A B L O G A BO UT PS Y C H O L O G Y A ND A R T

Innocent Butcher Bunnies: Pop Surrealism - How to

Cook your Brain
how-to-cook-your-brain.blogspot.com/2014/08/innoce
howtocookyourbrain
@xristospsyart
Why the who we think we are might be the exact
howtocookyourbrain
@xristospsyart
33s
42s
Tweets
Follow
Tweet to @xristospsyart
What the Nazi photographic albums of
the Wold War 2 might reveal about
human nature
Follow @xristospsyart What the Nazi
photographic albums of the Wold War 2
might reveal about human nature. In the famous
experim...
How can photography be used as a
participatory democratic medium
Follow @xristospsyart How can
photography be used as a participatory
democratic medium People have been
always concerned with t...
Is kitsch really so bad?
Follow @xristospsyart Is kitsch really so
bad? It's been a while since Walter
Benjamin declared the destruction of the
aura...
A history of the Modern Western
Culture: why the 2010s are more like
the 1910s
Follow @xristospsyart A history of the
Modern Western Culture: why the 2010s
are more like the 1910s In this article I use t...
How to hack your mind or how your
mind hacks you: The psychology of
Fight Club
Follow @xristospsyart How to hack your
mind or how your mind hacks you: The
psychology of Fight Club The Movie part Tyler D...
Five ways to analyze yourself through
a photograph: an experimental
technique for self-analysis.
Follow @xristospsyart Five ways to
analyze yourself through a photograph:
an experimental technique for self-analysis. In o...
Why the who we think we are might
be the exact opposite of who we really
are
Follow @xristospsyart How our ego
deludes us to believe that we are
somebody else Negative Introject is a concept co...
The ellipse as the emergence of the
self
Follow @xristospsyart The ellipse as the
emergence of the self A core-self must
lie somewhere in our self-perception,
tha...
film photo explorations
Home About Subjects Comments
Mark Ryden, The Butcher Bunny
Oil on Panel, 2000 [link]
Mark Ryden, Little Boy Blue
Oil on Canvas, 2001[link]


Follow @xristospsyart
Innocent butcher bunnies, children that hold small political figures from the hand and a kitsch statue of the Christ watching
over them are images that on a first glance they seem innocent and innocuous, but when more closely glanced they acquire
an uncanny essence. Antitheses are getting interviewed in an image that is both cute and grotesque, innocent and evil,
natural and artificial. The pop aesthetics of the image blended with that surreal ambiguity and absurdity spread this
uncanny essence into the aesthetic level as well.
Watching Mark Rydens works is like watching the world
through the eyes of an innocent child that has not yet formed
stable binary concepts of his reality; a child that is both
innocent and evil at the same time.
Through the expression of such ambivalent, vague and absurd
images, Mark Ryden might actually express a critique towards
the way our cultural logic creates a binary system of
understanding the world: good vs. evil, pretty vs. ugly,
moral vs. immoral and so on, which ultimately becomes the
inescapable frame through which the world acquires
significance and meaning for us, as well as also become the
justification for many of our unjustifiable or brutal natural
needs. When one attempts to escape that frame one is
facing a rupture with his reality.
Artificiality and a malevolent kind of cuteness are the central
themes to Mark Rydens art; maybe thats because he refers to
the way culture is wrapped around the natural order as a
plastic cute, seemingly innocuous mantle that delude us into
believing that we are able to transcend our nature, or that
we are capable of evolving beyond the crudeness of our
brutal nature effortlessly. Religious and political figures
referring - in the paintings of Mark Ryden- to unquestionable
beliefs ideologies and the past; fairy tales, bunnies even the concept of the childhood innocence are for Mark Ryden just
prejudices; images that support and perpetuate a reality that is delusional and solely in our minds; a binary reality that
blinds us from actually perceiving the rawness of our surroundings.

