Man Ray
Sans titre (Untitled), 1930,
(top: Georges and Yvette Malkine, bottom: André de La Rivière, Robert Desnos, André Lasserre)
Vintage gelatin-silver print, 9,3 x 8,5 cm
Private collection / Courtesy Galerie 1900-2000
© Man Ray Trust / 2010, ProLitteris, Zürich
The Subversion of Images
Surrealism, Photography, and Film
27 February to 24 May 2010
Opening: Friday 26 February 2010 6 pm
FOTOMUSEUM WINTERTHUR
Grüzenstrasse 44+45 , CH-8400 Winterthur (Zurich)
Tel: +41 52 234 10 60 Fax: +41 52 233 60 97
fotomuseum@fotomuseum.ch www.fotomuseum.ch
Tues-Sun 11 am to 6 pm, Wed 11 am to 8 pm
Roger Livet
Une regrettable affaire (A regrettable affair), c. 1947, from the album of the same name with 19 photographs, created during the revision of the film Fleurs meurtries (Bruised Flowers) c. 1929
Vintage gelatin-silver print, 22,3 x 28,1 cm
Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'art moderne, Paris
© J.-E. Livet
The Subversion of Images - Surrealism, Photography, and Film
From February 27 to May 24, 2010, the Fotomuseum Winterthur is presenting the exhibition The Subversion of Images - Surrealism, Photography, and Film, an extraordinarily rich survey of Surrealist photography. The exhibition comprises over 400 photographs, films, and documents: from very famous photographs by Man Ray, Hans Bellmer, Claude Cahun, Raoul Ubac, Jacques-André Boiffard, and Maurice Tabard to unknown pictures, to magazine publications, artist's books, advertisements, to fascinating "raw, found documents", to photo booth photographs, and group portraits of the Surrealists.
The exhibition also offers an opportunity to discover lesser-known photographic works by Paul Eluard, André Breton, Antonin Artaud, or George Hugnet, photographic games by Leo Malet or figures such as Artür Harfaux or Benjamin Fondane. More than twenty years after the last major review of the subject, "L'amour fou - Photography & Surrealism" (1985) by Rosalind Krauss and Jane Livingstone, the exhibition The Subversion of Images - Surrealism, Photography, and Film extensively demonstrates and discusses the openness, diversity, and innovation with which the Surrealists employed photography.
The formal language of Surrealism has long since found its way into everyday life via fashion, advertising, and the media. Today the term Surrealism brings together everything that appears magical, dream-like, and incomprehensible. It is often forgotten that the Surrealists were artists and writers who worked very incisively toward changing the world and gaining self-knowledge and who also reflected critically on social-political questions. The surrealist avant-garde considered itself to be a revolutionary countermovement to the bourgeois system of values. Through new imagery, they investigated existence during the interwar period, a time of great social and political instability, and they deconstructed received ways of seeing and thinking through various artistic strategies. Photography seemed to best fulfill the Surrealists' needs as their medium of choice. The title "Subversion of Images", given to a photo series by Paul Nougé by the Belgian Surrealist Marcel Mariën, is intended to inspire reflection. For the Surrealists, the challenge was certainly to overthrow images, and in this way to alter forms of representation. Yet it is equally - and perhaps even more so - about overthrowing through images, confusing the existing conditions of reality. "Over time the true revolutions," Breton wrote, "will be carried out through the power of images." The survey exhibition is organized by the Centre Pompidou in Paris and shown in collaboration with the Fundación Mapfre, Madrid, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur. The Fotomuseum Winterthur is this exhibition's only stop in the German-speaking area.
The curators are Quentin Bajac, Clément Chéroux, Guillaume Le Gall, Philippe-Alain Michaud and Michel Poivert. Main sponsors of the exhibition: Swiss Re / Vontobel Foundation
A comprehensive catalogue on the exhibition is available
(French with a German booklet):
La Subversion des images - Surréalisme, Photographie, Film
containing essays by Quentin Bajac, Clément Chéroux, Guillaume Le Gall, Philippe-Alain Michaud and Michel Poivert and a chronology by Emmanuelle Etchecopar-Etchart.
Published by Centre Pompidou, Paris
(Ed. Clément Chéroux, Quentin Bajac).
Hardcover, format 25 x 30,7 cm,
480 pages, approx. 500 illustrations.
