Chapter 13 - Surrealist Display Practices

Summary

This chapter examines Surrealist curatorial practice from its emergence in the 1920s until the last group exhibition prior to André Breton’s death in 1966. Rooted in the agitational French and German Dada demonstrations that immediately preceded them, Surrealist exhibitions aimed to transform their viewers through an evolving set of tactics that diverged markedly from normative gallery display practices. The chapter proposes that by recourse initially to the discursive, then to the tactile, and finally through fully immersive environments, these complex and often elaborate installations aimed to cultivate sensual, politicized, and postnational subjects. Eschewing those detached models of modernism that aimed either to privilege abstraction or to maintain medium specificity, the exhibitions curated by the Surrealists over half a century give shape to a coherent curatorial practice that engaged with some of the hallmark discourses and experiences of the twentieth century.