In fact childhood -depicted in nearly every painting of Mark
Ryden- is a very peculiar part of our developments timeline: It
is the most innocent, yet the most raw and nature-driven part
of our aging process. Children are innocent yet in that
innocence exists a raw natural organism, a wild animal that
acts upon ones instincts and raw needs, sometimes if needed
at the expense of others; it is the most seemingly innocuous,
cute, pretty part of our aging timeline and at the same
time the most raw, brutal and evil. Mark Rydens
surrealism signifies the vision of the child which sees
everything beyond good and evil, beyond the logical and the
illogical, beyond morality and immorality; it perceives the
world in a way where that binary cultural system collapses and
give its place to an experiential singularity through which
everything seem crazy and contradicting but in fact it is what
constitutes reality itself.
Mark Rydens technique of achieving the expression of that
singularity is through the impersonation of "belief systems"
in his paintings: the religious and political figures that become
just empty, banal images without deeper connotations, the
fairy tale bunny that through his cute masquerade chops a piece of meat, even the innocent child that would gladly eat
that piece of meat, all work together but contradictory in order to create a reality that binary definitions of good and evil,
ugly and pretty, moral and immoral no more exist.
Children in Rydens work might also incorporate our tendency to find transcending value in a glorious past, individually
(self-beliefs and self-identity) as well as collectively (nationalism and patriotism); to create prejudices that keep us stuck in
a past that exists only in our individual or national imagination. To yearn for an imaginary past is consume an experience of
Innocent Butcher Bunnies: Pop Surrealism - How to Cook your Brain http://how-to-cook-your-brain.blogspot.com/2014/08/innocent-butcher...
1 of 3 1/8/2014 1:50

Click to see the code!
To insert emoticon you must added at least one space before the code.
Follow @xristospsyart
Self Invalidation and the development
of a pseudo-self
Follow @xristospsyart Self Invalidation and
the development of a pseudo-self Keys:
toxic beliefs, cognitive dissonance, identi...
Xristos Panagiotou
4 have me in
circles
View
all
Mark Ryden, Pink Lincoln (#92)
Oil on Canvas, 2010 [link]
Mark Ryden, The Meat Shop (#97)
Oil on Canvas, 2011 [link]
the past, a heroism that has never existed beyond our wishes, and that blinds us from actually acknowledging our
problems and overcoming them creatively.

So, progress and civilization for Ryden become nothing more than an
artificial label that has nothing to do with the primitive way things work in
reality. Maybe religious or political figures once had indeed a deeper
meaning, maybe not, but whether civilization exists or not, we have to
acknowledge the fact that it tends to get alienated from its original purpose
and becomes just another empty image without any deeper meaning than the
one it superficially denotes; it becomes a prejudice that conceals the
brutality of things instead of actually transcending them; it becomes
conservatism which consumes solutions instead of creating solutions, it
becomes the belief that conceals the truth instead of creatively transforming
the truth; and that is what the banal aesthetics of Mark Ryden denote.
Banal aesthetics in Rydens art denote exactly that kind of consumerism (not
only in regards to material products, but also a consumerism in ideas, beliefs,
ideologies, and identities) that draws cultural material from the large pool of
societal images and prejudices to conceal the ugly truth instead of facing it.
Chinese letters to describe American political figures such as Lincoln, connote
exactly that tendency to massively, effortlessly and cheaply recreate,
reproduce and consume a belief, so that it ultimately become alienated not
only from its original purpose but also from its original place in time and
space.

Maybe Rydens uncanny worlds call us to release ourselves from established authorities:
beliefs, morality, the past, and instead experience the world directly and creatively. It might
be also that I am just projecting my own ideas on the paintings of the artist and they are all
just pointless pop surrealism without any actual significance beyond their aesthetic
value, but I believe that thats the value of such kind of art; that it doesnt dictate you what
to understand, instead it lets you to reflect your mind on them without intervention. It
doesnt lend you the "authoritarian" "eye" of the "genius" artist in order to see the world
through his mind; it instead opens your own mind into different kinds of possibilities and
understandings.
Share to:
Innocent Butcher Bunnies: Pop Surrealism - How to Cook your Brain http://how-to-cook-your-brain.blogspot.com/2014/08/innocent-butcher...
2 of 3 1/8/2014 1:50
Notify me
Comment as:
Publish

Copyright 2014 How to Cook your Brain All Right Reserved
Blogger Designed by IVYthemes | MKR site
Posts RSS Comments RSS

Innocent Butcher Bunnies: Pop Surrealism - How to Cook your Brain http://how-to-cook-your-brain.blogspot.com/2014/08/innocent-butcher...
3 of 3 1/8/2014 1:50