For its 29th edition, the French May Arts Festival has brought to the Hong Kong Museum of Art a large-scale exhibition of masterpieces presenting one of the major movements of the arts in the 20th century: the Surrealism.

While some of its leading artists such as Picasso, Magritte or Dali are very familiar to the public, the movement which spans over four decades makes many references to ancient history, mythologies and the discovery of subconscious and psychology which need some background explanations.

We had the chance to get some insights from the Assistant Director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne de Paris, Mr. Didier Ottinger, the man who selected the 100+ masterpieces, photographs and texts that we can admire until 15 September 2021.

Didier Ottinger, Assistant Director of MNAM – courtesy MNAM

How would you in a few words describe the ideas that are uniting the Surrealist artists, and make it what is called an “artistic movement” ?

Surrealist poets and painters share the same ambition to change the world in a very concrete way. One of the “tools” they used for this change were a revolutionary political engagement based on a Marxist theory of history, a recent historical example being the Soviet Revolution that took place in Russia. The other tool was the practical use of Freudian theories of psychoanalysis which favored the expression of the unconscious beyond all control of reason. Thus, the presence of dreams, fantasy and hallucination in their art. These two ideas were resumed in a statement repeated several times by André Breton, the founder of the movement and author of the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 where he wrote: “Transform the world” said Karl Marx,  “change life”said Arthur Rimbaud. Those two mottos for us are one only.” These theoretical and poetical positions of Surrealism were sufficiently powerful and attractive to allow Surrealism to draw the interest of several generations of Surrealist artists and poets for 40 years.

In the exhibition are presented films, photographs, paintings, sculptures, but also books. How are the different mediums linked together? What were the artists trying to express through their works?

All the works, films and books presented in the exhibition are all linked by the exhibition’s themes which is to show how far the question of myth is central to the Surrealist movement. For example, the revue Minotaur whose title itself refers to a myth. Films such as Bunuel’s Golden Age are directly connected to the myth of the Golden Age, the one by Man Ray on bullfighting refers to the figure of the Minotaur, a documentary film on the Hopi Indians testifies of the inclusion of non Occidental myth by Surrealists while on exile in America during the Second World War.

Chimera, Max Ernst, 1928, Collection Centre Pompidou

The mythologies are the central theme of the entire exhibition. Could you explain what are the mythologies and their role in the artists’ inspiration?

The Surrealists’ desire to change the world and to act upon the world finds its roots in the great example of the past where poets were able to create, through myths, the collective values of society. This were the purpose in Greek and Roman ancient history of Homer with The Iliad and The Odyssey, Virgil with The Aeniad or Dante with The Divine Comedy in modern times.

The exhibition presents works from Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, showing that the movement went beyond France and Europe. Is the Surrealism a universal movement?

Yes, from its beginnings Surrealism sought to be an international movement. Already in 1938, the Surrealist exhibition in Paris was entitled The International Surrealism Exhibition. Early on in the 1930’s, the surrealist movement spread across the world, with groups forming in Japan, Central Europe, Belgium, Czechslovakia, etc. The exile of many surrealists in the United States of America during WWII favoured the appearance of an American Surrealism. In particular, a group was built around the Chilean painter Matta; artists gathered in Los Angeles around Feitelson; in New York, young American artists adhered to the Surrealist values. They adopted “automatic writing and painting”  which led to Pollock’s drippings or De Kooning’s gestural brushstrokes. Indeed they called themselves “Mythmakers”.

The exhibition Mythologies : Surrealism and Beyond — Masterpieces from Centre Pompidou is ongoing until 15 September 2021 at the HKMoA.