Press release for Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism
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Press release for Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, source[1]
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The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, announces that its Exhibition of Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism will open to the public Wednesday morning, December 9*
ded by a private preview and reception given by the Trustees to
bers of the Museum and their guests on Tuesday evening, December 8.
The Exliibition will remain on viev/ through Sunday, January 17, except
on Christmas and New Year's Days, when the Museum is to be closed.
The four floors of the Museum will be devoted to the exhibition,
which will include more than 700 objects*
object shown will be about 1450; the latest, 1936. More than 157
American and European artists will be represented, ranging from such
extremes as Giovanni di Paolo and Leonardo da Vinci of the fifteenth
century to Walt Disney, Rube Goldberg and Thurber of the twentieth
century, and including such famous names both old and modern as Hieronymus Bosch, Duerer, Arcimboldo, Hogarth, William Blake, Cruickshank, Lewis Carrol, Daumier, Delacroix, Edward Lear, Redon, Chagall, de Chirico, Duchamp, Picasso, Arp, Dali, Ernst, Grosz, Magritte,Miro, Klee, Man Ray, Tanguy, Peter Blume, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Alexander Calder.
The exhibition is under the direction of Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Director of the Museum,who states in his Preface to the catalog: "Fantastic art, Dada and Surrealism is the second of a series of exhibitions planned to present in an objective and historical manner the principal movements of modern art.
and Abstract Art, was held at the Museum in the spring of this year.
The fantastic and marvellous in European and American art of the past
five centuries is represented by about one hundred and fifty items.
The main body of the exliibition is devoted to the Dada and Surrealist
movements of the past twenty years together i r t certain pioneers v sih
A number of artists, both American and European, who have worked along
related but independent lines, are brought together in a separate div- '
ision.
on comparative material, including the art of children, and the insane/'
The public opening will be prece-
The earliest date of
The first of these, Cubism
There are also special sections on fantastic architecture and
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In giving a brief outline of Dada and Surrealism, ;ir. Barr states:
"In Zurich in 1916, well before the end of the war, Dada was born, the
child of disillusion
at all conventional values and all pretensions.
thing (including modern art) and accepted anything.
tures of flotsam, odds and ends, paper, string, snapshots, clock-
works, popular illustrations, lace and bus tickets.
tures with their eyes shut or their backs turned.
D^daism grow in Paris and Germany.
artists for whom the war, Versailles and inflation had made civiliza-
tion and art, temporarily at least, a bad joke.
"Surrealism, which developed in Paris around 1924, was the direct
descendent of the Dadaist interest in the bizarre, the spontaneous,
and the anti-rational.
the iconoclasm of Dada it added serious researches into subconscious
images, dreams, visions, automatic and psychoanalytic drawings.
"Surrealism, so far as its serious adherents are concerned, is
more than a literary or an art movement:
of life, a cause which has involved some of the most brilliant paint-
ers and poets of our age.
fifteen years ago Surrealism has spread throughout the world with
active groups in London, Brussels, vtfarsaw, Copenhagen, Prague, Barce-
lona, Belgrade, Stockholm, Teneriffe, Japan and New York."
It was in 1922 that Andre* Breton, French poet, writer and editor
who had been a practicing psychiatrist during the war, gathered most
of the ex-Dadaists into a new group which assumed the name "Surrealist)'
in 1924, when Breton published the First Manifesto of Surrealism.
Breton defined Surrealism as follows:
and spiritual exhaustion.
The Dadaists scoffed
They rejected every-
They made pic-
They made pic-
After the Armistice
Dada was a bitter gesture made by
But while the Surrealist program carried on
it is a philosophy, a way
Since the formation of its nucleus in Paris
SURREALISM! Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, verbally, in writing, or by other means, the real process of thought. Thought1s dicta- tion, in the absence of all control exercised by the reason and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupa- tions* Surrealism rests in the belief in the superior rea- lity of certain forms of association neglected hereto- fore; in the omnipotence of the dream and in the dis- interested play of thougho. It tends definitely to do away with all other psychic mechanisms and to substi- tute itself for thorn in the solution of the principal problems of life.
