wanting to start over or completely change my idea in the middle of working on the piece. At one point, I even wanted to throw it away because I wasn’t at all satisfied with it but in the end, it did relay most of the message I wanted to communicate and I ended up kind of liking it. However, if I could improve this piece I would first make it a little neater and clean up my mistakes. And finally, I would definitely make it bigger, bolder, and add more objects to it that related to the hip-hop culture and its own view of the world such as with themes like women, sex, drugs, violence, peace, war, politics, race, gender, friends, family, and the outlook of the past, present, and future. Overall, this project was fully engaging, fully frustrating, fully inspiration, and very surreal.