Modernism emerged at the end of the nineteenth century in opposition to academic realism. It opened up the surface of appearances and represented the structure and essence of being. Often, autonomous structure prevailed and its environment was renounced; instead of rising to the spiritual order, flesh changed into a conserve. However, the masses still expect that art would has something to do with tangible substances, or at least with conceits of subconscious impulses or archetypal symbols. The man from the street expects to see in art a reflection of deceptive world. He desires nourishment for his soul and expects sentiment.

Modernism represents the idea purified of all superficial additions. It rejects sentiment and eventually even beauty as an attribute of modern commerce. But the dream of external superficiality and a claim to internal idea are only two related poles of the world.

Suprealism was born in 1993 at Leonard Lapin's studio as an attempt at wholeness, totality, and a unity of contradictory visual images and structures. Suprealism uses, on the one hand, popular kitsch, clothing logos, and cheap expressions; and on the other, the exclusive language of classical modernism: suprematism, neoplasticism, op art, and pop art.

Suprealism introduces to art the unmediated/naive self-expression of a producer of kitsch, while retaining the mental effort and elitism of a professional artist.

Suprealism stirs the soul, excites the senses, bringing even the secretive spirit to the public parade of impulses. Even anger about the lack of ordinariness of suprematist work is positive, because it allows the eyes to see the world afresh, in a way which unites opposites.

Suprealism corrects the relationship between "high" and "low" art, bringing popular kitsch to exhibition halls and elitist ideas to the masses.

Suprealism is environmentally sustainable art, because it puts rejected things into new – this time cultural – circulation. By reviewing in a suprealist manner the kitsch which has gathered in your homes, you sharpen your analytic senses and get rid of the chains of mass culture. If you lift physical weights, you become a culturist. If you lift spiritual weights, you become a suprealist, who is free of the bondage of things.

1996

Published 2007-07-06

Original in Estonian
© Leonhard Lapin
© Eurozine