Exhibition Proposal Internal Models: Surrealist Spaces / Surrealist Works Proposal The exhibition entitled Internal Models: Surrealist Spaces / Surrealists Works, will explore Andre Breton’s exhortation for “a total revision of real values, [such that] the plastic work of art will either refer to a purely internal model or will cease to exist.”1 Taking a cue from Breton’s model reference, this exhibition will focus on surrealist works (and a small percentage of works that predate the movement but which it nonetheless coopted) that depict or share in an architectural rendering of interiority or of the complexities of mind. Situating the exhibition within Sir John Soane’s Museum would double the architectural analogy back on itself, as it is both a building and a collection created by an architect which taken as a whole represents, one could say, a model for Soane’s own complex mind.
The approximately 30 objects proposed for the exhibition include paintings and
photographs, texts, and three-‐dimensional works. These will be exhibited in various rooms of the Soane Museum, alongside the permanent collection and even replacing some of the art works and objets. For example, in the room devoted to Soane’s collection of architectural models, a grouping of 1930s sculptures by Giacometti, a 1960s reproduction of Duchamp’s Large Glass by Richard Hamilton and 19th century mathematical models from the Institut Henri Poincaré will be interspersed among the artifacts in situ. Over a dozen paintings, including architectural perspectives by Soane’s 1
Breton, Surrealism and Painting, p. 4.
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