Subversive Spaces: Surrealism & Contemporary Art.

The following extracts are taken from the exhibition catalogue accompanying Subversive Spaces: Surrealism and Contemporary Art.

The catalogue is available to buy for £ TBC from The Whitworth Art Gallery Shop, tel +44 (0)161 275 7498.

Excerpt from ‘As Long as I’m Walking’

by Anna Dezeuze

`Drop everything … Set off on the roads.‘ André Breton’s motto from the 1920s suggests an opposition - between things, activities, attachments on the one hand, and the freedom of the unknown on the other hand - which would become a familiar trope with novels such as Jack Kerouak’s famous On the Road of 1957. For the Surrealist Breton, the unknown road was a combination of both `material’ and `spiritual’ paths, which he would explore in 1924 by setting off on foot, with his friends Louis Aragon, Max Morise and Roger Vitrac, on a trip from Paris to Blois in which nothing was planned in advance. `The absence of all goal,‘ according to Breton, led them away from reality into `ever more troubling’ `fantasies.‘ The excursion became `an exploration at the limits between wake life and dream life.‘ This fragile boundary was one of the Surrealists’ central concerns of the time, as they developed new means to probe into the subconscious through hypnosis and automatic writing. Like the subconscious lurking behind our conscious thoughts, fantasies are waiting to `rise from under our steps’ through aimless wanderings.

As artists have continued to explore the paradoxical states of walking, other paradoxes have emerged and multiplied. Self-discovery may go hand in hand with self-effacement, and a celebration of the boring commonplace can flip over into a potentially revolutionary critique of the everyday.

Excerpt from ‘Psychic Disturbance and Interiority in Surrealism and Contemporary Art’

by David Lomas

In 1795, Xavier de Maistre was confined to his quarters in Turin as punishment for having taken part in a duel. The experience of his world shrinking to the scale of a single room gave rise to a book, ‘Voyage autour de ma chambre’ (1795). The room comprised a long rectangle of some thirty-six steps for the round trip. As he journeyed about, he would traverse the length and breadth, diagonals and even zigzags - every conceivable line in geometry without following any rule or method.

De Maistre was not unduly discomfited by his enforced sequestration. He is nurtured by his surrounds, at home in them. By contrast, the experience (or perception) of confinement has provoked a more anxious response on the part of a number of Surrealist and contemporary women artists for whom the bourgeois home is seen as a constricting straitjacket. Some have sought to escape the rule-bound adult world by reverting to childhood. In the self-portrait photographs for which she is best known, the Surrealist photographer Claude Cahun appears often to be play-acting or dressing up for the camera. Recalling a children’s game, for Cahun these strategies allow for a searching interrogation of gender and sexual identity. In ‘Self-Portrait (in cupboard)‘ Cahun takes a nap on the shelf of a capacious wardrobe that dwarfs her, making her look like a small child. It seems probable that she is laying claim to the less socialised, correspondingly freer space of the child. Lucy Gunning’s video ‘Climbing Round My Room’ is another case in point. Viewed high up on a wall, one sees the artist barefooted and wearing a red dress edge her way around the perimeter of a room without touching the floor, her movements tracked by a hand held video camera. Children, after all, delight in leaping over the caverns between furniture, perching on bookshelves or windowsills, and exploring hidden nooks and crannies. On the other hand, it is only in a state of high emotion that someone is driven to climbing up walls. This may imply a more anxious or fearful motivation.