A surreal dream of an exhibition at Tate Modern

It is rare that you visit an art exhibition and come away with both a sense of having been thoroughly entertained, yet also feeling that you’ve seen a work of revolutionary scholarship and been thoroughly schooled too.

But the Tate Modern’s new blockbuster, Surrealism Beyond Borders, nails on both of those counts.

 

Personally, I’ve long liked some Surrealism very much – and some considerably less so. But I’ve also seen it as a very European school, and indeed, a very masculine one. And the iconic status of Salvador Dalí as the popular leading Surrealist has also left me with a sense of it being a tad on the political right.

A perfect illustration of at least some of this is the one book about the school in my personal art library. Surrealism, written by Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy and edited by Ute Grosenick for Taschen, was first published in 2006. It is worth noting that the latter has worked on at least one title for Taschen specifically around women artists.

 

Now, it is a slender volume, made up of short pieces about specific, important works in the school.

 

Thirty-five works are featured, by 18 artists. Five are by Dalí, with four each by René Magritte, Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst. Of the artists here, only Meret Oppenheim (a single work) is female. Only Matta (Chile), Wilfredo Lam (Cuba) and Man Ray (USA) were born outside Europe. Of these, only Matta didn’t die in Paris.

 

So for instance, no Leonora Carrington or Dorothea Tanning.

 

Tate Modern has long been working to rectify some of this: its 2019 Tanning exhibition was excellent.

 

But however basic such Taschen guides are intended to be (and that basic nature does not mean that they are not good), this all feeds an idea of a movement that was almost entirely European – indeed, almost entirely centred on Paris, where poet André Breton penned the Manifeste du surréalisme in 1924 – and predominantly male.

 

Wrong. Wrong – and then wrong again. As this extraordinary exhibition makes quite clear. 

 

Indeed, the very title of the exhibition, Surrealism Beyond Borders, makes that point – that this is not just about geo-political borders, but about sex and gender ones too.

 

With Surrealist groups in Japan, South America and Egypt, it can hardly be seen as  exclusively ‘European’. And it is most certainly not a predominantly male thing.

Co-produced by the Tate Modern and New York’s Metropolitan Museum, we open with Marcel Jean’s Armoire surréaliste (Surrealist Wardrobe, left) from 1941, when he was trapped in Hungary.

It is both of and painted on wardrobe doors – complete with real keyholes – and has an impossible double landscape behind those parts of it that are open. It is classic trompe-l’œil, stunningly executed; a real mind messer and arguably precisely the sort of thing that I have most relished about Surrealism for years – superb technique in a super-realistic approach, married with a dreamlike subject.

 

On the same themes, it’s why I have loved Giorgio de Chirico’s works since studying art for A’ level. And Magritte too, though I have had very few chances to see works by either of them in real life and away from the printed page or digital image.

 

Here, we have de Chirico’s Le rêve de Tobie (The Dream of Tobias) 1917 (see final picture in this post) and Magritte’s La durée poignardée (Time Transfixed) 1938, both of which are wonderfully, gloriously executed.

 

Incidentally, as the Magritte is framed and under glass, you can get very up close and personal to it at this exhibition – and it is worth doing so, because the brush work is absolutely sensational.

 

These were personal highlights because they were works not seen before ‘live’ by artists I personally love, but there were plenty of new discoveries that were highlights too.

 

For instance, from 1961 we have Remedios Varo’s autobiographic triptych – brought together here for the first time in years – showing her strict Catholic upbringing (left), a group of female artisans weaving a mantle for the world (one – how apt for these times – masked) and a depiction of the artist and a friend leaving Spain for Mexico.

 

It is fantastical – and (as observed by The Other Half) harks back to Bosch and Bruegel, yet is utterly different from anything we’d seen previously of their work.

The exhibition also includes Fantomerne by Danish artist Rita Kernn-Larsen (second picture from the top), which she created after the shock of witnessing a drowning.

 

Then there is the anti-colonialism of Malangatanta Ngwenya’s Untitled from 1967.

 

Perhaps the major revelation is of Surrealism in Japan – Kikuji Yamashita’s The Deification of a Soldier, from 1967 (see below), is astonishing; a visceral response to the artist’s own experience as a Japanese soldier in WWII. There are other works by Japanese artists using Surrealism to express the horror of the war. All of them are absolutely worthy of inclusion in this exhibition – they are not present for the sake of it.

