First surrealist art exhibition in England - archive, 12 June 1936
The exhibition of Surrealist art which opens at the Burlington Galleries in London to-day will no doubt create a stir even among those to whom modern painting usually means nothing. At all events it will give the public something to talk about, for no one can accuse the Surrealists of refusing to deal in definite objects, things that can be described even when they cannot be recognised, things that cast shadows, have weight, volume, and distance; whereas their elder brothers, the abstract painters, deal in nothing more tangible than shape, pattern, and colour. The one school uses paint to establish definite references: to the other paint is just paint, a mere means of altering the colour of canvas.
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The strange thing is that both groups are rebelling against the same established authority but rebelling in exactly opposite directions. Both are in revolt against the theory (formulated by the Renaissance and never seriously challenged till to-day) that art should be a reflection or an idealisation of visible facts, a report or a comment on human visual experience. The abstract painters questioned the theory by asking “Why report? Why comment? Why not create a visual language quite independent of visual facts?” The Surrealists said “We will report, we will comment with a vengeance, but not – oh, certainly not – on human experience. Art has the divine power, denied to the camera, of portraying what the eye cannot see. Why not use that power to the full? Why not dig deep into the lower strata of the mind, delve into the subconscious, bring to the surface Freudian imagery, and make it manifest in paint? Let intuition take the place of observation. Let banal materialism give way to weird symbolism. Let inconsequence invade the world of logic.”
Salvador Dalí holding an artist’s lay figure (the chauffeur in the Taxi pluvieux), International Exhibition of Surrealism, Paris, 1938. Photograph: Publicity image
Such (grossly simplified) is the Surrealist theory, and the exhibition is the first attempt in this country to collect together a set of works from all quarters to illustrate it. It is amusing enough to watch these artists grimly defy logic and conscientiously shunning all hint of relevance. Max Ernst images the uncanny monsters that are met with only in dreams. Salvador Dalí plays fantastically with the very essence of things, making alarm clocks bend and sag like blankets and reassembling common objects with a masterly sense of inappropriateness. André Masson achieves inconsequence in his medium rather than in his imagery and makes (I quote from the exhibitors’ own manifesto) “free use of sand, feathers, string, and nails in order to make a picture.” Chirico is the author of less nightmarish and more romantic dreams, and contents himself with occasionally substituting an egg for a human head. Paul Nash erects scaffolding in interstellar space, and Paul Klee weaves strangely whimsical fantasies in line.
As to the theory that underlies all this, I have sometimes been afflicted by doubts (recently confirmed by consulting a psychologist friend) as to how far it is possible for the subconscious mind to provide material for a conscious art. To what extent can a man turn his subconscious imagery into consciously created form and colour? Does not the very act of laying hands on the subconscious bring it into the field of consciousness and thereby destroy its very nature? Would not true Surrealist art consist rather in those queer little drawings that one involuntarily makes on blotting-paper during the course of a telephone conversation?
Gaze of Silence (1932) by Paul Klee. Photograph: Menil Collection, Houston/PA
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Such questions, however, are purely academic, and the answer to them, though possibly interesting to the psychologist, is relatively unimportant to the artist. Good art can be constructed round an absurd theory. And more often than not the theory originates not with the artist but with his self-appointed apologist. The test of the exhibition is in the pictures it contains. Ridicule and hostility will certainly not be lacking, and some of it will be deserved, for much of the painting is purely silly. But silly painting is by no means confined to Surrealist exhibitions. Moreover, Surrealism relies confessedly on its content and not on its beauty. It is as much a “literary” movement as abstract painting is an “aesthetic” movement. Presumably the true Surrealist does not ask us to consider his work as ugly or beautiful, but only as significant or the reverse. Indeed, some of their works are mere diagrams with intriguing titles, and some of the exponents of Surrealism are apt to take more trouble with their titles than with their pictures. But some of them are also true artists – Picasso, Chirico, and Masson, to name only three, – and for such men the starting-point hardly matters. They may be under the impression that they are painting faithful portraits of their subconscious minds, but their devotion to truth will always (thank goodness) be warped by their desire to paint a good picture, and good pictures are certainly to be found in the exhibition.
To the average spectator it is all bound to be a little puzzling and a little shocking through its sheer unfamiliarity. And yet need we be shocked? If a Lewis Carroll can create a world of hookah-smoking caterpillars, mimsy borogroves, and gimbling toves, why should not a Max Ernst or a Joan Miró find the equivalent of such a world in paint? And if the spectator is one who can tolerate nothing without a precedent, cannot the Surrealist reply by pointing to Hieronymus Bosch and William Blake?