ART NONSENSE

Evening Post, Issue 28, 1 August 1936, Page 5

ART NONSENSE

SURREALISM CONQUERS

A SENSATION IN LONDON

STRANGE, EXHIBITS

All London is flocking to the exhibition of surrealist art at the Burlington Galleries, which is by way of being j the most sensational event of the social i season, wrote the London correspondent of the Melbourne "Age" on June 18. The arty people of Chelsea and St. John's Wood turned out in their arty costumes on the opening day, and ever \ since the salons have been crowded! with serious and flippant students ojf the new movement. The exhibition, or perhaps one shoud say the exhibits, are the topic of the hour at fashionable dinner tables, and those who can discourse learnedly about the theory that underlies this serious nonsense are las much sought after as those who can be witty at the expense of the surrealists, a representative collection of whose pictures is now brought together for the first time in London. What is surrealism? you may ask; and it is no simple matter to supply an answer to the question: It's theo-l retical side, according to Mr. Herbert Read, that eminent authority on all matters concerning art, from medieval stained glass to sculpture, is indebted to '-the psycho-analytical system of Freud, by means of which the uncon-! scious, that region of the mind from which the poet derives his inspiration, becomes an admitted* reality. "The common notion of reality," says Read,! "is based on the limited data of the conscious ego; the 'super-reality,' which the artist now freely proclaims is a synthesis of experience which takes into account the evidence of every manifestation of life." The irrational art of savage races, the unconscious art of children, folk art in its various forms, are claimed as justification of the. art of the super-realist who demands that we admit the vividness of our dreams. He delves, or professes to delve, into the unconscious for material for conscious art, and portrays images conjured up in moments of dreaming, asleep or awake. The result is quite baffling. LOGIC IS DEFINED. Logis is set at defiance. Fantasy is completely unbridled. Stress is laid on the inconsequential and the irrational. William Blake, they say, was the first [English surrealist painter, and his counterpart in literature was Lewis Carroll. The walrus and the carpenter would have found many congenial topics of discussion in the exhibition at Burlington Galleries, which includes several of the works of Andre Masson, one of the high priests of the move- , ment, who proclaims the fact that he makes "free use of sand, feathers, string, and nails in order to make a picture." : The exhibition's by no means confined to paintings. The majority of ' the exhibits are in fact oils and water colours, and there are a few etchings and engravings and drawings. But the unconscious demands complete freedom in the choice of materials. Sculptures in wood and plaster and metal are on show. Reinforced concrete is the medium used in at least one work. In another the effect desired is secured by the use of cork and wood, together with oil painting. One particularly daring exhibit consists of half a dozen buttons —real buttons—sewn on to a canvas across which is drawn a diagonal band of colour. All sorts of tricks are resorted to to secure effects. In one you press a button and a primitive eye revolves like a Catherine wheel. It is, indeed, the conceptions which are expressed through the medium of "objects," to use the catalogue word, that are the best fun. Object made by a madman I consists of scraps of glass and scissor blades. A mirror and an1 egg are grouped to form another exhibit. • A really effective result is achieved by draping a pair of white dancing shoes in paper cutlet-frills. "OBJECTS" WITH QUEER TITLES. The titles are often more exciting and are certainly more elusive, than the exhibits themselves in some cases. There is, for example, an imperfect torso in plaster under a cage of wire s of the type that used to be familiar as . a guard on. gas brackets. Nailed to the base of it is the handle and part of the blade of a saw. The exhibit is ', entitled "Last Voyage of Captain ~ Cook." A dinner jacket, attached to which are half a dozen liqueur glasses with a metal fly floating in each, is "Aphrodisiac Jacket." Sursealists would have a gala day if they were let loose \in a marine dealer's store. A crudely5 f wrought torso in plaster has an empty £ watch case and a toy crab dangling 1 from it on the end of a piece of string. - It is cheaply called "Loplop Introduces i- a Young Girl." The wag who attach- ' ed a kipper on a hook to one of the •> "objects" may or may not have improved the effect. He certainly did not detract from its significance. It is a pleasant relief to turn to another ' series of "objects," quite a number of _ which are the work of primitive natives ir in the Mandated Territory of New ss Guinea, and are lent by the museum r of archaeology and ethnology at Cam- - bridge. Here,' at all events, one felt, c were the productions of unknown and ;e probably unconscious artists who had r> no need to suppress the disastrous - effects of countless generations of f_ civilisation to produce their results. V. OMELETTES AND CEREMONIES. ~ There is a story going about that a the possibility was discussed of stagt. ing some sensational incident at the Id opening ceremony. The idea that met 1 with favour in some quarters was to produce an omelette and plant it on r e a lady's head while the opening n- speeches were being made. This :li clever jest was, it is stated, practised _ with brilliant effect when a similar s. exhibition was opened some time ago s. on the Continent, but, in view of the >s opinion expressed that it might be re- - garded as being in questionable taste r" in London, this bold and original idea s- was dropped. The only sensational - incidents on opening day were prpf vided by the surrealists themselves § whose dresses were in many cases tho- ' roughly in keeping with the occasion. - Attention was perhaps mainly directed = r to a young woman in a satin gown t- whose headdress consisted of a wire cage in which roses were so thickly Te entwined that her features were mid visible except the eyes around which ct she wore green eyelids and eyelashes. _ She carried in her arms a lay leg of is. the kind used to display stockings ;'- in drapers' shop windows. It, too, _ was stuffed with roses. Very droll. Jr Apart from the works of genuine iH artists who have been roped in to the iy surrealist movement the exhibits were - well described by a friend of your correspondent as "case papers for a psycho-analyst." What else can you |S> make of subjects such as a cart horse - wandering unnoticed through a crowd--1? Ed drawing-room, or a purple-heeled '■ shoe lying in a desert of sand, or a - bleeding child playing with horses' skulls on railway lines? _ SURREALIST ALPHABET. :s Needless to say, the exhibition is p- condemned as shocking in the "Daily - Mail" which seizes upon some of the ■ s' least savoury subjects. But elsewhere 1( j it is, perhaps too readily, taken as a er joke. It is the subject of jests, everywhere. Almost any piece of inconse-

