According to the text on the wall at the entrance to The Subterranean Sky exhibition at the Moderna Museet “The Surrealists wanted to transform the world and liberate human creativity from the constraints of reason. They see a slumbering primordial force in the borderland between the unconscious and the conscious, between dream and wakefulness.” Given the pieces on display, I think the new exhibition lives up to this description.
There were a few things I needed to buy in Stockholm so, today, along with spending a few shekels, I decided to take in the new exhibition. This is one of the joys of being a member of the gallery. Every time there’s a new exhibition, I get in for free. For an entire year.
It also means, if the exhibition is as mind-expanding as this one, I don’t have to try and see everything in it the first time. I will definitely return to this one.
I guess I’m a fan of Surrealism. I rather like the deep dive into the subconsciousness of an artist’s brain. What lies there is sometimes haunting, other times fanciful and almost always confusing. Take the mobile made up of coat hangers, for instance. That was an odd yet familiar object presented in an unusual way.
The Moderna Museet has an excellent collection of Surrealist works and has taken this opportunity to show a lot of them off. 2024 is, after all, the 100-year anniversary of the publication of the first surrealist manifesto (called The Subterranean Sky) by André Breton. Mind you, given it’s all a bit Surreal, perhaps the 93rd or 102nd anniversary would have been more appropriate.
The vast majority of the pieces on display were completely unknown to me. However, there were a few I knew, including a Hieronymus Bosch, which I saw back in 2016, when I visited Den Bosch.
Not that Bosch was a Surrealist. He did inspire a lot of them though. As did the extraordinary 16th century Italian artist, Giuseppe Arcimboldo with his portraits of people made up of vegetables and fruit.
One of his works, The Trojan Horse, was on display. This features a painting of a horse which is made up of soldiers. The Surrealists liked his “…technique of juxtaposing objects to reveal a hidden motif…” which inspired them.
Personally, I rather like the cheeky smile the horse appears to have.
While I very much enjoyed a lot of the pieces, my favourite piece in the exhibition was one of the Surrealist films showing in the corner room where films are usually shown.
Grouped in with a number of other black and white films, was a piece created by René Clair (1898-1981) in 1924. He had been asked “…by Francis Picabia and Erik Satie to make a short film to be shown as part of their Dadaist ballet Relâche; he made Entr’acte…”
The film is rather odd and delightfully inexplicable but, best of all, it is funny in parts. The leaping mourners, as they follow a funeral cart pulled by a camel, is but one humorous segment in the film.
I would have laughed out loud, but the room was quite quiet. I assumed the other viewers were a bit serious when it comes to art. I laughed very loudly inside and felt sorry for them.
I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition, and I am really looking forward to finishing it later, when I return to the Moderna Museet.
And I have to mention the weather. After a few grey and gloomy days, today was bathed in glorious sunshine. The perfect weather for visiting Stockholm.
