Tanguy 'Untitled': Textual Analysis

For the subject of my visual analysis, I have chosen Yves Tanguy’s Untitled—an oil on canvas Surrealist painting, produced in 1937. This piece, though neither its subject nor its intent is entirely apparent, was painted with astounding precision in primarily cool grays, blues, and greens. It appears to depict a desolate, gray beach, surrounded by swirling winds and a spraying sea. The beach appears to be littered with several small, bizarre, and unidentifiable metallic objects—a distorted mask and an ebbing ship’s mast remain the only discernible objects present throughout the entire piece. While a storm is clearly raging directly offshore, the beach appears entirely untouched by the forceful winds—though, each of the objects strewn about

Physically, Surrealist pieces are typically produced with incredible attention to detail—they employ similar techniques used by renaissance masters that render their subjects flawlessly; their messages, however, often remain ambiguous—eluding even the most perceptive observer. This particular painting is an excellent example of how the intention of Surrealism, unlike artistic movements of years prior, was to create art for the mind, rather than simply for the eyes.

In the early 20th century, due to its recent republication in French, the published works of Freud had gained new momentum in France. French artists, thirsty for inspiration following the devastating reality of world war I, had a revelation while studying Freud’s psychoanalytic theories regarding the conscious and unconscious minds. Surrealists sought to demonstrate through art what Freud had asserted in print; and they found success by employing spontaneous association and by recreating dreamscapes

Untitled is so precisely crafted, that it instills a sense of unease in its viewers—not unlike how a modern AI robot thrusts all who observe it deep within the uncanny valley. Logically, we know such a setting has no place within our reality, but the skill with which it was fashioned is oftentimes so extraordinary, that it can almost deceive our eyes into believing otherwise. Unlike traditional landscapes, however, these exquisitely rendered scenes are painted from neither a reference photograph nor en plain air, but straight from the artist’s mind’s eye—we, as viewers, find these paintings so convincing because they actually do exist within the unconscious minds of their artists. The confusion, chaos, turmoil, loneliness, sorrow, and other emotions often depicted in the work of Surrealist artists is a reflection of their own inner confusion, chaos, turmoil, loneliness, and depression. More often than not, after waking from a particularly unsettling or peculiar dream, we feel the compulsion to analyze or decipher it—in fact, there are countless pieces of literature dedicated to the very cause. Surrealist dreamscapes are a visual manifestation of such dreams, and as viewers, we feel obligated to interpret them. Attributable to the personal