COPENHAGEN.- Out with reason and control, in with instincts and impulses. The Surrealists’ radical project is to set art free, and when the new artistic movement takes shape in 1920s Paris, the Surrealists place works on paper at the heart of their practice. SMK – National Gallery of Denmark presents more than 100 of the movement’s finest drawings, sketches, collages and collective works in the exhibition Surreal on Paper and shows how the Surrealists use drawing to explore their artistic project and to understand themselves, each other and their time through playful experiments and collective creative processes. An exhibition of this kind has never before been held in Northern Europe, and it offers a new entry point to the art of the Surrealists.

The Surrealist Movement

After the horrors of the First World War Europe undergoes major political and cultural changes. It is during this time that Surrealism emerges – an artistic movement seeking to think and create art in new ways. Inspired by psychoanalysis and spiritual currents the Surrealists explore the innermost aspects of the human being – drives, dreams and the unconscious – as a reaction against the norms and traditional art forms of bourgeois society.

For the Surrealists the creative process is more important than the finished work, and drawing becomes a central artistic medium because it allows space for spontaneity, play and experimentation. At the same time it marks a break with the idea of drawing as merely a tool in the creative process while the artist approaches the finished work.

Free pencil lines, imaginative collective works and exquisite corpses

In the Surrealist Manifesto of 1924 André Breton defines Surrealism as ‘pure psychic automatism’ – a spontaneous flow of thought free from rational control and without aesthetic or moral limitations. Automatism quickly becomes a central method for the movement, first in automatic writing and later in automatic drawing, where the artist’s hand moves without plan and allows the unconscious to take the lead. Shortly after the Surrealists also introduce cadavre exquis – a game and collective method where several artists create images or sentences together without knowing each other’s contributions. The name cadavre exquis, meaning ‘exquisite corpse,’ derives from an early example of the game, which results in the sentence: ‘The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine.’ Originally, cadavre exquis is a parlour game, but the Surrealists transform it into a creative experiment in which a sheet of paper is folded so that each participant sees only a part of the preceding drawing.

The experiments spread to a wide range of graphic techniques. Photograms, frottage and decalcomania, where chance determines the expression of the work, are particularly prevalent among the Surrealists, while collages are used to combine fragments of text and images into dreamlike compositions. In Surreal on Paper visitors can experience everything from automatic drawings and folded collective works to collages and dream visions on paper created by the movement’s most prominent artists – from André Breton, Max Ernst and Méret Oppenheim to Jean Arp, Man Ray and Salvador Dalí as well as the Danes Franciska Clausen, Wilhelm Freddie and Rita Kernn-Larsen.

Artists in the exhibition

Camille Bryen, Alberto Giacometti, André Masson, Jospeh Sima, Yves Tanguy, Jean Arp, André Breton, Franciska Clausen, Valentine Dobrée, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, Wilhelm Freddie, Maurice Henri, Georges Hugnet, Joan Miró, Méret Oppenheim, Man Ray, Jindrich Styrsky, Remedios Varo, Oscar Dominquez, Marcel Jean, Francis Picabia, Victor Brauner, Salvador Dalí, Cicero Dias, Brion Gysin, Léon Tutundjian, Gérard Vulliamy, Nusch Éluard, Valentine Hugo, Raoul Hausmann, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Tristan Tzara, Greta Knutson, Max Morise, Rita Kernn-Larsen and more.

Exceptional loans from Paris

At the centre of the exhibition is an extraordinary contribution from Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, which has generously loaned 75 of the movement’s finest works on paper to the exhibition. This takes place in connection with a major renovation of the museum and as part of a programme in which works are loaned to leading institutions while the renovation is underway. In addition, works are shown from institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York as well as from SMK’s Collection of Prints and Drawings, which is Denmark’s specialised collection of art on paper. The exhibition is part of the museum’s ongoing efforts to highlight and communicate the unique artistic qualities of drawing in a historical context.

Book

Alongside the exhibition a richly illustrated book is published in which four scholars address subjects that are central to the current discussions on Surrealism or that promote an understanding of the Surrealists’ drawing practice. In the opening article Thomas Lederballe, Chief Curator and Senior Researcher at the Collection of Graphic Art, presents a series of questions and answers that arise in relation to the artists’ work with drawing. Emil Leth Meilvang, PhD in Art History, describes the movement’s interest in biological phenomena as a key to understanding both human drives and mimicry as a cultural phenomenon. Camilla Skovbjerg Paldam, Associate Professor and PhD in Art History, addresses the precarious position of women in the movement, where they on the one hand constituted a significant source of imagery for male artists but on the other hand were to some extent rendered invisible despite their full contribution to the development of the movement’s visual art. In the final article of the book the writer and researcher Kasper Opstrup examines how Surrealism, as a particular outlook on life, is connected to ideas within the occult milieu. He demonstrates that in this respect it is possible to draw parallels to our own time.

The book is published in collaboration with Strandberg Publishing.