La Subversion des Images
Surrealism, Photography, Film
23 September 2009 – 11 January 2010
Centre Pompidou, Paris
It was Walter Benjamin, in his 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” who argued that photography shatters the aura of art. It’s funny, then, that the curators of Centre Pompidou’s surrealism exhibition, “La Subversion des Images,” chose to quote him in explaining a collection of images that explores the relationship between photography and Surrealism. It would seem Walter Benjamin might have shaken his finger at the kind of work the exhibit celebrates. But I have to disagree with Mr. Benjamin and use the Parisian exhibit itself as my cardinal case in point. I’m with Dali: “Nothing has done more than photography to prove Surrealism right.”
“La Subversion des Images” compliments itself on bringing together “more than 350 works, some hundred documents and a dozen films,” but it should; the collection is extensive. Curators Quentin Bajac, Clément Chéroux, Guillaume Le Gall, Michel Poivert, and Philippe-Alain Michaud cut a particular cross-section of Surrealist art, but one that nonetheless opens many an exciting new door. Film and photography were not just tools for the Surrealists, as the exhibit discovers. They were essential to sculpting and advancing it. Showcasing examples of Surrealist film and photography rather than particular artists, the exhibit still manages to squeeze in the likes of Man Ray, Hans Bellmer, and Claude Cahun alongside virtually unknown bodies of work.
After ascending the iconic escalators that traverse the façade of the Centre, it is a series of big and unabashed clown mirrors that you see when first entering the exhibit. Some children linger while the adults walk by. At first glance, this is a tragic ploy: letting image-distorting reflective surfaces greet an audience coming to see art that has, the world over, become known for its senselessness. But in fact the gesture makes sense. “La Subversion des Images” shows us a new way of seeing ourselves.
The exhibit has 9 rooms, each devoted to tackling a different facet of Surrealist art. The concepts are not wholly about Surrealism nor wholly about the role of photography, illustrating an elegant interdependence between the two. In the first room, we’re taught the importance of “collective action,” the strong preference to create in groups. Room 4 sensitively introduces the “art of juxtaposition,” that very devil that has given Surrealism its absurdist stereotype. The seventh room takes on “automatism,” the question of spontaneity in the images that appear through the lens. But the take-away here is not in the point of view that Surrealism takes on each question raised. Even before seeing any of the works we are reminded by the exhibition’s brochure that the Surrealists sought to redefine our ways of seeing rather than align themselves with any particular body of thought. It was revolution they were after.
Take the photograph by Brassaï, “La Tour Saint-Jacques.” It is in the room titled, “Le Réel, le Fortuit, le Merveilleux” demonstrating the Surrealist fascination with the city as their primary text. It is a picture of the tower at night with scaffolding surrounding it, as seen from the street level. Of course, this was not the first time in the history of art that someone has turned to the everyday images to explore a deeper idea. But the photograph does much more: it searches for the modern sublime of the city at night, devoid of human presence and almost devoid of adequate lighting. A room over, there are scrapbooks full of rags, streets, slums, and window-displays. The Surrealists found a new urban life all around them, aided in no small part to the camera that, yes, as Benjamin would say, strips what is being photographed of its authentic place in time and space. And this is the point.
“La Subversion des Images” shows Depression art at its best. Almost all of the works come from the late 1920s and all through the '30s, when the world felt economic panic. It is no wonder, then, that modern audiences like this exhibit so much. The act of seeing these images is intriguing. Unlike what is to be found in the hall of sculptures in the Louvre, people are not feverishly trying to learn the artist’s history, his inspirations, or even his influences. There is raw humanity abound. Even I was transported out of France, not knowing which language to speak when I accidentally bumped into someone on my way out.
In the midst of another global financial crisis that coincidentally mirrors the one that affected the Surrealists, I find the exhibit to be both well-curated and timely. There is solace is trying to understand the revolution in values the Surrealists were after as we go through our own kind of search for the same. The title is dead-on: the exhibit shows us subversion, but a comfortable one that might even help us in redefining our own images.
The exhibit does well in taking a particular flavor of art and unpacking its meaning and significance. While an exploration into the role of film in Surrealist art at first seems narrow, it actually digs into questions of inherent meaning, incongruity in urban images, collective artistic movement, and on. If its goal is to help us break out, it succeeds. Even as I casually glanced at a museum sign posted on the wall mid-way through the exhibit I saw new ideas. It had a drawing of a camera with a red line through it, a proclamation from the Centre Pompidou that in this exhibit “Photography is Strictly Prohibited.” It was funny and surreal.
Images (from top, left to right): Man Ray, "Lee Miller," 1929; Maurice Tabard, "Essai pour un film Culte Vaudou, 1937; Brassaï, "La Tour Saint-Jacques," 1933.
Images courtesy of le Centre Pompidou.
