LIFESTYLE
THE REAL SURREALISM
An irreverent 20th-century cultural movement is connecting with today’s collectors, artists, designers and architects. By Rhonda Riche
E
ver bold and unabashedly brazen, Surrealism, the artistic and literary movement founded by the poet André Breton in Paris in the early 1920s, has held on to its mission: revolutionize the human experience by juxtaposing a rational depiction of the everyday with images and symbols from the unconscious realm. And unlike many art movements, its influence has not faded. Much of modern art — from Montreal’s artistic dissidents, the Automatistes, to New York’s Abstract Expressionists, post–Second Word War — owes a tip of the hat to the irreverence of the Surrealist movement. In an age of virtual reality, smartphones and artificial intelligence, sometimes it feels as though we’re living in a waking dream. In this sense, Surrealism has never felt as relevant as it does now. And the art world is taking notice. Last November, Frida Kahlo’s arresting self-portrait in 1949 — Diego y yo (Diego and I) — sold for US$34.9 million at Sotheby’s
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auction house in New York, shattering the artist’s previous high of US$8 million (Two Nudes in the Forest, 1939). While she did not label herself as a Surrealist, Kahlo was a fervent admirer of Breton. All the hallmarks of the movement can be found in Diego y yo, in which she’d painted on her forehead the face of her husband, Diego Rivera, replete with a third eye himself. “When I look at this painting, the phrase ‘abre los ojos,’ Spanish for ‘open your eyes,’ immediately comes to mind,” says Julian Dawes, co-deputy head of the department for impressionist and modern art at Sotheby’s, in New York. “In the literal sense, it refers to the penetrating stare of Kahlo as the sitter of the portrait and the double portrait of Rivera. But I think it also symbolizes the incredible moment this painting will surely usher in for Kahlo, as the market opens its eyes to Kahlo in a new way and secures her place in the auction echelon [where] she belongs.”
And Surrealism’s moment extends beyond the auction house. We may be most familiar with the cheeky, humorous images of Salvador Dalí’s melting clocks and René Magritte’s floating apples, but the exhibition “Surrealism Beyond Borders,” currently at the Tate Modern in London and previously at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, challenges us to broaden our understanding of the movement. Showcasing artworks from more than 45 countries, this exhibition demonstrates how Surrealism has historically inspired and united artists around the globe. It also calls attention to the movement’s inherently radical political roots. In the exhibition’s catalog, curators Stephanie D’Allesandro and Matthew Gale point out that the original coterie of Surrealists in Paris were intent on exposing global issues such as racism, environmentalism and imbalances of power. Impressive in scope, “Surrealism >
