The Real Surrealism

An irreverent 20th-century cultural movement is connecting with today’s collectors, artists, designers and architects. By Rhonda Riche

Ever 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 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 >

Eyes wide open: Diego y yo, Frida Kahlo’s poignant self-portrait in 1949, fetched US$34.9 million in November last year — to date, the most paid at auction for a painting by a Latin American artist. Photo: PA Images/Alamy

THIS PAGE (from top): Birkenstock limited-edition clogs pay tribute to René Magritte painting The False Mirror. The Pioneer Village subway station in Toronto, designed by British architect Will Alsop. Photo: Ruta Krau. OPPOSITE PAGE (from top): Koga Harue’s Umi (The Sea), 1929. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Photo: MOMAT/ DNPartcom. Model Bella Hadid wears a Schiaparelli lungs breastplate on the red carpet at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Photo: Reuters/Alamy

Beyond Borders” features artworks from the Americas, including those of Kahlo and Rivera, Cuban-born Wifredo Lam and British-born, Mexico-based Leonora Carrington, alongside important, rarely seen works by Japanese artist Koga Harue and Afro-Surrealist Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, who co-founded the influential Négritude literary movement.

Given Surrealism’s political origins, it’s not surprising that the movement has historically been a democratic art form, frequently breaking down boundaries between high art, “low” art and craft. French fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli frequently collaborated with Surrealist artists, like Dalí and Jean Cocteau; one velvet hat from 1938 was inspired by an image of Dalí wearing on his shoulder the shoe of his wife, Gala. Schiaparelli’s designs continue to hold our attention. In 2021, at the Cannes Film Festival, model Bella Hadid broke the Internet by donning a gold-toned Schiaparelli breastplate comprised of an anatomically correct pair of lungs on the red carpet. At a more accessible price point, footwear brand Birkenstock, in partnership with New York label Opening Ceremony, released last fall a limited-edition capsule collection of clogs featuring some of Magritte’s most iconic imagery.

Today’s artists, architects, designers and filmmakers keep reimagining and reinvigorating this revolutionary movement. In Canada, the Surrealist influence has a long and venerable history across creative genres. Avant-garde Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin has cited Luis Buñuel and Man Ray as major influences for his unexpected and uncanny films, like Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988) and The Saddest Music in the World (2003). In their heyday, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, legendary comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall were, perhaps, accidental torchbearers for the Surrealist cause, largely disregarding comedic conventions and creating many surreal sketches. Meanwhile, from the 1960s until her death in 2005, Montreal-

born Mimi Parent incorporated found materials, including human hair, in her conceptual art pieces, which borrowed heavily from Surrealism. Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, a Cowichan/Syilx First Nations contemporary artist, marries elements of Northwest Coast formline design with Surrealistic images to explore environmentalism, land ownership and Canada’s treatment of First Nations peoples.

The influence of Surrealism is also evident in Canadian architecture. In Toronto, perhaps the most famous example is British architect Will Alsop’s Sharp Centre for Design at OCAD University downtown — a multicoloured, cartoonish box on “stilts,” built in 2000, which dominates the western side of McCaul Street just south of the Art Gallery of Ontario. Although Alsop died in 2018, his off-kilter vision prevails with the recent posthumous completion of the Toronto Transit Commission’s Pioneer Village and Finch West subway stations, both of which feature towering, brilliant-hued, light-filled entrances that feel more akin to sculpture than function.

“[Pioneer Village’s] big cantilevered porte cochère demands that you step back to take it all in,” says Globe and Mail architecture columnist Dave LeBlanc. “It’s like [Alsop is] creating enormous art objects that demand something of you, demand your attention, but don’t invite you to touch them despite the fun colours.”

Surrealism is at play on a less dramatic scale in local architecture. LeBlanc references the work of Partisans, the awardwinning architecture studio in Toronto that’s responsible for College Street’s striking Bar Raval, a moody space with undulating ribbons of carved mahogany on the walls and ceilings. “Bar Raval is like a wooden womb and [you] can stroke the surfaces all [you] want…. It’s encouraged!” says LeBlanc. “Partisans is one of most creative firms in Canada. Their stuff is always surprising, always Alice-in-Wonderland-ish, but never forced or heavy-handed. It’s like Surrealism for the masses.”