The Smithsonian Institution "An Amusing Lack of Logic": Surrealism and Popular Entertainment Author(s): Keith L. Eggener Source: American Art, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 30-45 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Smithsonian American Art Museum Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3109152 . Accessed: 02/06/2014 14:32 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The University of Chicago Press, Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Smithsonian Institution are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Art. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 137.140.1.131 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 14:32:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "AnA musing Lack of Logic" Surrealisma nd PopularE ntertainment Keith L. Eggener During the latter half of the 1930s, for Conde Nast Publications, spoke to a Surrealism spilled out onto the American luncheon gathering of the Advertising scene like fluid from a Meret Oppenheim's and Marketing Forum of New York about fur-lined cup. In 1936, more than fifty the practical uses to be made with the new thousand people attended the Museum of art form: Modern Art's "FantasticA rt, Dada, Surrealism"e xhibition in New York (fig. It can be easily understoodi f we remember 1). The show then moved on to Philadel- that surrealismd ealsp rimarily in the basic phia, Boston, Milwaukee, San Francisco, appealss o dear to the advertiser'sh eart. It and other cities. Soon socialites were capitalizesf ear, disgust, wonder,a nd uses dancing lobster quadrilles at Surrealist the eye-catching,b ewilderingd evicesw hich costume balls and shopping through the we all know were the basisf or many a sound pages of Voguea nd at Bonwit Teller's for advertisingc ampaign.1 Schiaparelli shoe-shaped hats. A broader audience, meanwhile, encountered reams While previous analyses ofAmerica's of print in popular magazines like Time, initial encounters with Surrealism have Life, Newsweek, and the American Weekly considered the movement's links to leftist detailing the movement's players and politics and its fertilizing of the field for plots. In 1939, thousands of visitors to Abstract Expressionism,2l ittle attention the New York World's Fair paraded has been paid to the ways in which through Salvador Dali's "Dream of Surrealismw as first presented to and Venus" pavilion to watch scantily clad received by American mass audiences or mermaids-"liquid ladies," the artist to how Surrealism came to be adopted by called them-frolic and gasp for air in a trendsetters in fashion and entertain- vast aquarium, replete with cow, piano, ment.3 Surrealism undeniably met its and typewriters, all made of rubber. share of hostile critics. According to Advertisers, too, deeply moved by Jeffrey Wechsler, it "had terrible timing. Surrealism'sl ure, were soon invoking its In the early 1930s, as a foreign movement themes-dreams, desire, domination-to dealing with apparently irrelevant or pitch such mundane items as cars and slightly mad subjects, Surrealismw as cardboard boxes (fig. 2). Even as the an irritation to those with growing Photographeru nknown,S alvador Dalis ketchinHg arpoM arxin "Dada, Surrealism"s how was still on perceptions of a national art with mean- Hollywoodc,a . 1939 MoMA's walls, M. F. Agha, art director ing and dignity." Attacks were generally 31 American Art This content downloaded from 137.140.1.131 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 14:32:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1:??I ~wr d .31" This content downloaded from 137.140.1.131 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 14:32:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ably those included in Katherine Dreier's i~C~u Sociata Anonyme exhibition of modern .I European and American art, which 1 opened at the Brooklyn Museum on 18 November 1926. Soon Surrealista rt could be seen in group and solo shows at galleries and museums across the United States; by 1936, Dali, Joan Mir6, Yves Tanguy, Andre Masson, Pierre Roy, u!? Giorgio De Chirico, Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Rend Magritte, Man Ray, and i Joseph Cornell had all had one-person :I"i:.k.i shows. Group exhibitions of Surrealista rt prior to MoMA's included those at Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum (1931), the Julien Levy Gallery in New York (1932), the Harvard Society for Contem- porary Art in Cambridge (1932), the Springfield Museum of Art in Connecti- cut (1936), and the Baltimore Museum of 1 Installation view of the "Fantastic xenophobic and defensive, expressing Art Art, Dada, Surrealism" exhibition, alarm over the importation of foreign (1936).5 The Museum of Modern Art, 7 decadence into an innocent America, or Most Americans who knew something December 1936-7 January 1937 about Surrealism, however, got their they were blas&,c asting Surrealisma s a information from printed accounts. historical artifact that every modish American newspapers and magazines person had already abandoned years began discussing Surrealismw