How Students Think: Efficacy of Surrealism as an Avenue for the Generation and Expression of Thought among Fine Art Students at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya
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Date
2024-12
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EANSO
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Surrealism is one of the most fascinating expressive genres of Art and seems to engage students in a very profound manner in the way they perceive themselves, the essence of their individuality, their inherent ideas, emotions and thought processes. In retrospect, it can be viewed from the perspective that it provides a unique opportunity for individual students to express points of view from imageries that emanate from the state of their minds. At the University level, surrealism particularly in drawing, has emerged as a potent visual consolidation of the ability of students to galvanize thoughtfulness that applies to their personal psyche and general outlook towards occurrences and upheavals in their lives. This study sought to examine how students think through surrealist inspirations as a basis of their imaginative work and the extent to which they were able to internalize and embed the basic tenets of surrealism such as distortion of forms, bizarreness of composition or grotesqueness in artistic compositions of their own. The study also sought to determine if indeed these new surrealist compositions carried any social message that was derived from the drawings themselves in order to underscore possible contextual meaning. The final year cohort of students involved in this study had not done any surrealist work before and were introduced to the concept of surrealism and its potential for individual expression through the discussion of selected previous works of past students at the same level. This was deemed useful as they were able to initially internalize the nature of compositions and the possible derivation of surrealist images such as those that manifest in the subconscious mind and other dreamlike dispensations. The students subsequently produced a significant body of work from which pieces were selected for this study using the criteria of visual impact such as profoundness of the surrealism, level of execution using pencil and social message. The analysis of the work was done using the analytical framework provided. The students were engaged in weekly class presentations of their individual work that provided the opportunity for critiquing.
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Wango, K.(2024). How Students Think: Efficacy of Surrealism as an Avenue for the Generation and Expression of Thought among Fine Art Students at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya.East African Journal of Arts and Social Sciences, 7(2), 394-433. https://doi.org/10.37284/eajass.7.2.2535
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Wango, K.(2024). How Students Think: Efficacy of Surrealism as an Avenue for the Generation and Expression of Thought among Fine Art Students at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya.East African Journal of Arts and Social Sciences, 7(2), 394-433. https://doi.org/10.37284/eajass.7.2.2535
https://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/29414
https://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/29414