Dictionary of the Surrealist Object.
Gallimard| N° d'inventaire | 17696 |
| Format | 20 x 24.7 |
| Détails | 331 p., B/W color illustrations, publisher's hardcover with dust jacket. |
| Publication | Paris, 2013 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | |
How to reconcile the call to dreams and the concern for reality, psychoanalysis and dialectical materialism? The question arose for surrealism in the late 1920s, when the movement, founded by André Breton, placed itself "at the service of the revolution." This allegiance presupposed a questioning of the social status of the artist, of the commercial fetishization of his works, to which the invention of the surrealist object responded. Suspected of "idealist" deviance by the authorities of the Communist Party, André Breton reconsidered the first "symbolically functioning objects" in relation to the "manifest content" and the links with the unconscious and the powers of overly explicit desire. The "Surrealist Exhibition of Objects," organized in 1936 at the Ratton Gallery, marked the high point of surrealist reflection applied to the object. It brings together "mathematical objects", Inuit masks, minerals, a stuffed anteater, and some surrealist objects. The war period saw the transfer of questions relating to the object to a new generation of sculptures. From Picasso to Mimi Parent and Miro), an art emerged that fused found objects and collages, reconnecting with the original, scriptural and plastic creation of surrealism. This dictionary-catalogue, which accompanies the exhibition "Surrealism and the Object", presented at the Centre Pompidou from October 30, 2013 to March 3, 2014, traces the stages of a questioning, of a creation, which provoked the advent of the object, caused the proliferation of the figure of the mannequin and led to the staging of exhibitions.
How to reconcile the call to dreams and the concern for reality, psychoanalysis and dialectical materialism? The question arose for surrealism in the late 1920s, when the movement, founded by André Breton, placed itself "at the service of the revolution." This allegiance presupposed a questioning of the social status of the artist, of the commercial fetishization of his works, to which the invention of the surrealist object responded. Suspected of "idealist" deviance by the authorities of the Communist Party, André Breton reconsidered the first "symbolically functioning objects" in relation to the "manifest content" and the links with the unconscious and the powers of overly explicit desire. The "Surrealist Exhibition of Objects," organized in 1936 at the Ratton Gallery, marked the high point of surrealist reflection applied to the object. It brings together "mathematical objects", Inuit masks, minerals, a stuffed anteater, and some surrealist objects. The war period saw the transfer of questions relating to the object to a new generation of sculptures. From Picasso to Mimi Parent and Miro), an art emerged that fused found objects and collages, reconnecting with the original, scriptural and plastic creation of surrealism. This dictionary-catalogue, which accompanies the exhibition "Surrealism and the Object", presented at the Centre Pompidou from October 30, 2013 to March 3, 2014, traces the stages of a questioning, of a creation, which provoked the advent of the object, caused the proliferation of the figure of the mannequin and led to the staging of exhibitions.