In addition, the Fotomuseum Winterthur publishes all essays and the chronology in German in the form of a bound booklet. 68 pages, no illustrations. Price catalogue and booklet: CHF 79.-
Claude Cahun
Que me veux-tu? (What do you want from me?), double self-portrait, 1929
Vintage gelatin-silver print, 18 x 23 cm
Private collection
© Estate of Claude Cahun
Photo: Philippe Migeat
Maurice Tabard
Essay for a film. Culte Vaudou (voodoo cult), 1937
Vintage gelatin-silver print (solarisation) with red/orange transparent foil, 22,7 x 16,9 cm
Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris
© RMN
Photo: Georges Merguerditchian
photography-now.com
Torstr. 218 | 10115 Berlin | Editor: Claudia Stein
contact@photography-now.com | T +49.30.24 34 27 80
From February 27 to May 24, 2010, the Fotomuseum Winterthur is presenting the exhibition The Subversion of Images - Surrealism, Photography, and Film, an extraordinarily rich survey of Surrealist photography. The exhibition comprises over 400 photographs, films, and documents: from very famous photographs by Man Ray, Hans Bellmer, Claude Cahun, Raoul Ubac, Jacques-André Boiffard, and Maurice Tabard to unknown pictures, to magazine publications, artist's books, advertisements, to fascinating "raw, found documents", to photo booth photographs, and group portraits of the Surrealists.
The exhibition also offers an opportunity to discover lesser-known photographic works by Paul Eluard, André Breton, Antonin Artaud, or George Hugnet, photographic games by Leo Malet or figures such as Artür Harfaux or Benjamin Fondane. More than twenty years after the last major review of the subject, "L'amour fou - Photography & Surrealism" (1985) by Rosalind Krauss and Jane Livingstone, the exhibition The Subversion of Images - Surrealism, Photography, and Film extensively demonstrates and discusses the openness, diversity, and innovation with which the Surrealists employed photography.
The formal language of Surrealism has long since found its way into everyday life via fashion, advertising, and the media. Today the term Surrealism brings together everything that appears magical, dream-like, and incomprehensible. It is often forgotten that the Surrealists were artists and writers who worked very incisively toward changing the world and gaining self-knowledge and who also reflected critically on social-political questions. The surrealist avant-garde considered itself to be a revolutionary countermovement to the bourgeois system of values. Through new imagery, they investigated existence during the interwar period, a time of great social and political instability, and they deconstructed received ways of seeing and thinking through various artistic strategies. Photography seemed to best fulfill the Surrealists' needs as their medium of choice. The title "Subversion of Images", given to a photo series by Paul Nougé by the Belgian Surrealist Marcel Mariën, is intended to inspire reflection. For the Surrealists, the challenge was certainly to overthrow images, and in this way to alter forms of representation. Yet it is equally - and perhaps even more so - about overthrowing through images, confusing the existing conditions of reality. "Over time the true revolutions," Breton wrote, "will be carried out through the power of images." The survey exhibition is organized by the Centre Pompidou in Paris and shown in collaboration with the Fundación Mapfre, Madrid, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur. The Fotomuseum Winterthur is this exhibition's only stop in the German-speaking area.
The curators are Quentin Bajac, Clément Chéroux, Guillaume Le Gall, Philippe-Alain Michaud and Michel Poivert. Main sponsors of the exhibition: Swiss Re / Vontobel Foundation
A comprehensive catalogue on the exhibition is available
(French with a German booklet):
La Subversion des images - Surréalisme, Photographie, Film
containing essays by Quentin Bajac, Clément Chéroux, Guillaume Le Gall, Philippe-Alain Michaud and Michel Poivert and a chronology by Emmanuelle Etchecopar-Etchart.
Published by Centre Pompidou, Paris
(Ed. Clément Chéroux, Quentin Bajac).
Hardcover, format 25 x 30,7 cm,
480 pages, approx. 500 illustrations.
In addition, the Fotomuseum Winterthur publishes all essays and the chronology in German in the form of a bound booklet. 68 pages, no illustrations. Price catalogue and booklet: CHF 79.-
Claude Cahun
Que me veux-tu? (What do you want from me?), double self-portrait, 1929
Vintage gelatin-silver print, 18 x 23 cm
Private collection
© Estate of Claude Cahun
Photo: Philippe Migeat
Maurice Tabard
Essay for a film. Culte Vaudou (voodoo cult), 1937
Vintage gelatin-silver print (solarisation) with red/orange transparent foil, 22,7 x 16,9 cm
Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris
© RMN
Photo: Georges Merguerditchian
photography-now.com
Torstr. 218 | 10115 Berlin | Editor: Claudia Stein
contact@photography-now.com | T +49.30.24 34 27 80
