Coffee with a Curator - Peter Tush: “Dali, Sculpture and the Surrealist Object”
June 7, 2017
Coffee with a Curator is a focused, theme-oriented presentation on a variety of Dali-related topics. The talk is presented by one of The Dali Museum’s Curatorial/Education team or an invited speaker.
Dali, Sculpture and the Surrealist Object
In response to the current Eduardo Chillida exhibition, this talk examines the Surrealist Object, Surrealism’s anti-sculptural project that preceded Chillida’s generation and its approach to sculpture. Curator of Education Peter Tush will explore the wildly inventive and symbolic approach the surrealists brought to their construction of three dimensional objects. The concept of the Surrealist Object was developed over time by various figures including Surrealist leader André Breton, Alberto Giacometti and Salvador Dali. The Surrealist Object was a new form of sculpture using assemblage to reconfigured mass-produced objects. They sought to create symbolic objects that could address the creator’s desires and enable access to the unconscious. Surrealist Objects were deliberately anti-aesthetic, poetic, and often designed to provoke the viewer. Artists discussed include Marcel Duchamp, Giacometti, Dali, Meret Oppenheim, Joan Miro and others.
Coffee with a Curator is a focused, theme-oriented presentation on a variety of Dali-related topics. The talk is presented by one of The Dali Museum’s Curatorial/Education team or an invited speaker. Dali, Sculpture and the Surrealist Object In response to the current Eduardo Chillida exhibition, this talk examines the Surrealist Object, Surrealism’s anti-sculptural project that preceded Chillida’s generation and its approach to sculpture. Curator of Education Peter Tush will explore the wildly inventive and symbolic approach the surrealists brought to their construction of three dimensional objects. The concept of the Surrealist Object was developed over time by various figures including Surrealist leader André Breton, Alberto Giacometti and Salvador Dali. The Surrealist Object was a new form of sculpture using assemblage to reconfigured mass-produced objects. They sought to create symbolic objects that could address the creator’s desires and enable access to the unconscious. Surrealist Objects were deliberately anti-aesthetic, poetic, and often designed to provoke the viewer. Artists discussed include Marcel Duchamp, Giacometti, Dali, Meret Oppenheim, Joan Miro and others.
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9. Surrealist objects were
addressed by André Breton
as early as 1924.
In Point du jour, Breton
proposed the creation and
circulation of "dream
objects," which had the
potential to discredit the
"creatures and things of
'reason," extending the "limits
of so-called reality."
10. Comte de Lautréamont:
"As beautiful as the chance
encounter of a sewing
machine and an umbrella on
an operating"
12. "I recently proposed to fabricate, in so far as possible,
certain objects which are approached only in dreams and
which seem no more useful than enjoyable."
"Thus recently, while I was asleep, I came across a
rather curious book in an open-air market near Saint-
Malo. The back of the book was formed by a wooden
gnome whose white beard, clipped in the Assyrian
manner, reached to his feet. The statue was of ordinary
thickness, but did not prevent me from turning the pages,
which were of heavy black cloth. I was anxious to buy it
and, upon waking, was sorry not to find it near me. It is
comparatively easy to recall it."
13. "I would like to put into circulation certain objects of this
kind, which appear eminently problematical and
intriguing. …Perhaps in that way I should help to
demolish those concrete trophies which are so odious,
to throw further discredit on those creatures and things
of 'reason'."
André Breton, from Introduction to the Discourse on the
Paucity of Reality (1924)
14. Such dream objects became the
basis for the concept of the
Surrealist Object.
This idea is aligned with
Sigmund Freud’s concept of
fetishism.
16. Freud on fetishism:
The ordinary object
becomes a fetish because
we project our desire upon
it, because we look at it
and look again until we
cannot stop looking.
17. The selection of this object,
like any Dada object, is
random. And like the
Surrealist object, the
choice is not as significant
as the meaning the human
psychology gives it.
18. The fetish is always a
substitute for something else
and always has a sexual
content, is always a substation
for sexual satisfaction.
