British Museum Ethnographic Photography at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition

IF 0.3 0 ART
Lauren Walden
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

As part of the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition held at the New Burlington Galleries in London, ethnographic photographs of non-Western objects were taken at the British Museum and interspersed amongst Surrealist artwork. Ten photographs in total were used, spanning Solomon Island Fish Coffins to Congolese Nail Fetishes. The article analyses these photographs as sculptures and in terms of their significance to the 1936 exhibition display and their wider impact upon the Surrealist movement. It reveals that Paul Nash and Hugh Sykes Davies were responsible for the selection of the non-Western objects to be photographed. At the exhibition opening André Breton gave a transformative lecture, ‘Limites Non-Frontières du Surréalisme [Borderless limits of Surrealism]’ which conjoined notions of cosmopolitanism and the spirit. The inclusion of the British Museum photographs was clearly intended to aesthetically mirror the content of Breton’s speech. This article thus postulates that the Surrealists intended to propagate a cosmopolitan method of curation through a transcendence of taxonomic display mechanisms common to ethnographic museum environments, such as the very one the photographs were taken in. Moreover, the British Museum photographs chosen by the Surrealists all have religious and spiritual connotations. Such embodied manifestations are a particular brand of border crossing that should also be considered an element of a burgeoning discourse surrounding international Surrealism. Consequently, the oft-cited impact of Freud’s Totem and Taboo (1913) upon Surrealist ethnography, which denounces the totem as a precursor to religious belief and madness, is marginalised.
1936年国际超现实主义展览中的大英博物馆民族志摄影作品
作为1936年在伦敦新伯灵顿美术馆举行的国际超现实主义展览的一部分,在大英博物馆拍摄了非西方物品的人种学照片,并穿插在超现实主义艺术品中。总共使用了十张照片,从所罗门岛的鱼棺材到刚果的钉物。本文将这些照片作为雕塑进行分析,分析它们对1936年展览的意义,以及它们对超现实主义运动的更广泛影响。它揭示了保罗·纳什和休·赛克斯·戴维斯负责选择非西方物体进行拍摄。在展览的开幕式上,安德烈·布列东做了一个变革性的演讲,题为“超现实主义的无边界限制”,结合了世界主义和精神的概念。纳入大英博物馆的照片显然是为了从美学上反映布列塔尼演讲的内容。因此,本文假设超现实主义者打算通过超越民族志博物馆环境中常见的分类展示机制来传播一种世界主义的策展方法,例如拍摄照片的地方。此外,超现实主义者选择的大英博物馆照片都有宗教和精神内涵。这种具体的表现形式是一种特殊的跨越边界的品牌,也应该被视为围绕国际超现实主义的新兴话语的一个元素。因此,弗洛伊德的图腾和禁忌(1913)对超现实主义民族志的影响被经常引用,它谴责图腾是宗教信仰和疯狂的先驱,被边缘化了。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.30
自引率
0.00%
发文量
12
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