PARIS AND THE SURREALISTS

The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona presents the exhibition PARIS AND THE SURREALISTS, curated by the art historian and critic Victoria Combalía, which will run in Gallery 2 of the CCCB from 17 February to 22 May 2005. The exhibition is a co-production of the CCCB and the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, where it will be presented from June to September 2005.

Paris and the surrealists is an exhibition that looks at surrealism from inside the movement. Taking a broad overview, it analyses the principal themes that concerned the artists and highlights the relevance and modernity of the movement. The city of Paris is the linchpin: the over 370 works that make up the exhibition were inspired, created, shown or collected in the French capital. For the surrealists, Paris was their studio, their muse and their utopia.

An initiatory journey

A whole constellation of artists, writers, film directors, activists and revolutionaries met in Paris after World War I. Drawn to the City of Light, the art capital since the 19th century, they brought about an authentic revolution in the field not just of images but also of ideas. Today, the concentration of artists that took place in Paris with the emergence of surrealism seems quite unimaginable to us, yet this phenomenon of passionate comings-together, not without great emotional and political tensions, produced spectacular results between 1919 and 1966. Paris became, in the words of Guy Debord, the “workshop of the future”, with numerous surrealist works providing the germ for countless subsequent artistic productions.

In 2002, two major exhibitions about surrealism took place in Europe. ‘Surrealism. Desire Unbound’, at the Tate Modern, explored the role of love and affective complicities in the movement’s development; and ‘La Révolution surréaliste’, at the Centre Georges Pompidou, illustrated the importance of surrealism with a great many masterworks. While the former took a specific approach, the latter stood out for the number and quality of the exhibits on show. Since then, studies about the movement have proliferated in academic circles, and a critical debate has begun following the publication of the book by Jean Clair, Du Surréalisme (Paris, 2003), that challenges the radicalism of the movement.

This exhibition sets out to explain surrealism by means of a visual and textual itinerary, from the point of view of surrealism itself, from inside the surrealist mentality. We therefore intend to reconstitute and explain the movement not just from its aesthetic viewpoint but also from its ethically mould-breaking spirit and recall its revolutionary political stance ⎯ in short, to remind spectators that surrealism, far from being a mere literary or artistic school, aspired to the total emancipation of the individual.

As it is a co-production of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània, an institution specialising in the relationship between city and culture, the exhibition will devote particular attention to the relations that surrealism established with its host city, and especially the view that the surrealists presented of Paris with their vindication of a series of public spaces such as the passages, the marchés aux puces, the cafés, certain public monuments, the lit-up advertisements, the circus and the cabarets.

The exhibition will be organised around a series of themes that marked the development of surrealism in Paris between the wars. Audiovisual language plays a major role in the exhibition: some of the themes are addressed in productions by the CCCB’s audiovisuals department and a film cycle will be organised alongside the exhibition, including surrealist films and others about the Paris of the 1930s.

SECTIONS OF THE EXHIBITION Each section is in itself an exhibition within the exhibition.

FORERUNNERS GROUP LIFE. PROTAGONISTS THE DREAM AUTOMATISM. OBJECTIVE CHANCE DISQUIETING STRANGENESS THE MARVELLOUS. THE OCCULT. THE MYTHOLOGICAL. MADNESS THE GAZE AND THE MASK THE HORRIFIC SUBLIME THE FORMLESS THE PRIESTESS AND THE MUSE SURREALIST EROS ART AND POLITICAL COMMITMENT SURREALIST NATURE PARIS THE SURREALIST GAZE. A NEW WAY OF EXHIBITING CHANGING ONE’S LIFE. AGAINST TABOOS CADAVRES EXQUIS AND NEW TECHNIQUES THE ENIGMATIC OBJECT POETRY AND METAMORPHOSIS

Curatorship

Victoria Combalía is an art historian and critic with many years’ experience in various fields related to modern and contemporary art. The fact that she met various members of the surrealist group (Elisa Breton, Aube Breton, Dorothea Tanning, Dora Maar and Jean-Jacques Lebel, among others) allows her to approach the expository project ‘from the inside’ in a way that would not otherwise be possible. She lectures in Modern Art at the University of Barcelona and contributes critical work to prestigious national and international media. She is a specialist in the work of Joan Miró, about whom she has written El descubrimiento de Miró, Miró y sus críticos and Picasso-Miró: miradas cruzadas; Antoni Tàpies (Tàpies and Tàpies, los años ochenta), conceptual art (La poética de lo neutro) and Dora Maar (Dora Maar, la fotografía, Picasso y los surrealistas), on whom she is an internationally renowned expert. She has recently published El primer Eros. África, América, Oceanía (Palau de la Virreina, Barcelona, 2004).

She has curated numerous exhibitions, including ‘Art and Modernity in the Catalan-speaking regions’ (Kunsthalle, Berlin, 1978), ‘Barcelona-Paris-New York’ (1985), ‘Tàpies, the eighties’ (1988), ‘Joan Brossa’, 1941-1991 (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 1991), ‘Seeing Miró. The irradiation of Miró in Spanish art’ (Madrid, Barcelona and Palma, Fundació la Caixa; Las Palmas, CAAM, 1993), ‘Kandinsky. The revolution of pictorial language’ (MACBA, 1996), ‘How we see ourselves. Female images and archetypes’ (L’Hospitalet, Centre Cultural Tecla Sala and Madrid, Círculo de Bellas Artes, 1998), ‘Dora Maar, photography, Picasso and the surrealists’ (Munich, Haus der Kunst; Marseilles, Vieille Charité; and L’Hospitalet, Centre Cultural Tecla Sala, 2002). The exhibition’s scientific committee comprises Jean Michel Goutier, advisor to the exhibitions ‘André Breton’ and ‘La Révolution surréaliste’ (both at the Centre Pompidou), and Dominique Rabourdin, a specialist in surrealism.

CATALOGUE The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue reproducing all of the works on show and including articles by specialists in the field: Jean Michel Goutier (El surrealismo y los infortunios de la política), Dominique Rabourdin (Las revistas del surrealismo), Robert Lebel (El surrealismo en vísperas de la guerra, los objetos surrealistas) and the curator, Victoria Combalía (Eros femenino surreal).

Pressetext

PARIS AND THE SURREALISTS
Zusammenarbeit von Centre de Cultura Contemporània Barcelona (CCCB), Museo de Bellas Artes Bilbao
Kurator: Victòria Combalia

mit André Breton, Dora Maar, Francis Picabia, u.a.

Stationen:
17.02.05 - 22.05.05 CCCB Barcelona
Juni - September 2005 Museo de Bellas Artes Bilbao