The exhibition “The Naked Eye” at the Shpilman Institute for Photography (The SIP) presents rare examples of Surrealist photography in the first half of the 20th century from the collection of the Sip and the collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
Surrealism rejected the old artistic-cultural order and strove to shatter the orders of bourgeois society by laying bare the depths of the human soul and liberating man‘s innermost urges and aspirations. In an attempt to introduce a stratified platform for new aesthetic perceptions, Surrealist photography strove to present a different reality and undermine the perception of “direct vision” by creating imaginary, fantastical, dreamlike images.
The title of the exhibition, “The Naked Eye,” is analogous to André Breton’s notion of the “savage eye” (l‘oeil sauvage), which contrasts the immediacy of pure, savage vision (its perceptual automatism) to the traditional bourgeois order. The dominance of the eye image in the Surrealist visual repertoire, which was associated with expressions of passion, desire and violence, was congruent with the attempt of the movement’s artists and members to change the modes of observation and vision to enable direct, subconscious perception, as opposed to thought and planning.
The first part of the exhibition focuses on Surrealist thought as manifested in photography: “the eye,” “the coveted woman,” “the doll,” “the mannequin,” “nightmarish/dream images,” etc.
Another part of the exhibition engages in Surrealist cinema. It features Man Ray‘s L’Étoile de Mer (The Starfish, 1928), and Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí‘s Un Chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1929), alongside still photographs from other films from the first half of the 20th century.
Special place is dedicated to the photographs by Man Ray, the father of Surrealist photography, presented alongside works by the movement’s artists, including Dora Maar, Paul Éluard, Claude Cahun, Hans Bellmer, and other photographers who were influenced by the ideas of the Surrealists in those years and operated elsewhere in Europe and the United States.
 
Participating Artists: Berenice Abbott, Herbert Bayer, Cecil Beaton, Hans Bellmer, Denise Bellon, Ferenc Berko, Ruth Bernhard, Erwin Blumenfeld, Bill Brandt, Josef Breitenbach, André Breton, James Hamilton Brown, Francis Joseph Bruguière, Luis Buñuel, Claude Cahun, Tibor Csörgeő, Salvador Dalí, Paul Éluard, Louis Feuillade, Paul Heismann, Heinz Hajek-Halke, Florence Henri, Pierre Jahan, André Kertész, Willy Kessels, Edmund Kesting, François Kollar, Germaine Krull, Clarence John Laughlin, Nathan Lerner, Eli Lotar, George Platt Lynes, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, Pierre Molinier, Jean Moral, Barbara Morgan, Oskar Nerlinger, Jean Painlevé, Man Ray, P. Sharland, Osamu Shiihara, Bohumil Šťastný, Maurice Tabard, Val Telberg, Raoul Ubac
 
Curator of the exhibition: Aya Lurie, Chief Curator of The Sip