Jan Svankmajer

Jan Svankmajer

Jan Švankmajer born 4 September 1934) is a Czech filmmaker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay, and many others. He has made 27 films in total.

Švankmajer's trademarks include very exaggerated sounds, often creating a very strange effect in all eating scenes. He often uses fast-motion sequences when people walk or interact. His movies often involve inanimate objects being brought to life through stop-motion. Many of his films also include clay objects in stop-motion, otherwise known as claymation. Food is a favourite subject and medium. Švankmajer also uses pixilation in many of his films, including Food (1992) and Conspirators of Pleasure (1996).
Stop-motion features in most of his work, though recently his feature films have included much more live action sequences than animation.
Many of his movies, like the short film Down to the Cellar, are made from a child's perspective, while at the same time often having a truly disturbing and even aggressive nature. In 1972 the communist authorities banned him from making films, and many of his later films were suppressed. He was almost unknown in the West until the early 1980s. Writing in The New York Times, Andrew Johnston praised Svankmajer's artistry, stating "while his films are rife with cultural and scientific allusions, his unusual imagery possesses an accessibility that feels anchored in the shared language of the subconscious, making his films equally rewarding to the culturally hyperliterate and to those who simply enjoy visual stimulation."

The surrealist movement was inspired by Sigmund Freuds theory of dreams. Surrealist artists generally aim to pursue the marvellous and to create a sense of wonder and almost fantasy in a way for the audience.
                              

This is Jan Svankmajers short film Dimensions Of Dialog (1982). He uses stop motion animation to create 3 separate short pieces in one film. The first sequence shows two people made out of various elements of rubbish and food and broken bits of scraps. The characters then start to eat each other and regurgitate each other. There is use of sound in this piece to amplify the uneasy nature of the visuals such as clanking noises and crunching noises as the characters eat each other. There is also some tense sounding orchestral music that adds to this mood. This sequence could be representing (from my personal opinion) greed and consumption in the world showing how the more people consume the  more disgusting the world gets (this could relate to global warming and distruction of forests that are replaced with ugly buildings or factories to make more things for people to consume simply for peoples desire to have more things) this is shown by how each time the characters eat each other the elements they are made up of get more and more broken and disgusting, theres also some close up unsettling shots of meat being mushed up and attacked which has a very uneasy feel to it as well as appearing rather repulsive. This idea of the characters getting more and more disgusting as they consume more could also represent the people themselves and how consumption is altering their morals and turning them into people who are disgusting on the inside (personality wise). The sounds get worse as this sequence god on, the more the characters eat the more they burp and the sloppier the noises get again just adding to this feeling of unease and making the characters slowly start to appear as though they are evolving into fouler creatures. At the end of the sequence the characters start to regurgitate clay moulds of people who then also regurgitate clay moulds of people, the people looking exactly the same. This could be representing how society today is just creating replicas of people and individualism is fading. And the idea of the final people being made of clay suggests that these people have been moulded by the stereotypes of society that is driven by consumerism.

The second sequence of the film shows to clay people who embrace each other and mould into each other so that human shape is no longer visual, the clay blobs sill move with the occasional hand popping out etc. All though the two figures are no longer representable as they have moulded into each other it is still suggestive that they are embracing each other. They then separate and the figures become recognisable again however there is now also a small blob creature between them trying to get their attention and looking very sad. The two characters seem to not want responsibility of this small creature and start throwing it to one another angrily. They then seem to get into a fight over neither one of them taking responsibly for the creature and start clawing at each other pulling bits of clay of one anthers forms and eventually destroying each other. This small creature could be a symbol of their love as it has no specific form and they seem to get angry with each other when the other dosnt want it. This could be showing how their anger at one another for not taking responsibility of the love made them angry and end up destroying each other or how their love destroyed them?.

The final sequence in this film is of two clay heads producing items from their mouths and helping each other make use of the items for example one of the heads would produce a pencil the other would produce a sharpener and the would together sharpen a pencil. The animation goes on doing this and eventually the heads start loosing rhythm and would mix item up that would go with each other for example they end up sharpening a tooth brush and putting tooth paste on a pencil. the heads then start yo look work out and start to crack and crumble and loose their form. This animation could be symbolising how the daily drag of the same routines can wear people down physically and mentally.

This film shows how it hold surrealist qualities and that it incorporates the throwing of elements together to startle the audience. All of the sequences in this film have a feeling of unsettling nature to them which creates a startling shock factor to the piece and makes it seem more confusing and creates a sense of curiosity about it.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

This is an artist that Svankmajer himself acknowledges himself as an influence for his work. Arcimboldo, active in Svankmajers home city of Prague during the late 16th century and celebrated for his trick portraits in which faces are built up from every day objects such as fruits vegetables and flowers. 

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was born in Milan in 1527, the son of Biagio, a painter who did work for the office of the Fabbrica in the Duomo. Arcimboldo was commissioned to do stained glass window designs beginning in 1549, including the Stories of St. Catherine of Alexandria vitrage at the Duomo. In 1556 he worked with Giuseppe Meda on frescoes for the Cathedral of Monza. In 1558, he drew the cartoon for a large tapestry of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, which still hangs in the Como Cathedral today.

Arcimboldo's conventional work, on traditional religious subjects, has fallen into oblivion, but his portraits of human heads made up of vegetables, fruit and tree roots, were greatly admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of fascination today. Art critics debate whether these paintings were whimsical or the product of a deranged mind. A majority of scholars hold to the view, however, that given the Renaissance fascination with riddles, puzzles, and the bizarre (see, for example, the grotesque heads of Leonardo da Vinci, a fellow Milanese), Arcimboldo, far from being mentally imbalanced, catered to the taste of his times.