ith increas- before.4Y et many embraced it eagerly. ing regularity as early as 1925, just one Whether designed to praise or bury Surrealism,A merica's initial critical year after the publication of Andrd Breton's first Manifesto ofSurrealism.6B y conceptualization of the movement bears the mid-1930s articles on Surrealista rt further analysis. and artists could be found in a broad One particular and recurring mode range of illustrated high-circulation of American discourse in the 1930s played periodicals, including Time, Life, and a critical role in Surrealism'sr eception: Newsweek. drained of its political content and reconstituted as entertainment, Surrealism American authors writing in these publications associated Surrealism almost was frequently cast as the close cousin exclusively with the illusionist branch of of cartoons and popular cinema. Indeed, the movement, the branch represented by the rhetorical commingling of Surrealism and mass market entertainment touched Dali. They noted little aesthetic or ideological difference between the Surreal- upon the careerso f two of the period's ism of the 1920s and that of the 1930s, most noted artists: a "mouse man" and few mentioned the movement's and a "madman"-Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. automatist or abstract painters apart from Mir6, who, even so, was best known for figurative works like The Farm (1921-22, Surrealism's Arrival National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) and Dog Barking at the Moon The earliest examples of genuine Surreal- (1926, Philadelphia Museum of Art). The ist art to be seen in America were prob- most widely discussed and highly praised 32 Fall 1993 This content downloaded from 137.140.1.131 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 14:32:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ~yIat p*s w ha Gunf~eihosch?oy ?~c12111 THE gR at Qcprhefkir~kiro #r~ kA~~uar~(~ d~~~rrthl ~sit,v ~ ~gr~k~w~~r,sotdf~~e f*0h o4 sl ~ PI 2 Surrealist-inspireadd vertisements "Surrealist"a rtists in America before 1934 owners, people with an investment in the for the AmericanC ontainer were Giorgio De Chirico and Pierre art, were producing much of the earliest Corporationa nd GunthersF urs. Publisheidn FrankC aspers, Roy--neither of them official members of American copy on Surrealism, and during "Surrealisimn O veralls,S"c ribner's the group, a fact scarcely acknowledged the politically fractious 1930s they may 104 (Augus1t 938) by the American press. After 1934, the have thought it economically prudent to movement's brightest star on America's cast the movement in relatively non- The GuntherF ursa d, designed by Paul Smith of Kenyona nd shores was unquestionably Dali. threatening terms. As New York gallery Eckhardtw, as the firstS urrealist This literature is also striking for its owner and art promoter Julien Levy later ad in America. neglect or ignorance of Surrealism's explained, Surrealism needed to be altered sources, aims, and thematic content. For if it was to be welcomed and bought by most American authors, Surrealism did American audiences. Recalling his 1932 not mean revolution, either psychic or exhibition, he wrote: social. Little mention was made of the movement's agenda or political sympa- IfBreton had been therea t that time there thies as described in Breton's manifestos would no doubt have been a more orthodox of 1924 and 1929 and in his more overtly representationM. anifesto heavy, it would political statements of the mid-1930s.7 have collapsedo f its own rigidity. I wished When Americans at this time spoke of to present a paraphrasew hich would offer Surrealism'sa ttachment to Marx, they Surrealismi n the language of the new world were usually talking about Groucho or rather than a translationi n the rhetorico f Harpo. Museum directors and gallery the old.8 33 American Art This content downloaded from 137.140.1.131 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 14:32:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions At the time of the show, Levy provided that misunderstandingis in no way an the press with a typically sanitized indictment ofAmerican life and taste;o n characterization,c alling Surrealism an art the contraryl am persuadedt hat it is in the "belonging to the 27th dimension. The nature ofa vindication. What this art has of artists are trying to objectify the uncon- laughteri n it is the laughtero fan old and scious. It all seems to have started years cynical world;A merican laughteri s neither ago with Dr. Freud." Such vagaries may old nor cynical ... The Europeanp reoccu- have contributed to the confusion of pation with material things and possessions professional critics with fewer vested has about it the clutching miserlinesso fage; thisp reoccupationi n America is the child's delight in a vast accumulation oftoys. The revolutionaryc ontent ofSurrealism, a WhenA mericans... mentioned content that is essentiallyb olshevika nd seeks Surrealism'sa ttachment to Marx, to cleanseb y destroying,w ill not reach Americansb ecauset he gulf betweent he they were usually talking about teachera nd pupil