Yet Koga Harue’s Umi (The Sea) from 1929 (see top picture) is a lovely, upbeat work bringing together images that he had collated from magazines and postcards, presenting a positive future.

 

Then there is Laurent Marcel Salinas’s Naissance (Birth) from 1944. Born in Egypt – that there was a Surrealist group based in Cairo is just another revelation here – he signed a 1938 group manifesto, Yajya al-fann al-munhatt/Vive l’art dégénéré (Long Live Degenerate Art).

 

As only a slight aside, I was delighted – albeit rather surprised – that, at this point, the curators didn’t feel the need to point out the ‘degenerate art’ was a Nazi description for any art that didn’t fit their rather limited view of the world.

And in keeping with moving away from a very limited idea of Surrealism, in this exhibition, there is just one work by Dalí – his lobster telephone, while both Carrington and Tanning have works included.

There are two works by Picasso – it's difficult to see how Les Trois Danseuses (The Three Dancers) 1925 really fits, but Composition au Gant (Composition with Glove) 1930, certainly does.

However, even if the former doesn’t really ‘fit’, its inclusion still raises an interesting question of the overlaps and similarities between Surrealism and Cubism. Similarly, de Chirico never identified as a Surrealist, yet it’s difficult for any viewer looking at his works not to see him as one.

And Tanning has in other places (indeed, another Taschen book), been categorised as producing “fantastic art”. But what is Surrealism if not ‘fantastic’?

And here you have a perfect illustration of why this exhibition, is not simply called Surrealism Beyond Borders, but genuinely goes beyond the previous borders erected around the school, whether formally or informally.

 

The last time that The Other Half and I visited an exhibition was in May 2021, but the Tate Modern’s Making of Rodin was a tad disappointing. However, it had felt safe – timed entries so no overwhelming crowds and, of course, face covering.

This still felt safe, with continued timed entry and at least half people wearing a face covering. What it also did was succeed in being a really excellent exhibition.

• Surrealism Beyond Borders is at Tate Modern in London until 29 August 2022.

 

Back to the gallery – but Rodin is no blockbuster

As our frenzy of COVID-19 lockdown-easing culture blitz continues, The Other Half and I nipped over to Tate Modern for The Making of Robin exhibition.

A little note: it might feel like a “frenzy”, but while getting out and about a bit, we’re also avoiding the centre of London and venues that would entail using the Tube or crossing central London. Let's all be sensible.

 

Living in east London, Tate Modern is easy for us as it’s a single bus ride and a walk away. I’d deliberately booked for late on the Sunday morning of a bank holiday weekend as that was almost certainly going to be quite quiet. It was. And we also walked most of the way home – but that’s a different story.

 

Now, this is billed as a major exhibition, but while it is interesting, it’s no blockbuster for the uninitiated. That said, we are living through exceptional times, so leeway has to be given as arts organisations try to get back up and running in the face of a deeply anti-arts government in Westminster.

 

The exhibition concentrates on the processes that Auguste Rodin used in creating his iconic sculptures. This means looking primarily at how he created, used and re-used the plaster works that were rarely intended as being finished items.

 

So, for instance, there is an entire display cabinet full of hands that were initially created when he was working on The Gates of Hell. These are really interesting ... but particularly if you’ve seen a finished version of The Gates of Hell. The OH and I are fortunate enough to have visited the Musée Rodin in Paris twice, spending time with castings of many of the works we see represented here in their development phases. Including The Gates of Hell.

 

Personally, I love Rodin’s monumental Balzac ... but can you fully appreciate all the maquettes (both very large and very small – and there are many of them) if you can’t see or haven’t seem one of the final castings?

 

Equally with The Burghers of Calais – although at least visitors to this exhibition can go and view the casting that stands in Victoria Tower Gardens, next to the Houses of Parliament without too much difficulty.

 

For me, the most interesting works shown here in their own right are those representing the Japanese actor and dancer Ohta Hisa, known as Hanako (left). They include works in bronze and glass and are fascinating.

They were unlike any Rodin works we'd seen previously.

It was also good to see a couple of works by Camile Claudel – Rodin's lover and co-worker – yet I find myself wonder whether, by forcing this tiny representation in, the exhibition doesn't do her a disservice rather than a service.

