Native Surrealists in New York
Valery Oisteanu
John Wilde, Exhibiting the Weapon, 1945, Oil on panel, 10 x 8 in. Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Gift of Frederick Burkhardt.
Homegrown Surrealism is not a new discovery. Ever since the 1920s, notables such as Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Mina Loy, Julien Levy, Peggy Guggenheim, Charles Henri Ford and Sydney Janis, to name just a few, have championed the cause. The grand new exhibit, "Surrealism USA," is a cheerful reunion in a cyclical revival, even if it risks falling into an artistic-regionalism. Some of the recent historical precedents of Surrealism-Americana with local color are:
+ A 1977 exhibition at the Rutgers University Art Gallery called "Surrealism and American Art 1931-1947," curated by Jeffrey Wechsler.
+ "In the Mind’s Eye," the Dada and Surrealism in Chicago Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1985.
+ "Surrealism Embodied: The Figure in American Art, 1933-1953" at the Michael Rosenfeld gallery in New York, 1992.
+ "Staging Surrealism: A Succession of Collections I & II, an exhibit at the Wexner Center for the arts at the Ohio State University, organized by Donna de Salvo, 1997-98.
+ "Surreal Wisconsin" at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Sara Krajewski, 1998.
The new century has called for a new reevaluation of American Surrealist independence, internationalism and collaboration. With its stellar lineup of artists, "Surrealism USA" showcases a substantial selection of recognizable and brand names from a movement that produced great works and as many masterpieces. This show comprises an exclusive salon of curator Isabelle Dervaux. She presents the avant-garde academia with a feminine presence, including works by Gertrude Abercrombie, Dorothea Tanning, Stella Snead, Vera Berdich, Helen Lundeberg, Kay Sage and Louise Bourgeois to name a just few. As always, the selection depends also on the taste of the curator and the ever-changing availability of the art-works.
The old contradictions of European Surrealism are still maintained in this show, including the "abstract versus figurative" argument or the grand issue: How much of Surrealism was imported from France through the influence of Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Roberto Matta, Andre Masson and YvesTanguy, versus "home-brewed" by the local, even regional Surrealism as practiced by Man Ray, Joseph Cornell, Charles Howard, David Smith and newcomers of the 1940s, Isabele and Patric Waldberg, Dorothea Tanning, David Hare, and Enrico Donati. Here too are the results of Barnett Newman’s famous 1945 declaration that Surrealism was dead probably referencing the Abstract and Abstract Expressionism that remained in America, which helped lead American painters to veer into new directions.
At its best, this exhibit is a thoughtfully selected group of artists and works that have graced the art landscape for almost a century, including creations by Alfonso Ossorio, Federico Castellion, Kurt Seligmann, Kay Sage, David Hare, Archile Gorky and Dorothea Tanning, which put on the map several schools and generation of Americans, including (in the catalogue) Wolfgang Paalen with his magic magazine, DYN.
Several patterns emerge as a result of a "deconstructionist" analysis: Eyes: Disembodied eyes are everywhere, as in Hugh Mesibov’s Eye Washing Machine (1942), and a catapult with a blue eye crying mechanical tears. Enrico Donati’s sculpture, Fist (1946), depicts two eyes squashed in a hand. In the painting, Palace (1942), by Adolf Gottlieb, eight haunting eyes stare from the canvas. In The Evil Eye (1947), Enrico Donati explores this perennial dream subject. In her painting View Through Distorted Spectacles (1950), Vera Verdich depicts more than 20 eyes staring from the walls and billboards of the city. In A Near Miss Work (1945), John Wilde portrays one eye on a wall, another in the hair of his self-portrait. Even Mark Chagall places an eye on the Eiffel Tower (1942), and Jackson Pollock places four eyes in the painting, Bird (1941). Many other variations of the eye appear in almost half of the paintings on display.
Hands are another favorite element in surrealist works, as in James Guy’s Police (1926), in which a handprint is the central character. Detached hands float in the air in an untitled 1935 work by Rubin Kadish, combined with a medical chart featuring a sectioned eyeball.� Three detached hands float around an armless Venus in Lucien Lebaudt’s Shampoo at Moss Beach (1935). Federico Castelion’s The Dark Figure (1938) features hands growing from the ground and from the wall. More detached hands, some holding up a dancer, figure in Harold Lehman?s Portrait of a Dancer and a Sculptor (1934).
