FOLLOWING MATERIALITY163influence that Freudian theories undeniably had on these artworks, it is
also important to remember that the introduction of everyday objects in
the surrealist context involves more than sexuality and desire. Accord-
ing to André Breton, the main aim of the surrealist object lay in its ability to
derail the perceptive processes, the cultural conventions that conceal ob-
jects to our perception, thus dialectically rewiring perception and rep-
resentation.^2 However, art historical discourses inevitably default to an
anthropocentric, epistemological finitude, which regularly stops its criti-
cal prodding at the point of the inaccessibility of Kantian transcendental
idealism.
Careful consultation of surrealists’ texts reveals, for instance, that
Breton^3 and other artists were concerned with an early form of flat ontology
in which objects, similarly to those in Graham Harman’s object-oriented
ontology, existed in two dimensions: the “material realm,” the essence of
the object or the impenetrable essence that characterizes it, and the sen-
sual realm, the numerous qualities that an object displays in relation to
other objects.^4 This condition will be further explored in chapter 6, but
for the time being, it is important to note that the Freudian notion of the
uncanny entails a rather similar structure. The uncanny object is simul-
taneously materially present and epistemologically withdrawn, yet it is
also in constant relation to other objects. By establishing this fluidity,
Harman hopes to instill an ontological instability by which all objects are
made uncanny, not in the sense that they quiver in symbolic allusions,
but that they remain inaccessible beyond the sensuality that other objects
cast upon them—“the mist of accidental features and profile” that mate-
rial presence cannot escape. Our apprehension of the object is therefore
always relegated to the surface level: even when we cut into an apple or an
animal body, our action is only capable of multiplying surfaces: the es-
sence of the object relentlessly withdraws. Our impossibility to ascertain
the essence of objects situates all experienceable surfaces as veneers, thin
layers of materiality inscribed with information but simultaneously unable
to make deeper claims about the essence of the objects they conceal.
As a surrealist piece and in consideration of its emphasis on surface
aesthetics, Oppenheim’s Object can be simply understood as leveraging
this very notion of phenomenological essentialism—one that is sufficient
to grant the piece an agential force it would not possess without its fur
coating. Trained by the long-lasting legacy of classical art, the western art