19. Freud described sexual fetish in
men as the result of childhood
trauma regarding castration
anxiety.
20. The fetish object became a
token of triumph over the
threat of castration and
protection against it.
21. In his Interpretation of
Dreams, Freud notes how
the mechanisms of
displacement and
condensation can relocate
objects to new contexts or
produce hybrid forms.
22. The fetish character of many Surrealist Objects derive from their play with
erotically charged substitutions for fragments of the body.
24. Marcel Duchamp:
The Bottle Rack
(also called Bottle Dryer
or Hedgehog)
1914 / 1964
Readymade
Musée National d'Art
Moderne, Centre
Georges Pompidou,
Paris
25. For Breton, the
readymade's chief
attraction lay in the
notion of "change of
role" as applying to the
activity of transforming
a commonplace object
and helping it achieve a
"separate identity."
26. The appeal of the readymade could
also derive from the immediacy of a
found object, involving no sculptural
or aesthetic considerations and
based, as Duchamp argues, on the
"total absence of good or bad
taste."
30. Marcel Duchamp:
The Bride Stripped Bare by
Her Bachelors, Even
(The Large Glass)
1915-1923
Readymade
31. Sandwiched between
plates of glass are
reproductions of
mechanistic objects
excerpted from
advertisements and
technical publications,
including a chocolate
grinder, water mill, and
chest-expanders.
33. In his "Introduction to the
discourse on the paucity of
reality", Breton dreamt of a
particularly unusual book with
a gnome beard binding and
black wool pages. This dream
led to his proposal for the
group to create "objects that
function symbolically."
34. "I would like to have a few of these
objects placed into circulation,
because their fate seems
extremely problematic and
troubling to me."
35. In his novel Nadja,
Breton illustrated a chapter in
his book with surrealist
photographer Jacques-André
Boiffard’s picture of the Saint
Ouen Flea Market, a symbol
of surrealist ideology: a place
full of possibilities for chance
encounters.
36. Breton describes the experience
of finding an object as capable
of "admitting [him] to an almost
forbidden world of sudden
parallels, petrifying
coincidences, and reflexes
particular to each individuals of
harmonies struck as though on
the piano, flashes of lights that
would make you see, really see."
37. Man Ray: Photo of André
Breton's "slipper-spoon"
1934
For Breton, this object
recalled an object he had
asked Giacometti to make for
him, a slipper in grey glass
which he planned to use as
an ash-tray, inspired by the
fragment of a phrase that
lingered from a dream:
"Cendrier-Cendrillon"
("Cinderella-Ashtray")
38. Man Ray: The Surrealist Group, 1930
Back row Paul Éluard, Jean Arp, Yves Tanguy, Rene Crevel
Front Tristan Tzara, André Breton, Dalí, Max Ernst, Man Ray
41. Giacometti:
"Objets mobiles et muets"
("Mobile and Mute
Objects")
in Le Surréalisme au
service de la révolution,
No.3, 1931
The illustrations are of
dream objects and forms
that relate to childhood
memories
42. In 1931, Salvador Dalí publishes his important essay "Objet surréalistes"
in Le surréalisme au service de la révolution, 1931, retitled
"The Object as Revealed in Surrealist Experiment" in This Quarter, 1932
43. Dalí describes Giacometti’s
Suspended Ball as follows:
"A wooden ball marked
with a feminine groove is
suspended, by a very fine
violin string, a bone a
crescent whose wedge
merely grazes the cavity.
The beholder feels
instinctively compelled to
slide the ball over the
wedge, but the length of
string does not allow full
contact between the two."
44. For Dalí,
Suspended Ball is "the
incarnation of these
desires, the means of
objectification through
substitution and
metaphor and their
symbolic expression
constitute the typical
process of sexual
perversity, which is in
every way similar to
poetic creation."
45. In this essay, Dali
complements his influential
Paranoiac-Critical Method
with a new theory – the
"Object Functioning
Symbolically."
