Nathan Lerner 
Eye on Nails, 1940 
18 1/2 by 15 inches 
copyright, the Nathan Lerner Living Trust 

How is this image composed like a still life? 

How is it composed like a landscape? 

In the 1920s artists including Max Ernst, René Magritte, and Joan Miró thought up a whole new way of looking at things. They painted mostly what they remembered from their dreams, or anything that popped into their minds. This style came to be known as Surrealism. 

"The Surrealists hoped their strange works of art would make people think, and discover feelings they never knew they had. They felt that stirring up thoughts from the backs of people's minds was important for artists to do." (From Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists: Salvador Dali, written and illustrated by Mike Venezia, Childrens Press, 1993.)

Nathan Lerner experimented with this surrealist style. Here he takes a double exposure of two objects, one very delicate, one very harsh.

How does this combination of two images make you feel?