t quence is dubbed surrealism. Within . forty-eight hours of the opening of the exhibition a couple of cross-talk radio comedians had concocted a rionsanse alphabet which was introduced on the 8.8.C. as a surrealist A.B.Ci This sort of thing: A (h.iy), for horses. • ' ' " ." B for hand ' (beforehand). C for (th) Highlanders (Seaforth Highlanders). I vor (for Novello). "' L Cell) for leather. M for Cis (emphasis). . . . , , , X vcr Fasha (Enrer Pasha). T for Two —and so on. ''';", But one hesitates to dismiss, as fatuous any movement ■ which: has the patronage of M. Andre' Breton anS. I Mr. Herbert Read, and, if the practice lof surrealism, as shown at • the Burlington Galleries, does . not bear, .out all these gentlemen have to say of- it in the lectures they are delivering,, it must not be assumed that the first public reaction to'the exhibition re- ■ presents its final judgment of surreal[ism. French impression was. scorned as a subversive influence when it first made its appearance and Gilbert led the laughter- about . Greenery Yallery Grosvenor Gallery^ '" ' ■ / MANET SURVIVED. But Manet survived ,the ridicule, of a public which always. resents depart' : ure from normal artistic, practice. Degas and Manet lived long enough to see their works adorn the walls of tha ; severest of public galleries. Cezanne, • despite the uproar of the critics, went . steadily on- with his new methods of : dissecting form and building ■it iip [ again. As for the "outrageous" post- [ impressionists who followed, they [ were persecuted even more bitterly, : but Van Goth, Gauguin, and their fel- - lows went madly on to prove- that i beauty was no longer a necessary corri- , ponent of.what was painted, but only > of the resultant painting itself. .'- ---, The "wild men,"' the "Fauves" of > Paris, were far from content with the i achievements of the -post-impression-i ists. With Picasso at their head they. ; strove to portray at the same time on r a two-dimensional canvas • different 1 angles of view of the same object. Sub--3 jects were perhaps supplied with threa ; noses, or views of them from the front, f back, and top were perhaps given - simultaneously. At length cubism arf rived and with it the study of primis tive art. Say what you will- of cubism, - it has left its mark o narchitecture, s interior decoration, stage setting, ■ and f fabric design. Meanwhile "futurism" :- was making headway in Italy, .but Picasso and his iellow-fauves were out - after a new ism. Surrealism was foisted on an unwilling . public and s London is at present being, drenched 1 with it. Obviously it opens the door • for charlatanry, and as the foregoing t indicates the charlatans are well res presented at the London exhibition. s But with painters of the calibre of - Picasso and Paul Nash in a movement 1 which is taken seriously by Breton arid 1 Read, it is perhaps as well that we s should not expend all our energy on l. ridicule, but should try to understand *■ what these surrealists are. really seek* 5 ing after. ' ■