Breton also has declared:
hatred of the marvellous which is so rampant among certain people,that
I am resolved to render powerless that
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ridicule to which they are no eager to expo DO it. Briefly: The mar-
vellous ic always beautiful, anything that is marvellouD in beautiful;
indeed, nothing but the marvellous in beautiful."
European artists represented in the Exhibition may be grouped an
f o 1 lo w s: Fantastic Art of the Past: 15th and 16th centurion: Arcimboldo, Baldung, Hieronymus Bosch, Brueghel, Duerer, Finé, Floris, Giovanni de Paolo, Goujon, Huys, Jamnitzer, Leonardo da Vinci, Agostino de Musi, Penni, Richier, Schongauer, Schoen, Vogtherr.
17th and 18th centuries; Paul de la Barre, Stefano della Bella, Boemmel, Bracelli, Callot, Eeckhout, Hogarth, Larmessin, Morghen, Piranesi.
F o . the French Revolution to the Great War: rii
Jean Victor Adam, William Blake, Bresdin, Busch, Lewis Carroll, Cruickshank, Daumier, Delacroix, Ensor, Fuessli, Gaillot, Gill, Gillray, Goya, Grandville, Heath, Victor Hugo, Kubin, Edward Lear, Lenormand, Lucas, Meryon, Naegele, Le Poitevin, Ramelet, Redon, Rousseau; classified in this group are two American artists, Joseph Boggs Beale and Thomas Cole.
20th Century Pioneers:
Chagall, De Chirico, Klee, Picasso.
Dada and Surrealis:
Agar, Aragon, Arp, Baader, Baargeld, Banting, Bellmer, Brauner, Dominguez, Eluard, Ernst, Fini, Giacometti, Grosz, Haussmann, Hayter, Hoech, Hugo, Hugnet, Janco, Jean, Maar, Magritte, Masson, Mednikoff, Mesens, Miro , Moore, Nash, Oelze, Oppenheim, Paalen, Pailthorpe, Penrose, Picabia, Man Ray, Ribemont-Dessaignes, Schad, Schwitters, Seligmann, Tanguy, Tauber-Arp, Tzara.
Artists Independent of the Dada-Surroalist movements:
Domola-iNiouwenhuls, Fernandez, Gonzales, Kukryniksy (composite name
of three Russian illustrators: Kupriyanov, Krylov, sokolov), Wyndham
Lewis, Malevich, Moholy-Nagy, Pierre Roy, Tonny, Ganz, Benquet, Cheval,
Gaudi, Guimard, Terry; classified in thin group is the greatest num-
ber of American artists in the exhibition:
Julien Alberts, C.C. Beall, Fred G. Becker, Meyer Bernstein, Peter
Blume, Alexander Caldor, Fedorico Castelion, Walter E. Disney, Arthur
3. Dove, Katherine S. Dreier, Walker Evans, Lornor Feitelson, Hugo
Gellert, Allan C. Gilbert; Reuben Lucius Goldberg, 0. Louis Guglielmi,
Waldo Glover Kaufer, Benjamin Kopman, Helen Lundoberg, George Piatt
Lynes, Loren llaclver, George J. Harinko, Knud Merrild, Inamu Hoguohl,
Georgia 0TKeeffe, Wallace Putnam, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Andre' Smith,
Harry Sternberg, James Thurbcr, George A. Wotherspoon, Jeane Holsing-
ton, Elizabeth King Hawley.
Paul de la Barre, Gtefano do11a Bella, Boemmel, Bra-
Jean Victor Adam,
Chagall, do Chirico, Duchamp, Kandinsky,
.pada and Surrealism;
Agar, Aragon, Arp, Baader, •
3ayer,
Russell Barnett Aitken,