preventsa nything but a Grouchoo r Harpo. type ofacademic understanding.T he propaganda, quitep ossibly indifferenti n effectivenessin Europe, becomesa musingly inappropriatea nd unrelatedi n America. interests. Edward Alden Jewell of the New York Timesl amented in 1933, "Those Byrne concluded by suggesting that who understand surrealisme are probably MoMA's exhibition would elicit three fewer than those who feel competent to types of reaction from the communities it explain Einstein." Moreover, perhaps visited: "a small measure of esthetic because few Surrealistw ritings were interest, such as that children possess translated into English before 1936, few when they are unhampered by accumu- English-speaking critics knew or cared lated prejudices";t he "thrill of sophistica- that this odd little band of francophone tion" for an "anxious, cultured fringe" malcontents had set their sights on who delight in being "in the know"; and liberating human consciousness from "that most hopeful group, fortunately a reason and, as Breton put it in his 1924 large one, who will find the whole matter manifesto, from "aesthetic or moral a sort of art circus, and who curiously concern."9 enough will have in their amusement a One intriguing exception to this common ground with the artists them- general journalistic incomprehension selves. These will laugh it on its way, in lends insight into how it may have come good American fashion..,. toward about. On 2 July 1937, the Commonweal oblivion."'0 published a negative review of the MoMA Byrne's description of the third exhibition. The author, Barry Byrne, reaction is of particular interest. For Byrne began by noting Surrealism'st hen-current and numerous other American analysts, modishness in the United States, astutely Surrealism'se ntertainment value far surmising that this was "in no way outweighed its political aims. While indicative of understanding or apprecia- Surrealism represented the mental anguish tion." In Byrne's estimation Surrealism of an old and dissolute Europe, Byrne's was pessimistic and decadent, already America, pure and innocent as a child, had passe in Europe and likely to be nothing no part in Surrealism'sb attles and was more than "an amusing, if a misunder- unlikely to understand or sympathize with stood guest" here. As he saw it, them. His portrayal of Surrealism-its 34 Fall 1993 This content downloaded from 137.140.1.131 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 14:32:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 3 S.lvadorD ali, "GrouchoM arx art, politics, and anguish-as somehow favorably. The movement's arrival as the Shivao f Big Business"a nd laughable, something to watch but not to during the mid-1920s coincided with a "HarpoM arx,H is Harp and Some LessF amiliarA ccessories." participate in, seems to associate it with growing critical aversion to Cubism and Portraidtr awingps,u blisheidn the concurrent vogue for slapstick com- abstract art. Surrealism, at least that TheatrAer tsM onthl2y3 (October edy, circus freak shows, and other popular branch of it that interested American 1939) entertainments that presented the pathetic critics, appeared to revive subject matter or the unusual as amusement. It is not that was more or less identifiable, and for without significance that Dali's "Dream this it was praised. As a writer for Art of Venus" pavilion at the 1939 World's News proclaimed in 1936, "Whatever the Fair was located on the midway beside faults of Surrealism, its quasi-romantic such attractions as Morris Gest's "Little interest in subject matter and in new Miracle Town," home of the "World's plastic forms have marked a cathartic turn Greatest Midget Artists." away from the sterile formalism of Cubism." Discussing Julien Levy's 1934 Dali exhibition, Henry McBride, art A Game Anyone Could Play critic for the New YorkS un, predicted that soon people would be "dashing... While Surrealistp olitics were variously to the gallery, in order to feast their eyes ignored, misunderstood, dismissed, or upon, at last, the destruction of this derided in the United States, Surrealism's cursed Cubism, which has occupied aesthetic results were often received the public attention too long." Even 35 American Art This content downloaded from 137.140.1.131 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 14:32:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 4 Joan Mir6, Carnivalo fHarlequin, Newsweek,w hose reviewer took a dim Surrealism often began by linking it- 1924-25. Oil on canvas,6 6 x 926.2 view of the proceedings at MoMA, had rather superficially in most cases-to cm (26 x 35 5/8i n.). Albright-Knox to admit that no one came away from these ideas. In 1932 Art Digest described Art Gallery,B uffalo,N ew York, the 1936 show unaffected: "There was Surrealism as "the newist [sic] 'ism' in art, Room of ContemporaryA rt Fund too much symbolism hitting below the which, apparently is a project into belt for even the most out-and-out aesthetics of Freudian psychology." extrovert not to feel some quiver of the Writing for the New YorkerM, argaret unconscious."" Case Harriman