His goal: discredit the daily
world and replace it with the
REAL world of the
imagination.
46. Surreal Objects thus make
concrete the human
imagination.
Historically, Dalí describes
the first phase of the Surreal
Object as the unexpected
enigmatic encounter with the
object in and of itself, as in
Duchamp’s found objects or
the objects in Breton’s Nadja.
47. The second phase is the
desire to interfere in the life of
the object, to force it to shed
its anonymous character.
This is often achieved by
magnifying the erotic
character of the object to
illustrate
"the shape of desire."
49. "A woman’s shoe, inside of
which a glass of warm milk
has been placed, in the
center of a soft paste in the
color of excrement. The
mechanism consists of the
dipping in the milk of a sugar
lump, on which there is a
drawing of a shoe, so that the
dissolving of the sugar, and
consequently the image of
the shoe, may be observed."
- Dalí
54. She strongly resembles an
insect on a leaf highlighting
the interest in
metamorphosis with a nod to
the key Surrealist symbol of
a praying mantis. Both insect
and woman are seen as both
vulnerable and femme fatale.
The mantis is both passive
and aggressive for once she
has mated she devours the
male.
69. Work consisting of a cut-out
box containing a
paperweight, a conical figure,
an erotic figure and a figure
of a chicken, chocolate
gloves, a shoe, a box of
matches, foot cast and
limestone with inscription
(originally it included bread
and more objects)
70. Meret Oppenheim:
Object: A Luncheon with
Fur (Fur-Lined Teacup)
(Breakfast in Fur)
1936
Teacup, saucer and
spoon covered with
Chinese gazelle pelt.
Museum of Modern Art,
NY
71. For his 1936 Exposition
Surréaliste, Breton
renamed it Luncheon in
Fur, a title that stemmed
from a Freudian
interpretation of fur as a
sexual fetish, recalling
Édouard
Manet’s Luncheon on the
Grass (Le Déjeneur sur
l’herbe) and Leopold von
Sacher-Masoch’s erotic
novel Venus in Furs.
72. Salvador Dalí:
Aphrodisiac Dinner Jacket
1936
Dinner jacket covered with
liqueur glasses containing
peppermint liqueur, each
containing a dead fly.
75. Joan Miró:
Object
1936
Museum of Modern Art, NY
Stuffed parrot on wood perch,
stuffed silk stocking with velvet
garter and doll's paper shoe
suspended in hollow wood
frame, derby hat, hanging cork
ball, celluloid fish, and
engraved map
77. Marcel Jean:
Secret of the
Gardenia
1936
Plaster head with
painted black cloth,
zippers, and strip of
film on velvet-
covered wood base
Museum of Modern
Art, NY
78. Hans Bellmer:
The Doll (La Poupée)
Photographed in 1936
"Variations sur le montage
d'une mineure articulée,"
Minotaure 6
(Winter 1934-1935)
79. André Breton and
Paul Éluard described
this work as ‘the first
and only Surrealist
object with a universal,
provocative power.’
80. In 1936 Breton wrote
the essay
"The Crisis of the
Object"
He finds the Surreal
Object represents a
"desire for
objectification," finding
that "one will discover
more in the reality
concealed within the
entity than the
immediate data
surrounding it…[to
produce] a total
81. André Breton:
"The objects that form part of the
Surrealist exhibition of May 1936 are of a
kind calculated primarily to challenge the
prohibition resulting from the stultifying
proliferation of those objects that impinge
on our senses every day and attempt to
persuade us that anything that might exist
independently of these mundane objects
must be illusionary…"
84. It was organized by
André Breton
and Paul Éluard.
Marcel Duchamp was
"generator"
(curator?, designer?)
and "arbitrator" to
appease the heated
conflicts between
Breton and Éluard.
85. Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst
were technical advisers.
Man Ray was head
lighting technician.
Wolfgang Paalen as
responsible for the design the
entrance and main hall with
"water and foliage."
