Room 507

 Surrealist Objects

'Beginning in the 1930's many artists associated with Surrealism turned to object making with vigor.  Freud's psychoanalytical theories - which suggested objects could function as projections of unconscious sexual desires - served as an important touchstone.'

Osamu Shiihara ' Shampoo' 1930s

Rene Magritte 'The Portrait' 1925

Germaine Dulac stills from the film 'The Seashell and the Clergyman' 1928

Alberto Giacometti ' Hands Holding the Void' [invisible] 1934

Salvador Dali 'The Little Theater' 1934

Brassai 'Man sleeping Along the Seine' 1932

Leonora Carrington 'And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur' 1953

Pablo Picasso 'Girl Before a Mirror' 1932

Man Ray 'Minotaur' 1939

Salvador Dali 'The Persistence of Memory' 1931

Roberto Matta 'Untitled' 1942

Salvador Dali 'Retrospective Bust of a Woman' 1933 

Yves Tanguy 'Untitled' 1947

Frida Kahlo 'Fulang-Chang and I' 1937

Oscar Dominguez 'Untitled' 1936

Max Ernst 'Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale' 1924

Joseph Cornell 'Untitled' 1940

Rene Magritte 'The Menaced Assassin' 1927

Frida Kahlo 'Self-Portrait' 1940

Joan Miro 'The Birth of the World' 1925

Meret Oppenheim 'Object' 1936

Remedios Varo 'The Juggler' 1956

Joan Miro 'Object' 1936

Andre Breton 'Untitled' 1936

Marcel Jean 'Untitled' 1936

I always think of Federico Garcia Lorca together with Salvador Dali.  They were friends along with Luis Bunuel before and during the Spanish Civil War.  Dali and Bunuel made the film 'The Andalusian Dog' which Lorca believed was an insult to himself because of his outspoken socialist and homosexual views when those views could get you murdered.  Federico Garcia Lorca was murdered in 1936 after last being seen taken under arrest by Franco's nationalist forces.  The circumstances of his death and his body have never been discovered.  He is credited with introducing Symbolism, Surrealism and Futurism into Spanish Literature:

Ode to Walt Whitman                            

by Federico Garcia Lorca

Along East River and the Bronx.

The young men were singing, baring their waists,

with the wheel and the leather, the hammer, and the oil.

Ninety thousand miners whittled silver from the rocks

and the boys traced ladders and perspectives.

But nobody slept

or wished to be: river;

none loved the big leaves

or the beach's blue tongue.

Along the East River and Queensborough,

the young men were grappling with Industry.

The Jews sold the faun of the river

circumcisions rosette;

and the sky, over bridges and rooftops,

emptied its buffalo herds to the push of the wind.

 

  

On the Third Floor.

 

Paul Signac, Opus 217

Sunday's NY Times had an article on the best Art Books from this year's Museum Exhibitions  One of those books is 'Felix Feneon, The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde, from Signac to Matisse, and Beyond.'  It's at MoMA; so I went and I'm glad I did.

Felix Feneon was an art critic, editor, publisher, art dealer, collector and anarchist.  He championed and supported Georges-Pierre Seurat, Paul Signac, Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse.  All of whom also considered themselves anarchists. In 1894 Felix was arrested and held in prison for 3 months on suspicion of bombing a cafe.  He was acquitted, even though they did find the makings of bombs at his job site, which was the Ministry of War.  La Belle Epoque France was very French.  

In 1906 Felix took a job as an Art Dealer at a prominent Art gallery where he championed his anarchist artist friends.  This exhibition is his collection of European art which he labeled Post Impressionist plus the arts of Africa and Oceania which he was instrumental in introducing to Europe.

Feneon and these artists believed anarchy was the pursuit of harmony: balance between wealth and poverty. 

Paul Signac's initially titled 'In the Time Of Anarchy' changed to ' In the Time of Harmony: The Golden Age Has Not Passed, It Is Still to Come'    1896

Edouard Vuillard 'The Folding Bed' 1903

Paul Signac ' The Demolition Worker' 1897

Maximilien Luce ' Man Washing'   1897

Georges-Pierre Seurat 'The Channel at Gravelines, Evening'  1890

Paul Signac 'Setting Sun'  

Giacomo Balla 'Street Light'

Amedeo Modigliani 'Nude'    1917

Modigliani 'Jeanne Hebuterne with Yellow Sweater'   1918

Matisse

'Interior With Young Girl'

'Landscape near Collioure'

'Still Life With Aubergines'

'Music'

'La Japonaise; Women Beside the Water'

 'Periwinkles' 

'African Mask'

Photo of Felix Feneon.  

He usually wore a top hat and carried a cane and was considered a Dandy.  He had collected 800 works of art, 50 paintings and 180 drawings by Georges-Pierre Seurat and 8 paintings by Matisse.  His collection was auctioned off upon his death in 4 batches, 3 for European art works and one for African and Oceanic art.