The Traumatic Surreal at The Henry Moore Institute
Maja Lorkowska, Exhibitions Editor
Galleries around the country have been celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Surrealism with exhibitions that focus on different elements of the movement and the artists involved. The Henry Moore Institute is currently hosting a display that spotlights a small but fascinating slice of Surrealist art: The Traumatic Surreal explores the appropriation and development of Surrealist sculptural traditions by women artists in German-speaking countries after World War II.
The Traumatic Surreal spans the period between 1964 and 2017 and brings together sculptures and films from seven artists: Renate Bertlmann, Birgit Jürgenssen, Bady Minck, Meret Oppenheim, Pipilotti Rist, Ursula (Schultze-Bluhm) and Eva Wipf. The show examines their work as a response to the traumatic events and legacy of the Second World War, with special attention paid to the female experience. To this group, art was a method of dismantling the patriarchal treatment of women as objects.
Viewers will notice certain motifs recurring throughout the show, like cages and animal characteristics such as feathers or fur. These refer to the restrictions of domesticity versus that which cannot be tamed by the oppressive conditions of patriarchy, and make for very visually striking works that benefit from a longer look.
Surrealism allows artists to express their experience in shocking or challenging yet often thoroughly comprehensible terms. The works’ visual appeal only works to enhance their meaning, like Birgit Jürgenssen’s sculpture Caught Happiness (1982) of what seems like a caged creature or Ursula’s Der große Schrank der Pandora / Pandora’s Great Closet (1966) combining painting presented in an open box, with three-dimensional elements and animal tails hanging from the bottom.
The events of the war, along with the trauma of fascist ideologies continue to reverberate in the artists’ thinking and resulting work: Surrealism provides a means through which this can be processed. The Traumatic Surreal showcases the unquestionable importance of women’s contribution to what was initially considered a solely male domain.
The Traumatic Surreal is co-curated with Patricia Allmer, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Edinburgh, and is based on her book of the same name.
