Resurrecting the poetic and the marvelous with surrealism

About the exhibition “Surrealism, the Centennial Exhibition”, on view at the Centre Pompidou in Paris until January 13, 2025.

The centenary of surrealism is on the front page of almost every art magazine. It is not so common for the very elitist contemporary art magazine Artpress to make the same editorial choice as the (much) more popular Beaux Arts Magazine… In fact, Artpress has chosen the same work of art as Beaux Arts Magazine on the cover of its supplement entitled “Le Paris surréaliste des galeries”: L’ange du foyer by Max Ernst. Logical when, in parentheses, the title of the painting is completed by Le triomphe du surréalisme…

Well, it must be said that as a bonus to satisfying an urgent need for fantasy in these times, the major exhibition presented at the Centre Pompidou in Paris until January 13 is the last at the Musée national d’art moderne before its five-year closure. And since it does not lack material, the ink can therefore easily flow freely. Which is quite funny, in more ways than one, when we know that this anniversary is basically that of a "simple" preface, the one that André Breton wrote for his collection of poems entitled Poisson soluble, published in 1924. And that the French writer was the champion of the shadows and the backstage rather than the spotlight, seeing in this rebellious movement the antithesis of glorification and celebration. Especially by the institutional environment! But isn't artistic life such that it recovers everything that falls into its hands to make great theories out of it... and to fuel the art market at the same time as the debates? The "simple preface" thus became the famous Surrealist Manifesto, completely obscuring the poems it was supposed to accompany, and the manuscript now sits in its original version at the heart of the "Surrealism, the Centenary Exhibition" tour. We're not likely to complain, since there are still plenty of things to learn from this adventure! But admit that it's still very surrealist...

Designed like a labyrinth, the "Surrealism" exhibition is an unprecedented dive into the exceptional creative effervescence of the movement. Combining paintings, sculptures, objects, films, photographs and literature, the exhibition presents the works of emblematic artists such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Dora Maar and Leonora Carrington, as well as the lesser-known works of international artists such as Remedios Varo, Ithell Colquhoun, Hector Hyppolite and Tatsuo Ikeda.

Given my preamble, it will come as no surprise that the first question posed to Didier Ottinger, curator of the exhibition with Marie Sarré, by Mariia Rybalchenko, assistant director at Artpress, was of course the following: “Isn’t it a paradox to celebrate the 100th anniversary of a movement that has always challenged the dominant order?” To which the deputy director of the Musée national d’art moderne responded with a nice pirouette: “This question concerns almost the entire history of modern art, which is intertwined with the series of avant-gardes challenging the established cultural order. Can the institution integrate what, by nature, challenges it?” » This reminds me, by the way, of the subject recently discussed for you in these pages, concerning street art in museums, on the occasion of which we wondered about the paradox of street art suddenly flaunting on the walls between four walls… It is indeed difficult for a human being who has no intention of starving to death to create works of art without them one day becoming works of art for sale!

“The history of surrealism was written outside of the institution. In the 1930s, there were no museums in the French context capable of hosting modern art,” continues Didier Ottinger. “The history of surrealism was written in galleries, and this was the case even after the Second World War when institutions dedicated to this modern art existed. When, in 1926, surrealism wanted to assert its existence, what did its members do? They exhibited in galleries.” And there you have it.

The Goemans, Ratton, Wildenstein, Maeght, Cordier art galleries… not one escapes it in France! And in the United States, it was the Hartford Museum that organized the first surrealist exhibition on American soil in 1931, before the MoMA took over in 1936 with Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism: an exhibition in which André Breton himself collaborated. Not without reluctance, certainly, but he collaborated. Didier Ottinger rightly concludes that “the hiatus between surrealism and institution is therefore not ontological in nature, but a question of context and historical situation.” It is not for nothing that the Centre Pompidou enlisted the support of many Parisian art galleries to celebrate this centenary. As Marie Sarré points out, "André Breton, on his own, opened three galleries: La Galerie surréaliste, rue Jacques Callot, in 1926, the Gradiva gallery in 1937 and the A l’Etoile froidee gallery in 1952. It quickly became essential to us to report on this excitement and to involve Parisian galleries in the centenary celebration. This collaboration, practically unprecedented, organized in partnership with the Comité professionnel des galeries d’art, brings together more than forty galleries and bookstores: not only historical, monographic or thematic exhibitions, but also contemporary counterpoints that testify to the topicality of the surrealist movement, to the urgency, for a large number of artists, to resuscitate surrealist poetics and wonder today."

And Didier Ottinger added that "this collaboration between the network of Parisian galleries and a national institution has already been carried out by the Palais de Tokyo, it focused on contemporary art. In the historical field, I do not see any antecedent to the collaboration that we have established with the Comité des galeries. Surrealism perhaps lends itself naturally to this type of relationship. More generally, it is perhaps time to reconsider the relations between the institution and "the art market", to approach this question without preconceptions, and in a transparent manner. " Finally, in a world where everything can now be bought, perhaps one day museums will also sell works of art...

But let's get back to surrealism as an artistic movement. Since the exhibition ends in 1969, we are entitled to wonder in which year it really died. "In 1966, when André Breton died, the surrealists questioned the survival of the movement," recalls Marie Sarré. "Jean Schuster announced its official dissolution on October 4, 1969 in an article entitled "The Fourth Song". Can we say that surrealism is dead? We only need to look at its relevance in contemporary art, not only in the plastic arts, but also in cinema." Surrealism is dead, long live surrealism!

Article written by Valibri en Roulotte

Illustration: Max Ernst, “The Angel of the Hearth (The Triumph of Surrealism)”, 1937 © Adagp, Paris. Vincent Everarts Photography