Wall St.Journal 27Feb2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Thursday, February 27, 2020 |A

cally), a form of free-flow-

ing, uncensored expression

without reason and control.

A disciple of Freud, Breton

believed that the most di-

rect path to artistic libera-

tion and revelation was

through the mining of

dreams, alternate realities

and the subconscious.

Among Surrealism’s favorite

parlor games was “exquisite

corpse”—during which a col-

lective picture or story was

successively, “blindly” exe-

cuted bit by bit on a folded

piece of paper as it was

passed from person to per-

son, with the whole finished

work revealed only at the

end. It was so named be-

cause one such game pro-

duced “The exquisite corpse

will drink the young wine.”

In 1920s Paris, Surrealist

revolution and transgression

were in the air, but not ev-

eryone agreed on how to

make Surrealist works or

what they should look like.

“Midnight in Paris: Surreal-

ism at the Crossroads,

1929,” an exhibition of 80

paintings, prints, sculptures,

drawings, collages, photo-

graphs, films and documents

at St. Petersburg’s Dalí Mu-

seum, proposes to examine

Surrealism’s rich visual fab-

ric, conflicts and rivalries

during the movement’s hey-

day in the City of Light. Or-

ganized by Didier Ottinger,

deputy director of the Mu-

sée national d’art moderne

at the Centre Pompidou, and

William Jeffett, chief curator

of special exhibitions at the

Dalí, it focuses on the mo-

ment just before Surrealism

burst onto and began to

dominate the world stage.

Besides its massive Dalí

collection, St. Petersburg’s

Dalí Museum includes a

biomorphic geodesic glass

bubble, a central helical

staircase fashioned after

the DNA spiral, an immer-

sive virtual-reality experi-

ence with a Dalí painting

and, in the lobby gift shop,

“The Rainy Rolls” (2010).

It’s a working reinterpreta-

tion, utilizing a 1933 Rolls-

Royce limousine, of the

Spanish Surrealist’s “Rainy

Taxi” (1938)—a Cadillac

limousine inside of which

Dalí placed live snails, man-

nequin occupants and a

downpour. So perhaps it’s

unsurprising that “Midnight

in Paris” doesn’t skimp on

dramatics.

Inside the exhibition gal-

leries’ dimly-lighted, laby-

rinthine corridors, painted

dark gray and piped with

period music, are three-di-

mensional reproductions of

Hector Guimard’s Art Nou-

veau Paris Métro entrance

signs, a small movie theater

and life-size silhouettes of

the show’s featured artists.

Rather than a fully devel-

oped thesis on its subject,

“Midnight in Paris” is more

like a slice of 1920s Paris art

and nightlife—a Surreal fun-

house, an introductory mise-

en-scène.

Though overly theatrical,

somewhat cramped and oc-

casionally piecemeal (Dalí,

understandably, is overrep-

resented, whereas Alberto

Giacometti’s Surrealist

phase consists of “Disagree-

able Object,” the totemic ab-

stract plaster phallus, horn

or club from 1931), the show

is well-paced, various and

visually striking. It includes

gorgeous nocturnal photo-

graphs of Paris by Brassaï

and two hanging wire por-

trait heads by Alexander

Calder—eerie, disembodied

specters, suggesting severed

heads, moving slowly in the

breeze of passersby and

casting haunting shadows.

What this exhibition lacks

in depth it makes up for in

melancholic timbre and mis-

cellany, making a strong

point for Surrealism’s revo-

lutionary diversity. Max

Ernst, in his dreamlike

novel “La Femme 100 Têtes”

(1929), saw collage as the

official challenge to tradi-

tional painting. Joan Miró,

who wanted to smash the

Cubists’ structures and gui-

tars, “to assassinate paint-

ing,” looked to children’s art

as inspiration for his ab-

stract landscape “Painting”

(1930). Jean Arp, embracing

the poetry of chance, pro-

duced biomorphic abstract

sculptures such as “Meta-

morphosis” (1935), which

conflate animal, cloud, fruit,

mineral and tear, as well as

sculptures whose multiple

elements could be reposi-

tioned by viewers.

In a 1920s series of auto-

matic figure drawings of

massacres, André Masson—

inspired by Nietzsche, the

Marquis de Sade and visits

to Parisian slaughter-

houses—equated the body

with landscape, sex with

battlefield, in neoclassical

works of orgiastic violence.

Dalí, collaborating with fel-

low Spaniard Luis Buñuel on

the illogical film “Un Chien

Andalou” (1929), embraced

automatic writing, collage,

jump-cutting and non sequi-

turs, creating, Dalí said, “a

dagger in the heart of the

spiritual and elegant Paris.”

Masson, a founding Sur-

realist, saw the movement

as an immersion “into what

the German romantics call

the night side of things.”

However, “towards 1930,”

Masson wrote, “a formidable

disaster appeared in its

midst: the demagogy of the

irrational.” “Midnight in

Paris” touches on Surreal-

ism’s highs and lows, its

darkness, poetry, beauty and

banalities, reminding view-

ers—at the heart of the Dalí

Museum, no less—that the

movement is much, much

more than melting watches.

Midnight in Paris: Surreal-

ism at the Crossroads, 1929

The Dalí Museum, through

April 9

Mr. Esplund, the author of

“The Art of Looking: How to

Read Modern and

Contemporary Art” (Basic

Books), writes about art for

the Journal.

ART REVIEW

More Than

Melting

Watches

Revealing the breadth of Surrealism

before it exploded onto the global scene

BYLANCEESPLUND

LIFE & ARTS

St. Petersburg, Fla.

SURREALISM,the literary

and artistic movement

started by the French poet

Guillaume Apollinaire in

1917 and officially launched,

with manifestos, in Paris in

1924, remains among the

most ubiquitous, popular

and influential modern art

movements. By 1936, when

Salvador Dalí graced the

cover of Time, Surrealism

was an international sensa-

tion. Yet its founders and

followers, a stylistically and

philosophically diverse

group of artists, writers and

filmmakers, were notori-

ously cantankerous. The

French writer André Breton,

Surrealism’s self-appointed

leader, was dogmatic and

ruthless. He regularly or-

dained and then excommu-

nicated artists from the fold,

at times through physical

confrontations. Even Giorgio

de Chirico, whose Metaphys-

ical dreamscapes are argu-

ably the first modern Surre-

alist artworks, was held in

contempt for embracing—as

in his painting of highly pol-

ished, animalistic nudes,

“Ancient Wrestling”

(1931-32)—nonsanctioned

classical subject matter.

Like Dada, another of its

progenitors, Surrealism ad-

vocated for irrationality,

chance, randomness and re-

volt. Breton promoted psy-

chic automatism (art and

writing made automati-

The show is well-

paced, various and

visually striking, if

overly theatrical.

Salvador Dalí’s ‘Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion’ (1930), above, and Alexander Calder’s ‘Mask’ (1929), below

Jean Arp’s ‘Pagoda Fruit’ (1934), above, and Salvador Dali’s ‘The

Spectral Cow’ (1928), below

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