Surrealism and the Exotic

Abstract

Louise Tythacott, Surrealism and the Exotic . London and New York, Routledge, 2003. ISBN 041–527637–3. 260 pp., 68 b. & w. illus. £60. ‘Part documentary and part sustained critique’, as the jacket text to Surrealism and the Exotic puts it, aptly characterizes the nature and content of the publication under review, as both components are intertwined in the nine dense but highly readable chapters of the book. The first chapter offers an ‘ethnography’ of the cult of Surrealism, demonstrating how Dada, itself a reaction to the horrors of the First World War, in turn led to Surrealism with the emergence of André Breton as the leader of the new Surrealist movement, who replaced Tristan Tzara, the key figure in Dada. Besides the organization and activities of Surrealism as a movement, including its fissures and excommunications, Tythacott demonstrates how its predilection for certain visual techniques – automatic drawing, collage, frottage and cadavres exquis – necessarily entailed a special relationship with the art of certain regions, such as the sand paintings of the Navajo or the hybrid masks of the northwest coast of North America. This in turn is reflected in the collecting habits of the Surrealists. Among the bric-à-brac they found in the shops and markets of Paris were exotic artefacts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas. When displayed in public exhibitions or in the privacy of the Surrealists' own domestic spaces, they revealed a penchant for the juxtaposition of the most incongruous objects.