Destabilising forces
Andrew Lambirth
Undercover Surrealism Hayward Gallery, until 30 July Max Ernst Helly Nahmad Gallery, 2 Cork Street, W1, until 28 July ‘ icasso, Miró, Masson and the vision ‘ icasso, Miró, Masson and the vision P of Georges Bataille’ is the subtitle of the latest extravaganza at the Hayward Gallery. Georges Bataille (1897–1962) is one of those buzz figures, beloved of the moment, without a quote from whom no contemporary art-speak catalogue introduction is complete. He has been influential as a philosopher as well as a writer (he penned a minor cult classic called Story of the Eye), and as a worthy opponent of André Breton, the self-styled Pope of Surrealism. Between 1929 and 1930 Bataille edited a radical surrealist magazine called Documents, which offered a heady mix of art and archaeology, ethnography and popular culture. This show is an examination of French culture through the lens of that magazine — an ideas-based exhibition if there ever was one.
Curators who ride exhibitions waving banners of theory often need to be treated with the gravest suspicion, for it is the exhibits which make a good exhibition, not the ideas they may (or may not) embody. Fortunately, this show features several groups of paintings and sculptures of the highest order, so the visitor is able to respond enthusiastically to it on a purely visual and aesthetic level. The display can then also be read and considered on various other levels, not least as a series of documents about the intellectual and artis tic climate of Paris around 1930. The presiding genius of the exhibition and doyenne of surrealist experts is Dawn Ades, ably assisted by fellow-curators Simon Baker and Fiona Bradley. The show is accompanied by a hefty catalogue (£22.99 in paperback) which will no doubt become a valued textbook of surrealist studies. The exhibition is quite small, and confined to the ground floors of the Hayward. Upstairs will be a programme of related talks, films, performance and live music (Willard White appears in Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale in late July). Is this a new direction for the Hayward? Smaller shows and an emphasis on ‘events’? Watch this space ...
The show opens with some film clips to put you in the mood. Never forget that surrealism is supposed to destabilise you, so we’re shown Buster Keaton falling downstairs as well as the unerotically shaped Marie Dressler as the Prancing Pearl. If that’s not enough, there are various Afghan and Nigerian sculptures lurking in the gloom, as well as de Chirico’s painting ‘The Evil Genius’ and Picasso’s great canvas ‘The Three Dancers’. In the main gallery space to the right of the entrance there are lots of photographs and documentary stuff and a lovely group of Picasso paintings — one of the main reasons to visit the show. ‘Bather, Design for a Monument (Dinard)’ and ‘Two Women Running’, both from 1928 and both magnificent paintings, establish the twin poles of this artist’s surrealist credentials. (All and Nothing.) The extremely odd ‘Bird on a Tree’ adds undoubted piquancy.
Another reason to venture to the South Bank is the group of sculptures on the mezzanine, including Giacometti’s ‘Man and Woman’, some cycladic specimens, several good things by Lipchitz, a Brancusi marble head and a wall of superb Arp reliefs hanging above. Elsewhere on this level are a lovely sequence of Karl Blossfeldt’s photographs of ferns and flowers, a group of strange and marvellous Miró paintings (tough, not sweet as some of his can be), and a room of Massons. These are exceptionally fine, and filled with inspired and inspiring linearity, despite the ostensible subject of butchered horses and abattoirs. Of course, no surrealist exhibition worthy of the designation would be complete without Max Ernst, but his presence here is confined to six exquisite collages from ‘The HundredHeadless Woman’. Even Dalí is given more prominence. For Ernst we must turn to the private sector for a proper assessment.
Very few commercial galleries can assemble a museum-quality exhibition of one of the great names of modern art, and then offer most of the exhibits for sale. Helly Nahmad currently achieves this feat with a show of Max Ernst’s paintings which is not just impressive but also rather enjoyable. Ernst always claimed he was a better painter than Picasso, and this group of works (many of them top-quality early examples) gives us the chance to test his boast against the paintings by the Spaniard at the Hayward. Some 25 pictures are hanging, though more are reproduced in the sumptuous hardback catalogue, an excellent range of work, which includes some famous images such as ‘Loplop’ (1932) and ‘Aux 100,000 colombes’ (1925). ‘Loplop’, the bird-god and Ernst’s alter ego, greets the visitor at the entrance to the gallery, with a rather more staid stilllife, ‘Les Prunes’, hanging to the left. Birds are a constant motif in Ernst’s imagery, sharp-beaked marauders of sense and logic, thieving magpies of chance — the accidental silhouettes of automatism thrown up by the process of working.
In 1925 Ernst produced his first ‘frottage’ — a technique akin to brass-rubbing, in which textures are taken from floorboards, leaves or cloth. Indeed textures are central to his art (a much stronger resource than his colour, which is often badly judged even for a rebarbative effect), and several of the smaller paintings here rely on texture almost entirely for their effect. Look at the carefully rucked and combed paint of ‘Waldbild: Winter’ (1927) or ‘Fôret et lune’ of the same year. Ernst was a master of the collage technique — putting together the previously unrelated to make a poignant new image — and this extended to his use of imagery in frottage and in oil paint. Mineral forests spring up from the humus of his northern imagination: out of the boney land, a dark plantation of skeletal vegetation. A moon rises, a bird falls, a shadow encroaches. It becomes a monster, a scarecrow a gigantic coffin. Meanwhile, in the courtyards of the castle, the blossoms gather. (Look, for instance, at the lyrical accomplishment of ‘Jardin gobe-avions’ of 1935.) Ernst was not a better painter than Picasso, but was perhaps more original in how he used the stuff (in common with the other surrealists, who delighted in discovering new strategies of paint application, such as écrémage and decalcomania), and he was undoubtedly more thorough in exploiting the wilder excesses of a fevered imagination. ‘Max Ernst is a liar, gold-digger, schemer, swindler, slanderer and boxer’ was the artist’s over-modest selfassessment of 1921. Anyone who’d like to know more should consult Max Ernst: Life and Work, edited by Werner Spies, the leading authority on the artist. Published by Thames & Hudson at £35, it contains over 600 illustrations, and is the supplementary volume to Spies’s eight-volume Ernst catalogue raisonné. It includes Ernst’s own ‘Biographical Notes’, bulked out with writings by others. Composed of letters, photos, poetry and diaries, much of it published for the first time, it is excellent value for the enthusiast who wishes to penetrate further into the topiarian mysteries of surrealism.
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