explained that "a Surreal- Talk of the subconscious and of ist is governed by the Freudian principle Freudian psychoanalysis was fashionable of licking the tar out of his subconscious during the 1930s, and attempts to explain by putting down loudly in writing, 36 Fall 1993 This content downloaded from 137.140.1.131 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 14:32:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 5 George Herriman, Krazy Kat comic strip, New YorkJ ournal,1 8 May 1919 t * "? s' r . . "*,: .......P~," ... .. i/ ..... iE ",.P~ painting, or ordinary speech all the things that "Surrealismi s no stranger than a his subconscious mind tries to frighten normal person's dream.... When you him with in whispers."12 scribble idly on a telephone pad you are Freudian-based explanations were setting down your irrational subcon- sometimes used to make Surrealism seem scious." In similar terms Levy declared, less ominous, even familiar-a part of "Everyone shares the subconscious. common, everyday experience. While Everyone can enjoy poetry and everyone Surrealism might be perplexing to critics can make it." Such populist analyses like Jewell, it was just as often noted for tended to efface whatever menace or the accessibility of its imagery and mystery Surrealism might have held for techniques. In 1936, Henry Luce's American audiences. Its making came to conservative and decidedly nonthreaten- be represented as a game that anyone ing new Life magazine assured its readers could play. In 1939, for example, Life 37 American Art This content downloaded from 137.140.1.131 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 14:32:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions published several Daliesque poems and share of the country's tight money, drawings submitted by its bemused producers continually outdid one another, readers.A nd for those who blushed as contriving ever more titillating and they doodled, McBride offered the amazing concoctions. As Sklar puts it, following absolution: "Everythingg oes in "Movies called into question sexual psychoanalysis. It's all a dream. Do you propriety, social decorum and the institu- see? It's not something you have done or tions of law and order.... Like the will do, but, as far as I can make out, it's politicians, they [film producers] recog- something you have repressed. Therefore nized how much their audience longed to it's altogether to your credit."'3 be released from its tension, fear and Writers and museum officials in the insecurity."'5 1930s repeatedly alluded to Surrealism's "amusing"a nd "escapist"e lements. In 1931, at the opening of the country's first group show of Surrealista rt, Wadsworth WhbileS urrealism represented Atheneum director A. Everett Austin the mental anguish ofan old offered an astonishingly offhanded interpretive strategy: and dissolute Europe, Byrne's America, pure and innocent as a We can takep leasure in what we have today and pride in knowing that we are in child, had no part in Surrealism's fashion .... Thesep ictures are chic. They battles and was unlikely to are entertaining. Theya re of the moment. understand or sympathize We do not have to take them seriouslyt o enjoy them. We need not..,. demand that with them. they be important.M any of them are humorousa nd we can laugh at them. Some of them are sinistera nd terrijing, but so are the tabloids.I t is much mores atisfing For many observers, Surrealist art aestheticallyt o be amused, to bef rightened suggested similar avenues of diversion. even, than to be boredb y a pompousa nd Jerome Klein, of the New YorkP ost, emptya rt.... After all, thep aintings of our categorized Surrealism as a "deliberate present day must competew ith the movie cult of nonsense and confusion..,. an thrillera nd the scandal sheet.'4 effort not to understand objective reality but to escape it." James Thrall Soby, art Coming at such an early date, Austin's critic and later director of MoMA's collocation of Surrealism and cinema is Department of Painting and Sculpture, clear and provocative. Paintings, like discussed the paintings of Yves Tanguy in movies and tabloids, were now being terms of their "humorous fantasy"a nd directed at audiences seeking diversion "amusing lack of logic." In a New York from the distressing realities of economic Timesr eview of 1932, Jewell called Levy's depression. If Surrealismp ushed the Surrealistg roup show "one of the most envelope, presenting imagery that was entertaining exhibitions of the season ... somehow more bizarre, disturbing, an hour of the most captivating diver- shocking, or amusing than earlier art- sion." Four years later he termed the work, so did Hollywood. Film historian MoMA "FantasticA rt, Dada, Surrealism" Robert Sklar notes that during the 1930s exhibition an "opulent circus..,. the most not even Hollywood was "depression- incredibly mad divertissement the town proof." In their fierce competition for a has ever seen." "The doors will probably 38 Fall 1993 This content downloaded from 137.140.1.131 on Mon, 2 Jun 2014 14:32:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions