Surrealism: 1936The wacky and alarming spirit of Surrealism lives on at the Zabriskie Gallery which has assembled an ambitious and terrific collection of objects, books, photos and documentation by all the most well-known, and other lesser known, practitioners of the "more real than real" art. The show zeroes in on the year 1936 when major Surrealism shows violated sense in London, Paris and New York. A display case in which books and letters are exhibited serves as an introduction. Julien Levy's book, Surrealism, is most helpfully opened to a page that exclaims in various typefaces: "Surrealism is not a rational, dogmatic, and consequently static theory of art. Surrealism is a point of view, and as such applies to Painting, Literature, Play, Behavior ... To reestablish man as psychology instead of anatomy. To revivify mythology, Fetishism, parable, proverb, and metaphor. To recreate man's efforts in the light of Freud's analysis of the subconscious . . . To exploit the mechanisms of inspiration. To intensify experience." The movement had "officially" been born twelve years earlier (in 1924, the year of Andre Breton's first "Manifeste de Surrealisme"), but as the evidence of this show proves, it hadn't tired in the least. Critics who'd prophesized a quick end to the novelty of this movement, couldn't have imagined in any portion of their brains the sources and regions of hidden thought these artists and social revolutionaries had only just tapped and begun to exploit. The shock, disturbance of social values, and affront to rationality is still very fresh and hilarious. Still vigorous is the Surrealist's appropriation of ordinary ephemera and reuse of them in startling new juxtapositions that redefine their original inherent beauty. This overlapping of domains exploded the myth of sentiment we might have had for the sanctity of any object. The movement was a totally new way of seeing. It set out to upset staid values in society not just the art world. It was a social movement expressing itself in art works. Its appeal, disgust and bewilderment endures through generations to a busload of gallery-goers in from New Jersey (where Man Ray was publishing books in 1915). Included are small boxes and jars stuffed by Joseph Cornell with the excess of a dream factory. Shelf life is indeterminate. Dali's Monument to Kant presents a disorientingly simple scale model complete with plaque of what might actually be the real thing, except the rock colors are a little garish. Bindings by George Hugnet and Paul Bonet of books by Paul Eluard, Raymond Roussel, Andre Breton and the "Bulletin of the MOMA" are masterpieces of transferring the ordinary to exotic new locations: a layer of bark with windows through which we see dice, snails and a glass eye covers one volume. Duchamp's Rotorelief is a pattern of overlapping circles that constantly rotates like a record. There are also dozens of pieces and photographs of and by Tanguy, Ernst, Oppenheim, Magritte, Man Ray, Dora Maar, Giacometti, Brassai, Bellmer, Arp and several others. Remarkable and unfortunate that a show of this scale hasn't been written up in the papers. (Arts, May 1986) |