Jean Painlevé, De gaulle ou Pince de homard, 1929, black-and-white photograph, 24 3/4 x 19 5/6". © 2009 ADAGP, Paris.
Madrid
The Subversion of Images
Fundacíon Mapfre | Recoletos
Paseo de Recoletos 23
May 16–September 12, 2010
Centre Pompidou
Place Georges-Pompidou
September 23, 2009–January 11, 2010
Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44 & 45
February 26–May 23, 2010
Curated by Quentin Bajac and Clément Cheroux
This survey of Surrealist photography—the Pompidou’s first since Rosalind Krauss and Jean Livingston’s 1985 “L’amour fou/Explosante-fixe”—might as well have “In the Expanded Field” as its subtitle. In the forthcoming exhibition of nearly four hundred works made between 1920 and 1940, expect lesser-known found images, independent magazines, films, and games by some seventy-five artists, from Jacques-André Boiffard to detective novelist Léo Malet—as well as rarely exhibited photos by André Breton and Antonin Artaud—all flanked by the iconic prints of Man Ray and Hans Bellmer. Offering some relief from Surrealism’s nagging sexism, a few strong female Surrealists, including Eileen Agar and Dora Maar, promise to twist their male counterparts’ subordination of women as objects of desire.
