Arts
Dada and Surrealism reviewed
John McEwen
Only once have I been confronted with Surrealism of the good old-fashioned sort, It Was in the snug of a ritzy hotel. I sat down and here alongside, tied to the adjoining stool, were a couple of cheetahs — not Cheetahs, actually, only the European equivalent, but the point was they looked like Cheetahs. Shortly afterwards Avida Dollars (Salvador Dali) came in to buy them a drink, He was their owner needless to say. These days, alas, surrealism has become Pplicable to almost any circumstance — ,We're going to Somerset for the weekend.' How very surrealist' — though in England it still seems to denote some sort of intellectual superiority. Monty Python, the Goodies, the Muppets, even, in the Arts Council exhibition Dada and Surrealism Reviewed (Hayward till 27th March) the Goons, these names can be bandied about at High Table because of their supposedly surrealist associations. But, despite that trendy allusion to the Goons, high jinks and lauppetry are not what you will find at the 4ayward, not even the high camp of Dali. This is a large, uneven, scholarly exposition of a movement (Dada ran on into Surrealism) that — though this is something the show does not dwell upon, — tried to find a new way for art suitable to the changed conditions of an industrial society. It will require at least an afternoon of your time if You are to do justice to everything on view.
Just as surrealism is today a well-worn epithet, so most people are now pretty familiar with the anarchistic events at the Cabaret Voltaire nightclub in Zurich, which heralded the start of Dada. People are also Pretty familia... with its precursors. buchamp is as well-known as Picasso, though twenty years ago his importance was acknowledged only by a select few. Most of this is as a result of contemporary artists returning to the dada /surrealist quarry, usually for ideas and not ideals. It has made the movement's visual discoveries banal — Passing references to soft watches by Dali and a wrapped object by Man Ray are turned into the life-work of an Oldenburg Or a Christo. Happenings have deteriorated into streaking. If I see Meret Oppenheim's fur cup and saucer, or its million derivatives, once more I will scream. All this in twenty Years. It is daunting to know how the real thing should be presented after such remorseless exploitation and exposure.
David Sylvester, Chairman of the selection committee for the present show, has opted to keep close, literally, to the text. In Berlin recently the great exhibition of the movement was set against the political events of the time. A very German solution, and one reflected, as the Hayward pre
sentation makes abundantly clear, by the aims of the original Berlin Dada groups fifty-five years ago. Sylvester has a correspondingly English taste for the little magazines, the literary squibs and firecrackers which were so characteristic of the movement right from the first bills for the Cabaret Voltaire entertainment. But he is also a rare example of an art critic who actually relishes painting and sculpture, so the ferment of literary, idealistic, political and personal ideas that seethes in the reviews is topped, in his exhibition, by the cream of the fine art to which they gave rise. The show begins and ends with painting, pure and simple, some of it very rich cream indeed, particularly at the start. Here is a wall of early De Chiricos; Picasso's superb 'Femme en chemise assise dans un fauteuil' of 1913; Picabia's `Je revois en souvenir ma chere Udnie', a key work of 1914; Duchamp's 'Chocolate Grinder No I' from Philadelphia and a good deal else besides.
One of the aspects of the show clarified by Sylvester's presentation is the way the movement spread internationally. He regrets in his introduction that there was insufficient space to devote whole sections to Dutch, Italian and Hungarian Dada and Czech, Yugoslav, Romanian, Scandinavian, Japanese and Mexican Surrealism, Their exclusion makes the inclusion of a comparatively large English section, no doubt included out of courtesy to our one and only surrealist impresario Sir Roland Penrose, the single blot in the show. The only place in the western world, more or less, where Surrealism did not catch on was England. It was absolutely antipathetic to the conservative English temperament — how could it be acceptable to a country in which the three things the movement was primarily interested in, sex, religion and politics, were precisely the subjects immemorially banned from discussion — and the surrealists were well aware of the fact. Their map of the world is prominently, and correctly, displayed in the exhibition, and of the British Isles only Ireland warrants inclusion. The British work at the Hayward entirely justifies their contempt. Before the war most of the surrealists passed through London on their flight from Hitler. Academics stayed, dividing their time between Hampstead and the V & A, the artists moved on to cause the final resurgence of the original movement in New York. Some early work by famous names like Rothko, Newman and Still, a beautiful Calder mobile (do not forget to look up), and the juxtaposition of fine paintings and sculptures by Matta, Masson, Pollock, Gorky, David Smith and the newly, and quite rightly, resurrected David Hare, give eloquent expression to what happened.
Such juxtapositions, the way you can follow the influences, make the exhibition exceptional, quite apart from the quality of some of the work on view. If you like Dali, there are plenty of good early things; there are some famous Magrittes and Ernsts; Picasso comes and goes with customary brilliance though it is a pity there are not more of his objects, particularly his dolls. It is a further mark of the exhibition's importance to say that reputations should shift, however minimally, as a result of it. Picabia's was raised on high by Paris a few years ago. Here he reinforces it. Sad to think of him dying destitute in 1951. Arp looks a bit dull, Man Ray a trifle lightweight and gimmicky, Miro unimpeachable, and so on. But the star is Giacometti. Not the Giacometti of the existentialist figure, but of the endlessly inventive work of the late 'twenties and early 'thirties. What a pervasive influence he has been. Bland and English Henry Moore, very well presented, is a notable casualty. As for the painters, Masson emerges as a figure of far greater consequence than his reputation suggests. His influence insinuates its way from Miro right through to Pollock. Elsewhere there is a certain amount of padding, particularly upstairs, and the purposely overcrowded nature of the hanging makes for a load of looking at times. A load contributed to by the repetitive nature of the contents of the strategically placed display cabinets which perhaps tell more than any other specific feature, against the more profound implications of the movement, still perplexingly unresolved. Their African masks and fanciful old books belie the sequential aesthetic developments demonstrated by the art to which they have supposedly given rise, and they harp too much on one theme. The problem remains. How is art to maintain its ancient importance using Renaissance tools in a modern world? How can it lead the way out of the present social morass, when it is so dependent upon all that it would have to repudiate if it were to evolve significantly once again? The worst that can be said of this fine exhibition is that it tends to close the real debate of Surrealism, it does not reopen it.
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