Barbican Art Gallery Explores the Power and Mystery
of the Surreal House
Sarah Lucas, Au naturel, 1994. Courtesy Murderme
and Sadie Coles, HQ, London. © Sarah Lucas.
LONDON.- The Surreal House explores the power and mystery of
the house in our collective imagination. It is the first exhibition to
throw light on the significance of surrealism for architecture. Bringing
together over 150 works, the exhibition also reveals the profound
influence surrealism has had on a host of contemporary artists,
filmmakers and architects. In an ambitious installation by acclaimed
architects Carmody Groarke the exhibition is designed to be experienced
as an extraordinary surreal house in its own right. The Surreal House
opens on 10 June 2010.
For the Surrealists the house was more than ‘a machine for living’,
as identified by Modernist heavyweight Le Corbusier. Instead it was a
‘stage for living’, a convulsive theatre of the domestic; a real space,
inhabited, if not by people, then by their ghosts. In The Surreal House
all the exhibits show the significance of the unconscious world of
dreams and desires, presenting extraordinary dwellings that reflect
everything that the rational, sanitized house sacred to Modernism is
not.
Combining works of the imagination with important examples of actual
‘surreal’ houses, the exhibition presents a diverse range of paintings,
photographs, films, models and installation from public and private
collections in Britain, Europe, Canada and the United States, many
rarely seen in the UK. The Surreal House brings together first
generation Surrealists, precursors and close associates, with
contemporary artists and architects. Iconic works by Salvador Dalí,
Marcel Duchamp, Alberto Giacometti, and René Magritte are set alongside
works by Giorgio de Chirico, Le Facteur Cheval and Edward Hopper as well
as contemporary works by artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Sarah
Lucas. F ilmmakers include Maya Deren, Jean Cocteau, Andrei Tarkovsky
and Jan Švankmajer , whilst modern and con temporary architecture is
represented by John Hejduk, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Rem Koolhaas , Bernard
Tschumi and Diller & Scofidio.
The exhibition opens with Buster Keaton and Marcel Duchamp. American
filmmaker Keaton, much loved by the Surrealists, is famed for his
absurd lyric humour and extraordinary stunts. In Steamboat Bill Jr,
1920, a clapboard house famously falls on top of Keaton in a moment of
sheer, heart-stopping madness; while in The Scarecrow, 1926, all the
functions of the house are hilariously compressed into one room. Prière
de toucher,1947, by Marcel Duchamp, is a relief of a woman’s breast
mounted on a cloud of black velvet. Originally the front cover of a
luxury edition of a surrealist book, here it signals the doorbell to The
Surreal House.
Tomado de: ARTDAILY.ORG
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