Abstract

Yves Tanguy is one of the most important painters of surrealism. His unique image, however, has never been concretely discussed. The purpose of this paper is to show the characteristic of Tanguy's image in surrealist contexts and to add a new aspect to the discussions about optical images of surrealism. According to Roger Caillois, surrealist image is "an image without assured, perceptible or unitary signification," and has an "infinite" structure which makes viewer's interpretations infinitely. This paper calls this kind of image an "obscure image." Most surrealist images are constructed by signs that have a defined and perceptible signifi*, and these signs make gaps of meaning among each other to become an "obscure image" . However, in Tanguy's image, signs that form his image do not have a defined and perceptible signifié. Moreover, that image is the perfect representation with three-dimensional illusion. For this reason, the viewer's interpretations caused by "infinite" structure are all nullified. The image of Tanguy is an image that could be resolved into nothing except for image itself. That is an extreme form of the surrealist image