Discussing portrait surrealism
Portrait surrealism has been explored by many artists significantly: Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Salvador Dali and Frida Kahlo. Although records insist that this art movement was pioneered by André Breton in 1924, it has been long in existence before André Breton simply put a name to it. Giuseppe Arcimboldo created faces made of fruits, vegetables, books, and flowers in the 1500s way before 1924. The only core difference was that by the early 1900’s the goal shifted from painting objects to fusing the human mind and the subconscious with reality. While other artists focused on the skin and outlook of their model or reference. Surrealists explored emotions, mood and structure and applied metaphorical objects in place of plain body parts. Visual wit, symbolism and allegory were also adopted.
Vertumnus by Arcimboldo (c. 1590–1591)
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The Librarian by Arcimboldo (c. 1566)
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In photography, photographers began to realize, photographs didn't always have to depict reality; they could be staged, manipulated, cropped, overlaid and that lighting and colours could also be used to create dream-like portraits.
I decided to study how this plays out in modern art and I found an artist and a photographer. Midepella,a female Nigerian portrait artist that often replaces the eyes of her portraits with metaphorical fruits and objects and Flora Borsi, a Hungarian artist and photographer
Find Midepella on X
Read about Flora Borsi here https://www.floraborsi.com/about
(Image gotten from Flora Borsi's website)
Flora Borsi smoothly blends real humans and nature in most of her portraits that it feels like you're staring at a dream. Her choice of female models intrigues me, it's so consistent that her portraits have this soft, flowy, feminine energy that is simply captivating. There's so much on her website to feed your eyes with https://www.floraborsi.com/
Photographs have evolved from being static to expressing emotions and it is quite easier in this era than in the past because we now have technologies that can help manipulate photos expertly although it doesn't replace the creativity needed to set the elements of the photograph.
Midepella reflects the compositional logic in Giuseppe Arcimboldo style with a modern touch. She shows us what's going on in the soul by replacing the eyes with objects, especially fruits portraying visual wit and symbolism. Which is quite uncommon in contemporary African portrait art trends and makes her work distinctive
Discussing the future of portrait surrealism I look forward to artists blending bots and humans into one portrait depicting the limitations a bot has despite being able to perform certain human functions in terms of consciousness and emotions.
Jesunifemi.
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