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Displaying the Marvelous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and the Surrealist Exhibitions

By Lewis Kachur
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2001.
ISBN 0-262-11256-6
Reviewed by David Gove Surman, U.K.
E-mail: : david_gove_surman@yahoo.co.uk


In 'Displaying the Marvelous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and the Surrealist Exhibitions' Lewis Kachur notes, with meticulous detail, the integral characters, exhibition motives and locations. In Chapter 1, Kachur details the manifestation of the Surrealist group, reporting the fact that they were not the first to utilise the potential of the display environment. The Surrealist theme of exhibition as; both subject and producer of political meaning; is also carefully stated. Detailing the International Surrealist Exhibition, the work of the chief exponents - and more importantly the relationships between them, Kachur is quick to build persona into the previously somewhat two-dimensional history. The nascent tension between Breton and Eluard isnoted, founded (one concludes from Kachur's detailed account of their involvement in the 1938 exhibition preperation) in the conflicts between art, commerce and politics, so central to the Surrealist manifesto. Chapter 2 centralises Kachur's argument around the symbiosis of environment and spectator - and the use of 'objˇt du surrˇalisme'. In the context of what has become 'controversial' in conceptual art Breton, Dali and Duchamp are discussed. The use of a parade of mannequins customised by the surrealist artists adds a noteworthy debate on the somewhat lyrical early interpretations of Freud and their influence on contemporary world-view. The potential for political forethought within the surrealist mindset is embodied in Duchamp's '1200 Coal Sacks' - preempting the wartime sensibilities which were to rule Parisian life shortly after. Here too we find the symbiotic tension between the Surrealist fetish object and the found object. The outcome, Kachur posits, being a similar symbiosis of art and fashion key-stoned by the co-operative of Dali and designer Elsa Schiaparelli.

The percolation of the Surrealists into the American mindset forms the hub of Chapter 3. Noted here are Dali's repeat of the original show -- a distinct and consumable display of his surrealist 'product'. The epomymous 1938 World Trade Fair forms the greater body of this chapter and is, as Kachur points out, perhaps the most telling of all the Surrealist 'spaces' in its reports on audience interface and response. Central to Kachur's Surrealist history is the repeated cerebral fetishisation of the female form - the combination of mannequin and performer within said spaces, treatment and display of the 'marvel' of femininity. The people's response tells of the niche that the consumer surreal of the thirties and forties had carved, that of a disorientating though wholly pleasurable peep-show. In Chapter 4 the implicit tragedy of Surrealism is detailed. In coming together as a group of equals (reflective of earlier communist motives) often a single piece, 'marvellous' as it was often intended to be, seemed to steal the show so to speak - often to the (arguable) detriment of the encompassing works. Duchamp's 'Mile of String' and its discourse/deconstruction of the function of work in the gallery space, embodies Kachur's point and is featured in the book as part of its design.

Finally Chapter 5: here Kachur speaks on Peggy Guggenheim's Art of this Century Gallery and the growing increase in "a form of spectator involvement". He then goes on to talk about the artistic tangents that extended from the original Surrealist works notably Eva Hesse (and other female artists) emulating and reinventing the string works of Duchamp. Kachur's conclusion inserts the Surrealist debate into our modern world view, asserting its contribution to debate on the body, gender and sexuality - especially those within the constructed 'exhibition' space. He seems to conclude that Surrealism is a study in longevity - that in its drifts from logistical to poetical to political and to commercial it could have only ever survived in the spaces discussed. In its fragility of statement and miasmic ideology the ability to capture the potential of the chosen space pulled it through to (commercial) success. Kachurs work makes for a compulsive (and beautifully presented) read for those with an interest in key debates surrounding the body and its interiors/ exteriors so prevalent today. One thing that does puzzle for a book so closely researched is the absence of the photographer Lee Miller, who was also lover to both Penrose and Man Ray. Otherwise the book is extensively detailed, and adds depth to the characters, previously indefinable in the literature. Overall Kashur's book is a wholly recommended work for those with a professional interest in the topic.

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Updated 6 November 2001.




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