Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

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For the historic Surrealists, working with found objects—often gathered from the streets and flea markets of Paris—was a means of challenging the primacy of reason over emotion and crafting poetic associations intended to invoke the creative power of the subconscious mind. Artists working in the 1960s relied on similar techniques to create their assemblages and collages, but, by this time, these methods had evolved from their Surrealist roots to offer a means of opening up new associations with contemporary social or political conditions. The Bay Area artists associated with Bruce Connor’s Rat Bastard Protective Association (active 1957–60) challenged commercial tendencies with inflammatory work that made use of materials like discarded junk and storefront signage. In Southern California and Texas, the satirical and often vulgar sculptures of Edward Kienholz became widely influential. And in South Central Los Angeles, Noah Purifoy and Judson Powell organized the 1966 exhibition 66 Signs of Neon, which included works made in the aftermath of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, illustrating the importance of assemblage as a means for community self-expression. One participant in the exhibition, John Outterbridge, proclaimed that the foundations of the works’ meaning were “not merely material but the material and essence of the political climate.”

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A childhood fascination with the mechanical engineering of cars and airplanes prompted the gritty, machine-like forms of Ed Bereal's early works—Focke-Wulf FW 190 among them. The swastika seen at the sculpture's center was a frequent element in the artist's practice. Though no avant-garde application can wholly erase its hateful connotations, Bereal uses the symbol here in its original orientation, which is representative of good fortune or divinity in many cultures. This strategic deployment functions as a commentary on the potential of visual phenomena to physically arrest, compel, and manipulate attention. Soon after making this work, Bereal rejected the embrace of the predominantly white art world in search of a more sociopolitical mode of artmaking.

Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

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Ed Bereal, Focke-Wulf FW 190, 1960

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