FMJ:
Quote:[...]I am compelled to make a comment connected to some of the above thoughts...the use of the term 'surreal' has become an all to easy catch phrase to use on some art. Smith was not a surrealist [...]
It seems to me that you're setting fire to a straw man. I can't speak for anyone else, but nowhere in my post do I suggest that CAS was a Surrealist. Strictly speaking, such a label would apply only to one who was a member of the movement, or who otherwise explicitly appropriated the label. My post merely speculated as to whether the critic in question was familiar with the then-newborn Surrealist movement, and whether that knowledge (or merely an awareness of Freudian concepts alone, as Dr. Farmer has suggested) informed his review of CAS's painting. I also wondered whether, aside from his somewhat snide sonnet, CAS had ever commented publicly or privately on the Surrealist movement. That's it!
I do think, however, that applying the adjective
surreal to some of CAS's work is not entirely
mal apropos. An early appreciation of CAS by Robert Allerton Parker, for instance, appeared during the 1940's in
VVV, a Surrealist publication. CAS may or may not (in the absence of further evidence, I'm assuming the latter) have appreciated the Surrealists' work, but at least some of the Surrealists appear to have appreciated his.