Saturday, October 3, 2009

Paris, Surrealism at Beaubourg


I was pleased to receive in my post box (here in Auckland) an invitation from the Centre Pompidou for the opening of their current show THE SUBVERSION OF IMAGES, SURREALISM, PHOTOGRAPHY, FILM. The exhibition runs until January 11 and brings together nearly 400 works, gives a rare overview of surrealist photography.

A broad selection of the finest proofs by Man Ray, Hans Bellmer, Claude Cahun, Raoul Ubac, Jacques-André Boiffard, Maurice Tabard will be shown alongside rarely seen images which reveal a number of surrealist ways of using photography, such as publications in magazines or artists' books, advertisements, collections of images, fascination for the raw print, pictures taken in photo booths and group photographs etc.

The event introduces the public to unknown series of collages by such renowned artists as Paul Eluard, André Breton, Antonin Artaud and Georges Hugnet, the photographic games of Léo Malet and Victor Brauner and highlights personalities like Artür Harfaux and Benjamin Fondane.

The image here, which was also on the invitation, was made by Man Ray in Paris in 1929 and is possibly Lee Miller's neck.

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