 

Indeed, the OH and I have a long history of finding some curators’ notes impossibly pompous or priggish. Here, this becomes the gallery’s attempt to be ‘woke’ (and I hate myself having to describe it as that).

Further, it actually risks misrepresenting Claudel's life – reducing her problems to her connection with Rodin, rather than noting, for instance, the massive damage done to her by her mother.

 

And seriously, who really needs to be pointed, via QR code, to a chat between two women saying that there was a “gender imbalance” in art in the 19^th century? Not least for an essentially art geeky exhibition ... is Tate really assuming that visitors won’t know that the 19th century was deeply unbalanced in gender terms in general?

 

Equally, do we need a mini lecture on ‘cultural appropriation’? I mean – the examples of Rodin's personal collection of objects from the far east, then turned quite casually into new works are genuinely interesting. But would the gallery also, in such context, mention Ai Weiwei, or is smashing centuries-old Chinese vases and claiming that doing so is a ‘work of art’ okay if you’re Chinese and the centuries-old vases you smash in the name of art are themselves Chinese?

 

Look ... it was great to get back into a gallery. In terms if Tate Modern, the social distancing etc all works well and allows you to feel comfortable, for which I am genuinely grateful, but this exhibition is, in essence, for Rodin geeks. If you haven't seen finished versions of these plaster works, then it's probably not worth visiting.

 

And such things can be done better. See Matisse in the Studio in 2017 at the Royal Academy showed how – my thoughts here.

 

And as for Rodin – some thoughts from the last time the OH and I visited the Paris museum.

Tanning exhibition is a complex, satisfying hit

The Mirror, 1950

It only has a week to run, but if you have the chance – and haven’t done so already – then get thee to the Tate Modern in London for the Dorothea Tanning exhibition.

It’s not one of the most massive Tate offerings, so is cheaper than many and nowhere near as exhausting. But don’t mistake that for something that doesn’t pack a punch in its eight rooms.

The Tanning I was familiar with was primarily from the pair of paintings exhibited here that the Tate Modern itself holds: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1943) and Some Roses and their Phantoms (1952).

But while this starts at around the same era, it goes far later – and there’s plenty of ‘late’, since Tanning’s artistic career panned seven decades and her life, a century plus.

A Mrs Radcliffe Called Today, 1944

Given a background in Galesburg, Illinois, where she observed that nothing happened “except the wallpaper” and a liking for gothic literature, it’s hardly surprising that Tanning was drawn to the imaginative world of Surrealism.

The exhibition opens with 1944’s Endgame, a surreal riff on chess – a game that was popular among the movement’s artists and that Tanning herself described as “more than a game. It’s a way of thinking”.

It’s a work that’s typically meticulous for this stage in her career, but the white stiletto (the queen) crushing the black bishop, and the revealed strip of landscape at the bottom of the canvas, does more than suggest that there’s a lot more going on here than ‘just’ a game a chess.

And that’s one of the major points with the exhibition. There are a number of works here that you could spend ages looking at and still find yourself wondering what they ‘mean’, though Tanning herself seems to have had less concern for interpreting her works than some of those looking at them.

Pour Gustave l’adoré, 1974

A Mrs Radcliffe Called Today from 1944 (pictured left) is one such piece (Ann Radcliffe was an English Gothic author) with it’s sense of moving beyond the physically possible world into a realm without the boundaries of nature.

Open doors are a repeated motif: in the first of Les 7 périls spectraux, a series of lithographs from 1950, Tanning has a door opening in a book, while in Maternity, from 1946-7, a door stands opening in the middle of a desert.

Elsewhere, The Mirror, from 1950 (see top), shows – appears to show – a dead sunflower looking at itself in a sunflower looking glass. Dorian Grey leaps to mind (Tanning loved the book) and Snow White. It’s creepy and compelling.

Over the years, her work became more fluid and abstracted, yet no less mysterious. Pour Gustave l’adoré (1974), shows a mermaid’s tail in the foreground but as our eyes move up, the body is lost in deep shadow. But if that’s a mermaid’s tail, what’s going on just before we’re plunged into shadow: is that a limb to the right and, if so, how does it relate to the tail?

