In the late-1930s, numerous male surrealists created works using the female body as a subject, either blending it into landscapes or juxtaposing it with other objects from within their psyches. André Masson, for instance, drew the forms of women represented by the trees and hills of a landscape during this period (Ades 40). Man Ray, likewise, juxtaposes a nude woman and a mackerel in his 1938 Pisces, evoking the eponymous astrological symbol by replacing one of the fish with the figure of a woman (Towler). Dawn Ades suggests that these pieces and other similar works of the time represent the surrealist trend of incorporating the female body into paintings depicting transformation and other dream-like processes, using women as a guide to the unconscious and, in the process, dehumanizing them (Ades 40). In Man Ray’s Pisces, for instance, the replacement of one of the twin fish of the astrological sign with a nude woman evokes a comparison of a human figure with a non-human concept—a dehumanizing juxtaposition common within the landscapes of surrealists during the 30s. Dawn Ades also notes that surrealism contained an “ideology of eroticism,” using the female body as a vessel to evoke the feeling of the erotic in a way that sexualizes women while furthering their dehumanization (40).

            These prior events explain the cultural climate within the British surrealist movement and Ithell Colquhoun’s stylistic influences which led to the creation of Gouffres Amers. It was at the International Surrealist Exhibition that Colquhoun attended Salvador Dali’s lecture, resulting in Dali becoming Colquhoun’s dominant influence as she entered the surrealist movement (Ades 39). While other artists like Eileen Agar were more abstract and cubism-inspired, Colquhoun referred to her style as “magic realism” and derived it from Dali’s own methods, which typically depicted strange scenes with disparate elements in a realistic, concrete representational style. It was in this style that blended dream-like imagery with techniques of realism that Colquhoun painted Scylla in 1938 and Gouffres Amers the year later (Ades 40). The latter painting was also seemingly inspired by the works of Arcimboldo and de Momper, as Gouffres Amers depicts a male figure composed of the disparate elements of a seascape.

            Colquhoun’s choice of a male subject is also explained by the aforementioned events. Surrealism was pervaded with a culture of eroticism and the dehumanization of female subjects—as depicted in the works of Man Ray and as is responded to by Magritte. Colquhoun reverses this treatment of women by placing a nude male figure at the center of a transformation in Gouffres Amers. Rather than evoking the erotic, Colquhoun seemingly emphasizes the unsettling nature of this treatment. The sea-life making up the man is disturbingly skeletal, and the center of his sexuality—his penis—is flayed into an unidentifiable sea-thing. These aspects form, as Ades suggests, “an almost mocking response to the prevailing imagery of eroticism within Surrealism,” (40).

Ades, Dawn. “Notes on Two Women Surrealist Painters: Eileen Agar and Ithell Colquhoun.” Oxford Art Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, 1980, pp. 36–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360177. Accessed 19 Mar. 2023.

Colquhoun, Ithell. Gouffres Amers. Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow. 1939. https://en.wahooart.com/@@/AQSREH-Ithell-Colquhoun-Gouffres-amers. Accessed 19 Mar. 2023.

Ray, Man. Pisces. Tate. 1938. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/man-ray-pisces-t00324. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.

Towler, Lucinda. “Man Ray: Pisces.” Tate, Dec. 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/manray-pisces-t00324. Accessed 19 Mar. 2023.