TITLE: Art is more real than reality
NAME: Philippe Gibone
COUNTRY: France
EMAIL: ph.gibone@wanadoo.fr
TOPIC: Surrealism
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: artreal.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray for Windows V3.5

TOOLS USED: 
    MORAY, SmokeGen by Mikael Carneholm, ISO_CSG by Christoph Hormann
            some of my own Moray plugins or Macros: KNOT, PARQUET, WALL,
DOMENATOR, IVY.
JPGFILE: ARTREAL.jpg

RENDER TIME: 
    1h52

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium IV 2.4 Ghz, with 128Mb ram, XP

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

(First I must apologize for my lousy english, and for such a long explanation)
The Title is " Art is more real than reality " hence, by essence, it is surreal
The composition of this picture starts from the famous sentence by Lautreamont 
" Beautiful as the chance encounter on a dissecting table of a sewing machine 
and an umbrella ".  
One can easily sees the umbrella and the sewing machine; the table is a
representation of 
the proof by dissection of the Pythagoras' theorem, this gives us a dissecting
table, but, 
as a bonus it takes us to the mathematics, that are, as surrealism, the
privileged land of 
free imagination (non Euclidean geometry, G_del's theorem_), it's a science
which doesn't
deal with reality.
In the glass triangle in the middle of the table of dissection, there is an eye,
as the one 
of Horus which is a Babylonian symbol (the eye that sees all, knows all) and
represents  
knowledge.  
The cloud colored pupil reminds us several Magritte's paintings, but also the
cloud of 
"Un Chien Andalou "(aka An Andalusian Dog) : in this movie directed by Luis
Bu_uel (the only 
authentically surrealist film director), one sees a cloud that passes in front
of the moon, 
and in the next sequence, a woman's eye is sliced by a razor, as a redundancy of
the moon 
sliced by the clouds.  
Dali is cosignatory of the film, but it has been said that he didn't do much,
and that the 
film was especially Bu_uel (hence the heavy absence of Dali)

The apple is the one of the picture of Magritte called " Ceci n'est pas une
pomme" 
(This is not an apple), but the character doesn't understand why.

Of course the Grail represents the legend, the magic.
The cigarette smoke represents the ephemeral and the intangible
The museum has no walls because art has no, nevertheless, History (the Greek
column) and 
Nature (the ivy), show limits that art has not to respect (the picture beyond
the limits of 
the museum), but that the " visitors " respect.  
Art is sometimes out of reach, and we need help to attain it (the ladder)
The painting on the right represents_ the very same scenery, because art is way
ahead of 
reality.
The human beings are represented by rough wooden silhouettes, for they are not
as real as 
the other elements, even their thoughts are not real (while normally_) :

To conclude: art, mathematics, legends, magic, knowledge, ephemeral and
intangible are more 
real than the reality, and especially more real than the " visitors of art "

Therefore the subtitle:

"Chance encounter of Lautreamont and of an apple standing on the Holy Grail,
under the Eye 
of Horus, not yet dissected by Bunuel in the heavy absence of G_del and Dali,
but in the 
shadow of Pythagoras"


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The Apple is a triangle mesh, the wooden silhouettes are simple 2D Black and
white rough 
drawings used as heightfield. The big painting outside the museum is another POV
image made 
with the help of a tree macro by Joachim Puerschel and the People macro by Hero
Ngauv.
I have to thank Sylvain Leseur, whose unvaluable help was absolutely necessary
to achieve this
entry.