Le Surréalisme et l’objet — Centre Georges Pompidou — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: October 30, 2013 → March 3, 2014

A second chapter in the history of Surrealism began in 1927 when its most active members — André Breton, Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, Pierre Unik and Benjamin Péret — joined the French Communist Party. Brandishing the banner of Surrealism, Breton and his friends asserted their aim of surpassing and reinventing the real. The movement’s founding Manifesto of 1924 called for an “interior model”, and a contempt for the perceptible world symbolised by the closed eyes of the figure in Giorgio De Chirico’s Cerveau de l’enfant (1914).

Dreams and the powers of the subconscious inspired an automatism in drawing and writing; a “high speed” poetry designed to move far beyond reality and throw it into turmoil.

What is exhibited in art today under the auspices of the object is based on principles advocated by the Surrealist object. The play on words and images characterising the ready-made inspire the work of Ed Ruscha. The “disturbing strangeness” of mannequins continues to fascinate Paul McCarthy. The “games” of Hans Bellmer’s Doll are prolonged in Cindy Sherman’s Sex Toys. Heim Steinbach places Surrealist psycho-objects on his contemporary consoles. Philippe Mayaux perpetuates Marcel Duchamp’s anatomical moulds — Objet-dard and others. Théo Mercier reinvents the Cadavre exquis in a souvenir shop for tourists. The iconoclastic, libertarian vigour of Surrealism innervates Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux’s practical joke and trick store. The magic of the Enigme d’Isidore Ducasse lives on in Mark Dion’s proliferation of postal packages.