Crepuscula glacial (var., Flos cumuli) from 1997

The title is a play on the name of Paul-Gustave Doré, a 19th-century French engraver and illustrator who was best known for fantastical illustrations of fairy tales.

It’s not difficult to see why Tanning loved his work, but it’s also great to see illustration not regarded as some sort of inferior form of art.

The sense of the mythical, the folkloric and the fairytale is present elsewhere – in Murmers (1976), for instance, and To Climb a Ladder (1987), which has a subtle hint of nightmare about the naked bodies tangled together as they climb.

Tanning turned to poetry late in life, but there’s a poetic quality about some of latest painted works too – not least in the beautifully coloured Crepuscula glacial (var., Flos cumuli) from 1997.

Tweedy, 1973

Some of her soft sculptures are on show and two stick in mind, even for a someone who is not a fan of this approach.

In Tweedy, from 1973, the artist created an animal-like form in tweed, with a small, matching turd near by. It’s very funny.

On the other hand, Hôtel du Pavot, Chamber 202 is deeply unsettling. An installation, the ‘room’ combines soft fabric sculptures with old-style, dark wallpaper, wood and floor.

An open door, though we cannot see through it, offers the only hint of escape as torsos and parts of human forms emerge – in some cases, tearing themselves – through the walls and furniture and into this world.

The wall facing us has a rectangle of wallpaper that’s cleaner and brighter than elsewhere: what picture has been removed and why?

Hôtel du Pavot, Chamber 202, 1970-73

It has a sense of Stephen King’s The Shining – and it’s impossible not to recall Tanning’s own description of her place of upbringing as being where the only thing that happened was the wallpaper. Here, the wallpaper is alive and not in a good way.

Tanning, who was married to Max Ernst for 30 years until his death and very much part of the Surrealist circle of the day, is well served by this fascinating retrospective.

It shines a spotlight on her work, showing us its variety, her humour, her technical skill and – not least – her ability, throughout her career, to create work that, in its unsettling nature, sticks with us long after we’ve left the room.

You have until 9 June – find out more at www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern.

Modigliani – bohemianism's poster boy

Nude, 1917

Modigliani was just 35 when he died in Paris, in 1920, of tuberculosis exacerbated by alcohol and drugs. Just after his funeral, Jeanne Hébuterne, eight months pregnant with the couple’s second child, threw herself out of a fifth-floor window.

He’d had just one solo exhibition (closed by the Parisian police after a day because of its ‘shocking’ nudes), sold only a few works – for little money – and died destitute.

If the stereotype of the self-destructive bohemian artist needed a poster boy, Modigliani would be a prime contender.

Young Gypsy, 1909

It’s fitting too that, like van Gogh, his work would only become appreciated and valued in the years after his death.

Tate Modern in London has been hosting a major Modigliani exhibition since November – it closes on 2 April – and after various false starts, The Other Half and I finally caught it, just before seeing the new Picasso exhibition in the same gallery.

The two men knew each other – but what strikes one most when seeing these two exhibitions so close together is the ferocity of their working: Modigliani over the latter part of his short career (he destroyed most of his early work) and Picasso particularly in the single year that the new exhibition seeks to shine a light on.

Both exhibitions also include works that are not the artist’s best, but which provide a deeper context for visitors.

The earliest of Modigliani’s works shown here reveal the influence of Cézanne – not least in the palette – before we reach the elongated figures that are instantly recognisable.

But one of the first exhibits, The Young Gypsy from 1909 tells us straight away where we’re headed, with its accentuated cheekbones, puckered lips and almondised eyes.

Portrait of Léopold Survage, 1918

There are plenty of these here – both nudes and portraits. In some, the line is exquisite – in others, less so, while there can be an archness in some of the portraits that helps to embed them firmly in your mind – the 1915 portrait of art dealer Paul Guillaume is a perfect example.

On a personal level, I was delighted to see that the curators had included his portrait of Leopold Survage, a fascinating artist who studied briefly under Matisse in 1905 and later followed in his footsteps to Collioure.

It’s impossible to know whether – and how – Modigliani would have developed were it not for his early death. Some art historians believe he would have gone on to much greater things, but his creativity was such that his work stays long in the mind – perhaps not least because he is pretty much impossible to categorise in terms of labels of any school or style. There is simply Modigliani.

• Modigliani is at Tate Modern until 2 April