88. 2. Plus belles rues de Paris
("The most beautiful streets of Paris") with surrealistically
fitted mannequins rented from a French manufacturer
89. The sixteen figures showed surrealist motives and techniques,
which consisted of concealment and revelation, and expressed
captivated lust, the power of unconscious desire and the breaking of taboos.
98. Paalen’s
"Avant La Mare"
installation.
It featured a
pond, water
lilies and reeds,
with the floor
covered with
dead leaves and
mud, creating
an atmosphere
of humidity, fog
and romantic
twilight
106. Blain Di Donna Gallery
exhibit, 2013
Such object were
intended for the viewer to
elicit a positive or negative
reaction, since they could
arouse urgings or
memories that then
conferred on the object a
reaction of either
fascination or repulsion.
107. "The Surrealist object
constitutes an intrusion
into daily life of a desire
that molds and transforms
matter according to its
requirements..."
109. 2) The Surrealist Object is a social action that undermines the
"status of the bourgeois commodity object."
110. 3) The Surrealist Object appealed as an agent of sexual subversion.
111. 4) The Surrealist Object suggests metamorphosis and
ultimately is a challenge to reality.
112. While the surrealist’s goal was to shock and disgust the general public, the
Surrealist Object became a tantalizing model for fashion designers and
manufacturers.
113. William Jeffett:
…Dalí’s understanding of the
Surrealist Object was to
dislocate the viewer’s false
sense of rational certainty and
to thrust him or her into the
disorienting realm of enigmatic
doubt.
The subversive goal of
discrediting reality…captured
an essential element of the
revolutionary surrealist project.”
114. André Breton
in his curiosity-
filled studio,
chez lui, 42,
rue Fontaine,
Paris, 1956
115.
116.
117.
118. Dalí’s article on the surr object appears in Le Surréalisme au service de la
révolution
No.3, 1931
Magical Objects: Things and Beyond
https://books.google.com/books?id=P_wcLQ-
hKOYC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=Valentine+Hugo+Object+1931&source
=bl&ots=FeA9o-iUDp&sig=bVuARPqeMYtEr7X8cO5-
FbbpuQc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiT2IqgtZrUAhXl0FQKHRk2AoAQ6
AEIWDAN#v=onepage&q=Valentine%20Hugo%20Object%201931&f=fals
e
119. From Rodin to Giacometti: Sculpture and Literature in France, 1880-
1950
breton The Crisis of the Object 1937
https://books.google.com/books?id=8N_17GFw3dkC&pg=PA137&lpg=PA1
37&dq=breton+The+Crisis+of+the+Object+1937&source=bl&ots=XjKHQm
Hzpd&sig=TM0njx2tjctgOdYoZhdUPY1TnDw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKE
wi-
9d7j1p_UAhWIsFQKHYLQCn0Q6AEIMDAD#v=onepage&q=breton%20Th
e%20Crisis%20of%20the%20Object%201937&f=false
124. Meret Oppenheim: Spring
Banquet/ Cannibal Feast
1959
for the opening of Exposition
Internationale du Surréalisme
(EROS) at the Cordier Gallery
in Paris. André Breton in
middle.
125. Marcel Duchamp
The Bottle Rack (also called
Bottle Dryer or Hedgehog)
1914 / 1964
Readymade
Musée National d'Art
Moderne, Centre Georges
Pompidou, Paris
126. Meret Oppenheim
Objet: Le Déjeuner en
fourrure (Fur-Lined Teacup)
(Breakfast in Fur)
1936
Museum of Modern Art, NY
128. Vue de l'Exposition
internationale du
surréalisme, une
salle adjacente à la
salle principale. Paul
Eluard, René
Magritte, Léo Malet
et une anonyme
129. On the opening
night, more than
3,000 people came
to see the exhibition.
After opening, it
averaged more than
500 visitors per day.
131. Yet, despite their goal to shock and
disgust the general public, ironically,
the Surrealist Object created tantalizing
models for fashion designers and bric-a
brac manufacturers