黑料不打烊

Twilight Visions explores the city of Paris as the literal and metaphoric base of Surrealism, and examines the revolutionary social, cultural, aesthetic, and political activities and meanings of the movement during the 1920s and 30s. Over 100 works鈥攎ainly vintage photographs but also including films, books, and period ephemera鈥攈ave been selected for their power to suggest the mystery and wonder in the chance encounters experienced by Surrealist writers and artists as they wandered through the labyrinthine streets of Paris.

Artists such as 叠谤补蝉蝉补茂 (1899-1984), Andr茅 Kert茅sz (1894-1985), Ilse Bing (1899-1998), Man Ray (1890-1976), and Germaine Krull (1897-1985) photographed the monuments, caf茅s, dance halls, and streets of Paris as if they were 鈥渇ound objects.鈥� Their psychologically charged photographs reveal the hidden secrets of these commonplace things, exposing the marvelous in the everyday. While some photographs incorporate innovative lighting techniques and unusual camera angles in a documentary style, others show various technical manipulations to disclose the disjunctive character of modern life in Paris.

Although there was no official organization of Surrealist photographers, many of the artists included in this exhibition published their work in the Surrealist journals La Revolution surr茅aliste, Le Surr茅alisme au service de la revolution, Documents, and Minotaure. Whether portraying the Eiffel Tower or a disturbingly distorted image of the female body, these artists reveled in paradoxes and contradictions, inspiring a revolutionary consciousness whereby memory, imagination, and reality became indistinguishable.

Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris was organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee, with guest curator Therese Lichtenstein, Ph.D.