Friday: October 24, 9:30 a.m. – 12 noon
Bethany Congregational Church 556 N. Hope Avenue, Santa Barbara
VISTAS member price: $20; non-member price: $30
Presented by: James Glisson
This entertaining presentation will explore the steps that Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Kurt Schwitters, and Max Ernst, among others, used to make artworks that still fascinate, annoy, and inspire us today. We’ll begin with Marcel Duchamp and his still controversial urinal. The conversation then moves on to the collages of Picasso and Georges Braque, with their use of cheap, common materials such as old newspapers. The discussion ends with the Surrealists’ techniques for evoking dream-like states and pulling from dark regions of the mind’s unconscious, including how Max Ernst looked to the techniques of psychology to conjure nightmarish pictures. Over a century later, contemporary artists still draw on these strategies. Seeing how those artists worked long ago can give us insights into the contemporary art we see today in museums and commercial art galleries.