Post-Surrealist Art from Meret Oppenheim to Mariella Mosler
Text by Belinda Grace Gardner.
In recent decades, the real legacy of Surrealism for contemporary art has stemmed not from the Surrealists' paintings of disparate and bizarre objects, but from their combinations of actual objects, such as Meret Oppenheim's “Fur Cup” and Dali's lobster telephone. Taking as its departure point the “Surrealist object” as theorized by André Breton in the early 1930s, The Ear of Giacometti looks at the importance of this work for a new generation of artists applying Surrealist conceptions of enigmatic objects and fragments to the fragmentary world we live in today. The volume opens with a six-page cabinet of curiosities display that underscores its object-oriented take on Surrealism, and reproduces works by Arp, Bellmer, Dali, Duchamp, Ernst, Giacometti and Oppenheim alongside more recent objects by Arman, Hubert Berke, Louise Bourgeois, Thorsten Brinkmann, Michael Buthe, Mathias Deutsch, Juul Kraijer, Kiki Smith, Daniel Spoerri, Anette Streyl, Paul Wunderlich and others.
"The senselessness promoted with verve by the protagonists of Surrealism is countered by the displaced significance of dreams and by the distorted meaning of the concealed spheres of the subconscious, which also integrate the abysmal aspects of existence. The states of sleeping and dreaming are accompanied by death, often addressed in the charged juxtaposition of Eros and Thanatos. Or also in the post-Baroque vanitas image, which is to be seen both in Meret Oppenheim's X-ray portrait with earring (1964/1981) and in Damien Hirst's image of a diamond-studded skull (2009). Yet at the end there is always another beginning: as Meret Oppenheim's Primal Venus from 1933--a symbiosis of vessel, dinosaur, and female torso--symbolizes, the past continues to effect the present and the future in ever-new transformations."
Belinda Grace Gardner, excerpted from The Ear of Giacometti in The Ear of Giacometti.
FORMAT: Hbk, 5.75 x 8.25 in. / 224 pgs / 168 color / 8 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $50 ISBN: 9783866784789 PUBLISHER: Kerber AVAILABLE: 9/30/2011 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA ME
The Ear of Giacometti Post-Surrealist Art from Meret Oppenheim to Mariella Mosler
Published by Kerber. Text by Belinda Grace Gardner.
In recent decades, the real legacy of Surrealism for contemporary art has stemmed not from the Surrealists' paintings of disparate and bizarre objects, but from their combinations of actual objects, such as Meret Oppenheim's “Fur Cup” and Dali's lobster telephone. Taking as its departure point the “Surrealist object” as theorized by André Breton in the early 1930s, The Ear of Giacometti looks at the importance of this work for a new generation of artists applying Surrealist conceptions of enigmatic objects and fragments to the fragmentary world we live in today. The volume opens with a six-page cabinet of curiosities display that underscores its object-oriented take on Surrealism, and reproduces works by Arp, Bellmer, Dali, Duchamp, Ernst, Giacometti and Oppenheim alongside more recent objects by Arman, Hubert Berke, Louise Bourgeois, Thorsten Brinkmann, Michael Buthe, Mathias Deutsch, Juul Kraijer, Kiki Smith, Daniel Spoerri, Anette Streyl, Paul Wunderlich and others.
