THE KEY TO DREAMS, SURREALIST MASTERWORKS FROM THE COLLECTION HERSAINT, BEYELER FOUNDATION, BASEL
THE KEY TO DREAMS
BEYELER FOUNDATION
BASEL
16 February-4 May 2025
SURREALIST MASTERWORKS
FROM
THE COLLECTION HERSAINT
Curator:Raphael Bouvier
Reporter:Nazli Kok Akbas
14 March, Basel
Max Ernst, The Fireside Angel (The Triumph of Surrealism),1937 Oil on canvas. Collection Hersaint.
"The Angel of Hearth and Home", why Ernst called a destructive creature as an angel?
This marvelous painting The Triumph of Surrealism is originally called as The Angel of Hearth and Home. Ernst painted it for the International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris and it is oly one of his paintings in his career that was inspired by political events.
It was shortly after the defeat of the Spanish Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish fascist leaders had been supported in their victory by Germany and Italy.
Ernst's aim was to depict the chaos that he saw spreading across Europe and the ruin that fascism was bringing to countries.
The main focus of the painting is the creature and the pose it assumes as a sense of chaos and destruction.Ernst called a destructive creature as an angel.By doing that he questionned the existence and support of God himself in the chaos that Europe experienced during the Spanish Civil War.
Max Ernst, Oedipus Rex, 1922, oil on canvas, Hersaint Collection.
Fondation Beyeler presents the world premiere of nearly 50 Surrealist masterpieces from the Hersaint Collection in the exhibition "The Key to Dreams".Surrealist Masterworks from the Collection Hersaint
The famous Hersaint collection was founded by CLaude Hersaint (1940-1993), who bought his first painting at the age of 17. It was the work of Max Ernst, "Cage et oieseau" from 1920, Paris, while he was a student at the Science-PO in Paris.
Claude Hersaint's longlife passion for art has led him to assemble one of the most significant collection of 20th century Surrealist masterpieces.
WHAT IS SURREALISM?
Surrealism has its roots in the World War I. After the destruction and carnage caused by the war, European artists needed to develop something completely new:
life no longer made sense and art became the space in which to express the contradictions and challenges to the foundations of reality.
René Magritte, La Gravitation universelle, 1943.Oil on canvas. Hersaint Collection.
A super-reality Of the dreams
The aim of surrealism was to dissolve the contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality, we might say.
A woman's touch to a more masculine movement
She was the daughter of Swedish immigrant parents.very talented artist and writer Dorotea Tanning was born in the USA, in 1910.
Tanning's ambition was to depict the unknown but in a recognisable state, and her work combines the familiar with the strange, exploring desire and sexuality.
Dorotea Tanning, A Gap to Be Filled, 1963, Oil on Canvas, Hersaint Collection.
She was one of the few female artists of the Surrealism movement. Her figures are often caught in a state of physical, emotional or pycological metamorphosis.
Dorotea Tanning died at the age of 101, in 2012.
Right up to the last days of her life, she was profoundly intelligent, funny and in possession of her full creative powers almost everyday.
Dorotea Tanning, Blue Valse, 1954, oil on canvas, Hersaint Collection
The automatic illustration of the mind's deepest thoughts
At the heart of Surrealism is a focus on the automatic illustration of the mind's deepest thoughts as they come to the surface.The poet Guilliame Appolinaire first coined the term "Surreal" in reference to the idea of an independent reality that exists behind our conscious reality.
Max Ernst, A Night of Love, 1927, Oil on canvas, Hersaint Collection.
André Breton MANIFESTS
The Movement Surrealism initially started in 1924 when french poet André Breton published his " MANIFESTO OF SERREALISM".Breton was influenced by the theories and writings on the unconscious mind of the psychologist Freud, the studies of Carl Jung and the DADA movement of the 20th century.
Le Passage du Commerce Saint-Andre is a large-scale painting by the Polish artist Balthaus, which expresses his preoccupation with the dimensions of space and time in relation to people and objects.
His work was often a questioning of the architectural reality of space and, at the same time, of the existence of people in that fictitious, dreamy space.
Balthaus,Le Drap bleu, 1958, oil on canvas, Hersaint Collection
What could the painting say to the viewer?
Magritte answers;
-nothing.
The artist denied that his paintings had any meaning; his work suggested a mystery, and a mystery has no definite explanation.
René Magritte, "Le Salon de M.Goulden, 1928/29, oil on canvas, Hersaint collection.
René Magritte reminds to the viewer that he is not a neutral observer of the work of art. In the end, each viewer engages in an ongoing dialogue with the work, depending on his or her experience.
René Magritte, The Key to Dreams, 1930, oil on canvas. Hersaint Collection.
René Magritte's art is marked by desire to reject the conventions of all pictural traditions.His painting is not an open window on the world, but a world painted on a window. The analysis of the sky in his paintings is not very clear and complete however much has been written about it.
Simply perhaps it could be considered as an "eternal silence" or a "discreet absurdity".
Magritte described his paintings saying at many of his interwievs;
..."when one sees my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question,"What does that mean? It does not mean anything, it is unknowable."
How is it that a enigmatic mystery can have a unique description?
Magritte's painting The Key to Dreams is the part of series of later works where he combines words and images.
One simply has to understand the nature of the game Magritte invites the viewer to play, in order to understand the nature and effect of his work.
At the end of the 1920s, Dali embraced Surrealism and developed the 'paranoaic-critical method'. Dali explored this in the form of a chain of irrational objects emerging from a single image.
The Lubgubrious Game of Dali
The painting The Lubgubrious Game is a work that is breathtakingly busy and evokes a dream-like atmosphere that is typical of Dali's signature.The painting presents totaly passionate, deeply disturbed, sexually centred man, adorned with Dali's erotic fantasies and fears.
Perhaps the man in the corner is the focus of the painting? Or perhaps the dramatically oversized hand of the statue suggests to the viewer that the theme of masturbation is present and commanding?
who knows?
Overall, the painting represents Dali's contribution to Surrealism and invites the viewer to ponder its enigmatic composition.
Automatism
A fundamental aspect of the movement is a mode of expression called "automatism", which involves the act of automatically recording the thoughts and images that arise in the artist's mind. There is a strong focus on involuntary processes and the interpretation of dreams.
Oscar Dominiguez, Transparent Room, 1931, oil on canvas,Hersaint collection.
WHO WAS CLAUDE HERSAINT?
Claude Hersaint was born in Sao Paulo, where his family, originally from Alsace-Lorraine, had emigrated in the mid-19th century. He grew up in the traditional upper-class intellectual milieu and moved to Paris as a young man, where he studied law.
He became close friends with important surrealist artists such as Max Ernst, Oscar Dominguez as well as Balthaus and Jean Dubuffet.
In 1938 he married Helene Anavi, a flamboyant figure of her time, but they fled Paris in 1942 due to the Second World War and persecution by the Nazis.
They became friends with Oppenhemer, Leo Castelli and Matisse, as well as many artists who had gone into exile during the war.
After the Second World War, Claude Hersaint returned to Paris, where he met his second wife, Francoise Moutier.
They lived in Montreux and Paris until they settled in Crans-Montanain the Valais.
After her husband's death, Françoise Hersaint took charge of the collection.
Today, her daughter, Evangeline Hersaint, continues to manage the Hersaint collection and is making it available to the general public for the first time with this exhibition.
The Key to Dreams, Surrealist Masterworks from the collection Hersaint can be visited until 4 May,at Beyeler Foundation,Basel Switzerland.
Reported by Nazli Kok from
Basel, 14 February.
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