Reshaping Reality
In looking at the relationship between architecture and art the article Reshaping Reality: How Actual Architecture Inspires Surrealistic Building Art by Kate Wagner, for 99% invisible, highlights said relationship. Surrealism is a well known genre and extremely well chosen to illustrate how the art of surrealism becomes architectural fantasy.
Kate references the “Ideal Cities” of the Renaissance and discusses how Escher and Dali have been heavy influencers on the digital world who have taken the art of architectural surrealism to a new level. She goes on to say: “What strikes us about today’s surrealist depictions of the built environment is precisely that their execution in the real world is, unlike the work of Escher and Dalí, often entirely plausible in today’s realm of mega-projects.” What was previously considered entirely fantastical is becoming acceptable, as the images in the title header indicate (Beko Building, Zaha Hadid Architects, ‘Inter-actions 9, Dionisio Gonzáles and 701 v1 from Anarchitecture Seoul, Olivier Ratsi).
The article explores ‘architectural manipulations’ by Laurent Chéhère and Filip Dujardin. Chéhère’s ‘Flying Houses’ (fig 1), a “surrealistic and poetic vision of old Paris” (Chéhère, 2010), and Du Jardin’s (fig 2) photomontages are fantasy architecture that could not possibly be built but retain a realistic quality through the way the art has been created. As Wagner states: “While the mind-bending images of surrealist artists may seem new and disorienting in our digital context, many have either direct analogs or indirect precursors dating back decades. They also fit a long-standing tradition of exchange between the worlds of art and architecture.“
Fig 1.
Fig 2.
References
99% INVISIBLE. WAGNER, K. (2017) Reshaping Reality: How Actual Architecture Inspires Surrealistic Building Art. [Online]. Available at https://99percentinvisible.org/article/reshaping-reality-actual-architecture-inspires-surrealistic-building-art/ [Accessed on 9/10/17]
CHERERE, L. (2017). The Flying Houses. [Online]. Available at www.laurentchehere.com/ [Accessed on 9/10/17]
DUJARDIN, F (2017). Untitled #19. [Online] Available at http://www.filipdujardin.be [Accessed on 9/10/17]
