Until the end of the month of February, the MAMCS (The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Strasbourg) and the Tomi Ungerer Museum joined their forces to create two exhibitions centered around the theme and book of Lewis Carroll: "Alice's - Adventures in Wonderland".
Under the common name "SurréAlice", a contraction of surrealism and Alice, the two exhibitions aimed to look back at the first French translation of Lewis Carroll's novel in 1865 and it's reinterpretation by the surrealist such as Eileen Agar, Hans Arp, Leonora Carrington, Joseph Cornell, Dorothea Tanning, Roland Topor, Toyen, etc.
Lewis Carroll and the Surrealists
2. Vues de « Lewis Carroll et les surréalistes », volet de l'exposition « SurréAlice ». Strasbourg,
Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain. Photo : M. Bertola, Musées de Strasbourg
The exhibition which is taking place at the MAMCS present more than 300 works, from paintings, photographs, drawings, prints and publications made between 1919 and the 1960s.
The introduction of the exhibition is made by an imposing sculpture made by the English artist Monster Chetwynd. To enter the exhibition space, you need to being eaten by this figure before entering a space full of books and translations of the novel of Lewis Carroll.
In 1865, the first French translation of "Alice's - Adventures in Wonderland" were published. But the titled of Lewis Carroll became a classic of children's literature and the avant-garde between the two world wars, almost 60 years afters its first publication.
Between 1930 and 1949, the titled have been published by more or less 10 editors. Other books followed such as the translation of "The Hunting of the Snark" published in 1929 and translated by Louis Aragon. He later wrote a small article about the book in "Le Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution" (1931).
The combination of the two works became part of the Surrealist narrative combining the themes of the imaginary, childhood and rebellion.
3. Dorothea Tanning, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1943, 40,7 x 61cm, huile sur toile. Courtesy: Tate
Collection, Londres © DACS 2020 © Artists Rights Society, New York, and ADAGP, Paris 2022
In 1924, the surrealist manifesto was published. And in this text, the surrealist said: "Let's be clear about this: the marvellous is always beautiful, any marvellous is beautiful, in fact only the marvellous is beautiful.", thus, the quest to marvellous is at the heart of Surrealism's preoccupations.
To find these marvellous ideas, the surrealist took their inspiration from their dreams... In a sense, the story of Alice is so unexpected, between each chapter of the book you find yourself into situations with animals and plants, upsetting a whole series of established ideas and categories such as darwinism, naturalism and genesis itself.
Between the lion who asked Alice: "Are you animal – or vegetable – or mineral?" and the representation of the scene by Max Ernst, where the painting depicted Alice coming out of the tree-trunk, to Réné Magritte who shape-shifted the tree to look like a human figure.
More or less, biology was an important part of the surrealist thinking, due to the medical training of Aragon and Breton and the review published in "Nature, revue des sciences et de leurs applications aux arts et à l'industrie." But the two we're more intrigue into the secrets of nature, by looking at zoological and botanical forms and by creating their own Curiosity Cabinet with unusual and colorful specimens found among the bric-à-brac of flea markets.
4. Vues de « Lewis Carroll et les surréalistes », volet de l'exposition « SurréAlice ». Strasbourg, Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain. Photo : M. Bertola, Musées de Strasbourg
Beside the importance of the story, the surrealist we're also captivated by the figure of Alice, between her changed from children to adulthood. Beside her body, her emotions changes from innocents or naive to rebellious, impudent, combative and playfulness.
In a sense, Alice is the definition of the transgression of identity, between the children and the women. Most of the artist of the exhibition had or will have later in their life a link to Alice story's, between Claude Cahun and the notion of gender, to female artists like Leonora Carrington, Alice Rahon or Gisèle Prassinos, were even nicknamed after Carroll's heroine.
For some of those female, like Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning, they reacted to this personification, placing the woman-child in a universe that was more distressing than marvellous. The body of the child was transformed under the action of external factors beyond the sole determinism of time...
Over the decades, the transformation of the body became more and more abstract, visible in the work of Arp, Hantaï or Alechinsky.
Thus, we can conclude that the book of Lewis Carroll's "Through The Looking-Glass" provided the Surrealists with a formidable instrument for duplicating and deforming the body, but also for reflecting on the volatility of the real and its representations.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Strasbourg (MAMCS)
Date: 19.11.2022 – 26.2.2023
Curators: Barbara Forest and Fabrice Flahutez
Ticket: Available at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Strasbourg (MAMCS)
Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg
1, place Hans-Jean Arp
67000 Strasbourg
Phone: +33 (0)3 68 98 50 00
© Lucas GASGAR / Lucas Art Talks 2023
