Louis Aragon, Antonin Artaud, Georges Bataille, Hans Bellmer, André Breton, Bruno Botella, Claude Cahun, Simone Collinet, Alfred Courmes, Arthur Cravan, André Derain, Oscar Dominguez, Marcel Duchamp, François de Nomé, Guillaume Dégé, Max Ernst, Léonor Fini, Aline Gagnaire, Alfred Jarry, Carl Laszlo, René Magritte, Bona de Mandiargues, Janine Queneau, Raymond Queneau, Man Ray, Bernard Réquichot, Hugues Reip, Mathieu Rosianu, Emile Savitry, Lou Tchimoukow, Sarah Tritz, Jacques Vaché, Diego Bianchi, Katinka Bock, Mélissa Boucher Morales, Santiago de Paoli, Francisco Tropa, Prinz Gholam, Franz Erhard Walther, Miriam Cahn Transform the world, change life: a surrealist library
“Transform the world, said Marx. Change life, said Rimbaud. For us, these two imperatives are one in the same”.
Of these two ambitions of the surrealist programme evoked by Breton in 1935, only the second may have been realised. Nevertheless, like all imperatives, these two statements embody a shared belief in the capacity of language to act upon reality – or what is also known as its performativity.
Pamphlets, announcements, addresses, manifestos, letters, poetry, essays: surrealism is a dynamic library, striving to engage with the tumult and disorder of the world, open to all the winds of a life that desires to be denser and more intense – “a poetic life”, writes Aragon in Le Paysan de Paris, “the real life”, says Breton at the beginning of the Manifesto. One hundred years after the publication of this foundational text, and with an existent library as our starting point, that of Simon Collinet - André Breton’s first wife - our exhibition aims to unpack this imaginary library though a wide range of printed materials composed from the world and life, with a fervent desire to act upon both.
There is of course an ambiguity regarding the actual impact of such an intention when anchored in the artistic field. While Dada and the Situationists sought to raise this issue by calling for the consideration or transcendence of art, Surrealism kept it alive by considering that sensitivity must be addressed first. What becomes of pamphlets and announcements when they are transferred from the street to the library or gallery? But also: how does one activate a library? How can a book, now reserved for bibliophiles and even sometimes originally intended for them, be made accessible to readers?
How does one exhibit a book? How, in essence, can vision and reading, gallery and library, exhibition, usage and performativity be articulated? There are some of the questions our exhibition aims to explore by presenting a collection of pieces originating from Surrealism and its surroundings – ancestry, margins, descendants, and various ramifications – and also in dialogue with contemporary works or forms of engagement. These pieces rely on the performativity of language, and more broadly of forms, to influence sensitivity and reinvent our presence in the world.
Built around an imaginary figure that could be named Simone and embodying various aspects of Simone Collinet, the exhibition will offer a journey from the public to the intimate, from the exterior to the interior, from light to darkness.
This journey will be structured into four sections spread across two levels of the gallery: on the ground floor, “the street” and “the gallery”; on the upper floor, “the library”, which will be divided into two parts – one dedicated to André Breton and the Manifesto, and the other to Simone and the margins and extensions of the movement - and “the cabinet”, focusing on psychoanalysis and curiosity.
From a thematic perspective, the main motifs and driving forces of the movement will be featured: dandyism and nonchalance, desire and love, virulence and commitment, adventure and freedom. Surrealism asserted early on, presenting itself to the world through the image of “magnetic fields”, that these were also lines of tension.
That is why the exhibition will highlight the forms of ambivalence and conflict: particularly between life and art, idealism (of Breton) and materialism (of Bataille), Rue Fontaine and Rue du Château, poetry and politics.
Bringing together publications (books, magazines, pamphlets, ephemera) and visual artworks (drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures, furniture, installations), and creating a dialogue between surrealist works and contemporary pieces, the exhibition will ultimately invite the visitor to share a unique experience. The experience aims, according to Walter Benjamin’s 1929 texted Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia, to “explode the realm of poetry from within” by “pushing ‘poetic life’ to the extreme limits of the possible”.
Emmanuel Tibloux
Emmanuel Tibloux has been the Director of the École nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs since 2018. Prior to this, he was a teacher and researcher in literature at the University of Rennes 2, Director of the Institut Français in Bilbao, and Director of the art schools in Valence, Saint-Etienne, and Lyon. He also served as President of the National Association of Higher Art Schools (ANdEA) from 2009 to 2017. In conjunction with or alongside his professional activities, he has curated several exhibitions and organized in-person and conferences, while also maintaining an active editorial and publishing career.
He co-founded the journal Initiales at the Beaux-Arts de Lyon in 2013 and the journal DECOR at the École des Arts Décoratifs in 2021. Additionally, he co-directs the "Icônes" collection at Les Pérégrines publishing house. Tibloux is also the author of several critical texts, particularly concerning Georges Bataille and the 20th-century avant-gardes, as well as a novel, Le Déclin de la beauté, published under the pseudonym Virgile Tavernier. He frequently contributes to the press with op-eds, articles, and interviews on art, design, culture, and education.