Another trope: the heads of birds. As in Charles Rein’s Bird Heads (1945), Stella Snead?s Animal Totems (1947), full of totemic birds, and Max Ernst’s Stolen Mirror (1941), which features birds? heads built into his frottage oil painting, along with his famous crayon frottage, The Bird People (1942), akin to Andre Masson?s ?The Germs of the Cosmos? (1942), with a bird head as a central figure?all of these works portray an interspecies transmutation of bird heads onto the human form.
A quibble: A master such as Charles Henri Ford, considered by many the American-literary head of the Surrealist movement, is described in the show?s accompanying catalog a just an "editor of a magazine not exclusively surrealist but sympathetic to surrealism." Actually, Ford?s surrealist magazine View is still being reprinted as an anthology. Andre Breton?s book of Surrealist poems, translated and published by Ford in 1946, is not credited as such. In fact, Ford was one of the first American Surrealists. He published some 20 books of poetry and created a visual body of work as well, including collage, photography, sculpture, posters and artists? books. His first publication, Blues (1930), created when Ford was only 17, presented Parker Tyler, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes and Paul Bowles. His lifetime companion, Pavel Tchelitchew, is also missing in action on the walls of the National Academy Museum, due to the unavailability of his artwork, although he is present in the catalogue with the reproduction of his famous painting, Hide and Seek (1940-1942). Many great American surrealist women such as Beatrice Wood, Marisol, May Wilson, Sari Dean and Lil Picard also are missing.
In her essay, "The Tale of Two Earrings," Isabell Dervaux mentions the story of Peggy Guggenheim wearing two different earrings, one designed by Yves Tanguy, the other by Calder, "in order to show impartiality between Surrealism and abstract art." Thus, by 1940 in America, abstract art meant geometric abstraction, and Surrealism meant Dali. "No wonder the two appear to be irreconcilable," concludes Dervaux. It is clear, though, from H. Barr’s creation of a major exhibition in 1937, "Fantastic Art, DADA and Surrealism" at MoMA, and Peggy Guggenheim’s efforts in the arts of the 20th Century, that they favored contact and infiltration between the styles. "The most obvious attempt," says Dervaux, "can be found in the work of Robert Motherwell’s collages and paintings," and in the works of Ad Reinhardt and Adolph Gottlieb. "Surrealism and abstraction could indeed be integrated," concluded Dervaux. "Automatism was finally seen as a way to renew abstract art."
By the time of the Museum of Modern Art exhibition of 1951, "Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America," Surrealism had been absorbed into the category of abstract art and had become dominant in the avant-garde. Accordingly, "Surrealism USA" displays brilliant abstract surrealist hybrids, such as Jan Matulka’s "Surrealist Landscape" (1935), Arshile Gorky’s study for "Nighttime Enigma and Nostalgia" (1932), the collaborative painting of William Baziotes, Gerome Kamrowski and Jackson Pollock (1940-1941), Knud Merrild’s "Aroma of Birth" (1942), Robert Motherwell’s "Figure with Blots" (1943), and an untitled Mark Rothko from 1945.
Another notable aspect of this exhibition is its unusual design. The National Academy has joined forces with the Parsons School of Design to create a viewing experience inspired by Surrealist installations such as Duchamp’s string galleries and Frederick Kiesler’s biomorphic concave walls. "Surrealism USA," with its 120 paintings, sculptures and works on paper provides the visitor with a solid view of native surrealism between the 1930s and 1950s in New York, Dallas, L.A., San Francisco and Chicago. A fully illustrated catalogue includes contributions from Gerrit Lansing, Michael Duncan, Robert Lubar, Robert Hobbs and Scott Rothkopf. Both the exhibit and the well-designed catalogue prove educational for surrealist art lovers. Moreover, they demystify this over-intellectualized philosophy and movement, making it more accessible to a larger public.
