Scottish
National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One), Edinburgh
Four
stars
On the
off-kilter face of it, My Windows Look Sideways (1939) appears to be a
relatively modest contribution to this expanded two-room compendium of Dada and
Surrealist heavyweights. Yet, as Roland Penrose’s playful mix of words and
colours hangs above the exhibition entrance/exit, it is the perfect pinned-up
welcome mat for a still iconoclastic non-movement.
Penrose
was a key figure in Surrealism, as organiser and collector as much as artist.
He put together the International Surrealist Exhibition in London during 1936,
and it is his acquired archive that forms much of the source for the more than
40 works by 17 artists. The rest of the gang are all here, from the pages of
Andre Breton’s original Surrealist manifesto and documents from Tristan Tzara’s
Zurich-based Cabaret Voltaire club onwards.
Look,
there’s Pablo Picasso, all angles in Nude Woman lying on the beach in the sun
(1932) and the wonky-headed but grin-bright visage in Portrait of Lee Miller
(1937). And there’s Salvador Dali and Edward James’ cartoon super-villain
styled Lobster Telephone (1938). There’s an entire wall-load of Magritte, and
another of Max Ernst, who, in different ways, from the deceptively serene
flying machines in Magritte’s Le Drapeau Noir (1937) to the dark entries
of Ernst’s La Foret (1928), point the way for future sci-fi artists to come.
Less
obviously familiar works by the likes of Scottish surrealist Edward Baird,
Czech
artist Toyen, aka Marie Cerminova and the army of amoeba-like shapes in Yves
Tanguy’s Le Ruban des excess (1932) are just as vital. As is Leonora
Carrington’s Portrait of Max Ernst (1939), which casts her lover in a red
feather robe aloft a frozen landscape. This is hung opposite a case of
Carrington’s typed letters to Penrose that are full of plots, schemes and
proposals that suggest, in the Surrealists’ brave new world, anything was
possible.
The List, August 2019
ends
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