The theme of Dali's clocks has been done and overdone.
What does it represent? Perhaps a form of psychology of art, or psychic study.
I would argue that aside from formal properties, Surrealisme of this type is mostly an object in previous examples of historical art.
For example, the discriminated qualities of surrealisme can be found within other pre-existing conditions.
Perhaps, one might cite, it is radical that these disparate qualities are combined.
But, if the combination is not assumed to be dynamic, then it still must be looked upon as an agglomerated object, a study of pre-existing examples.
It is clear enough that what Surrealisme offers-embodied not so variously as a form similar to Dali's clocks, or frequently otherwise by relating to images of literature or sex-is a conceptual landscape.
The twisting of objects or use of absurd colors IS conceptual, and its use on a landscape DOES make it a landscape, but twisting and colors are after all simple figmenta, from what I understand they are not conceptual art in the metaphysical sense embodied by formal rhetoric, or indeed abstract expressionism.
Where formal rhetoric has become in recent years a superficial reflection of technology and humanism-inciting the idea of pop-psychology brings a GROAN-abstract expressionism has become similarly caught on superficial objects-surrealisme to name one.
The critical study comes down to the idea that surrealisme merely worked within a box.
Where previous examples-it could not be denied-were to some extent trumped by photography, surrealisme obsessed with the objects of study, and the result was, I shall say, closer to an aesthetic of photo-editing than to an aesthetic of formalism.
But, where photography seemed to display aspects of formalism, surrealisme certainly seemed ticketed to escape.
What was not realized by surrealists, however, was that Cubism had set a standard that all future art was to be formalistic.
Even post-formalism-the idea that media and frame are not everything-must be candorous to this new image of what is called aesthetic art.
As it turns out, surrealisme (perhaps influenced by Fractionism or Fractionalism, a movement which I think is misunderstood to be insignificant) was only a partial answer.
Surrealism offered what I have already called the aesthetic of photo-editing.
What, then, is missing from the theory of surrealisme? Certainly there is a note of complexity within the psychological theories of Andre Breton and Tristan Tzara.
But what it seems to me is that these are 'figments' of a photo-editing technique.
Surrealisme was merely addressing the warping of time and space (say, under the authority of Einstein), nonetheless that is all that was being addressed.
When I spoke earlier of the 'psychic studies' of surrealisme, it is clear upon examination that these are merely 'psychic examinations' of the warping of time and space.
If, as it turns out, the warping of time and space had no special place in history, then it seems that there is a psychological reduction.
It seems, then, that the surrealists are obsessing impartially with an aesthetic that amounts to no more than a material detail of the world.
Clearly, if that is the case, then it might be reducible to photography.
So my thesis continues.
Dali's clocks seem to amount to a twisting of time and space, which might as easily become a ruffling or interpretation of time and space, and a landscape, which might as easily have the complexity of architecture or video games.
If there is a folly in translating Surrealisme for the purposes of abnegating its principle of originality, it lies in the effect that Surrealisme cannot be translated.
Yet it is clear with Hyper-Cubism that further complexities are possible.
It is clear that in the context of dynamic information, Surrealisme was only a formalism.
Where Cubism announced that all art must be formal, Surrealisme merely instigated a variation on formality.
If that is not the case, we are saying that Surrealisme is a form of abstract expression.
But that is not the case.
So Surrealisme remains an exploration of formalism.
However, as Cubism is reduced in the imagination to modular photography, Surrealism remains a plaque on the wall, merely a qua unrealized formula still native to the barren walls of modernism.
The step beyond this is obviously Dimensionism.
Where Surrealisme moved formal variation onto a three-dimensional plane, Hyper-Cubism announces that the third dimension of surrealisme is really an aspect of the paradoxical second dimension.
If it were not for dimensional art, Surrealisme would remain free from the photograph museum.
It would present one of the few imaginative alternatives to applying perspective concepts.
But instead, Hyper-Cubism officiates that Surrealisme is in some respects only a prisoner of Cubism.
As such, Hyper-Cubism is the natural development of more than one school.
Just as Cubism has the potential to standardize and thus antiquate the Apochryphal and Classical periods, Hyper-Cubism appears to reduce and dispose of the Cubist photograph museum, with Surrealisme being an incidental inhabitant.
In the future, as I have said before, there will be paradoxes which overcome Hyper-Cubism.
But Hyper-Cubism defined that the paradox was possible, just as Cubism defined that formalism was relevant.
Surrealisme, on the other hand, will be remembered not for its absurdity (absurdity becomes ugliness over time), but instead for its hints of complexity, a complexity which later forms of art transferred back into the context of photography.
-Nathan Coppedge Avant-garde Philosopher and Artist