Edition 2017
The specter of surrealism
AN EXHIBITION CELEBRATING THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CENTRE POMPIDOU
Eleanor Antin, Hans Bellmer, Jacques-André Boiffard, Brassaï, Claude Cahun, Mohamed Camara, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Evelyne Coutas, Marcel Duchamp, Germaine Dulac, Peter Fischli et David Weiss, Michel François, Agnès Geoffray, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Hirofumi Isoya, Lukas Jasansky et Martin Polak, Ulla Jokisalo, Július Koller, Eva Kot’átková, Jiří Kovanda, Roger Livet, Dora Maar, René Magritte, Anna Maria Maiolino, Nicole Metayer, Karel Miler, Otto Muehl, Gabriel Orozco, Jean Painlevé, Man Ray, Sophie Ristelhueber, Alix Cléo Roubaud, Armando Salas Portugal, Cindy Sherman, Taryn Simon, Dayanita Singh, Alina Szapocznikow, Georges Tony Stoll, Maurice Tabard, Patrick Tosani, Raoul Ubac, Hannah Villiger, Nancy Wilson-Pajic, Erwin Wurm.
The Centre Pompidou celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2017 everywhere in France. To share its anniversary with a wider audience, the Centre Pompidou will be presenting a completely new programme of exhibitions, outstanding loans and various events throughout the year. Surrealism is still alive, even if it sometimes leads its life underground—this is a conclusion we can come to by looking at contemporary photography, or more broadly, photography after 1945. Using the photographic collections at the Centre Pompidou, this exhibition returns to a few of the themes born of the interaction between surrealism and photography. It shows the ways in which the artists of the postwar years drew on the surrealist sensibility, and illustrates how they adapted their relationship to reality to their ends, abolishing the rules of art, taking the absurd to extremes and addressing contemporary political issues. Beyond chronological continuity, the exhibition places seemingly disparate artistic projects in dialogue with one another across their similar strategies.
Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska
The Centre Pompidou celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2017 everywhere in France. To share its anniversary with a wider audience, the Centre Pompidou will be presenting a completely new programme of exhibitions, outstanding loans and various events throughout the year. Surrealism is still alive, even if it sometimes leads its life underground—this is a conclusion we can come to by looking at contemporary photography, or more broadly, photography after 1945. Using the photographic collections at the Centre Pompidou, this exhibition returns to a few of the themes born of the interaction between surrealism and photography. It shows the ways in which the artists of the postwar years drew on the surrealist sensibility, and illustrates how they adapted their relationship to reality to their ends, abolishing the rules of art, taking the absurd to extremes and addressing contemporary political issues. Beyond chronological continuity, the exhibition places seemingly disparate artistic projects in dialogue with one another across their similar strategies.
Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska
Exhibition curator: Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska.
Publication: Damarice Amao and Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska, Le Spectre du surréalisme, Éditions Textuel, 2017.
Wallpaper by Processus, Paris.
Framing by Blaise Saint Maurice, Barbizon. With support from Enedis, partner for the 40th anniversary of the Centre Pompidou.