A book bound with shards of shattered glass. A manifesto enshrined in polished metal. Love poems seamlessly merging with solarized photographs. For artists and writers of the Surrealist movement, the book was a perfect vehicle for subversive experimentation and the promotion of Surrealism’s revolutionary tenets. Working collaboratively to unlock the unconscious, they transformed the bound volume into a provocative new art form, an enchanted portal to the unexpected, the irrational, and the marvelous.
The Surrealist Book features the work of Surrealism’s most fascinating figures, including André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Claude Cahun, Paul Éluard, Toyen, Max Ernst, and Unica Zürn. It traces the myriad roles of Surrealist books from their foundational impact in the 1920s, through their convention-defying influence in the 1930s and ’40s, to the persistent presence of a Surrealist sensibility in volumes produced well into the 1950s and ’60s.
The exhibition showcases a transformative gift of rare artists’ books from the Helen and Sam Zell Collection, presented for the first time at MoMA. This trove of exquisite objects includes special editions printed on unusual papers or enhanced with supplementary materials, unique maquettes and singular sketchbooks filled with collages and fantastical drawings, sculptural bindings that turn books into hybrid, interactive artworks, and much more. Whether sparking disquiet or delight, books, the Surrealists insisted, “are doors.” Whoever “opens them is immediately thrown into a higher realm.”
Organized by Jodi Hauptman, The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints, and Starr Figura, Curator, with Kolleen Ku, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints.
Unica Zürn, artist and author. Orakel und Spektakel, IV. Buch: Anagramme und Zeichnungen (Oracle and Spectacle, Book IV: Anagrams and Drawings). 1960. Book with ink, colored ink, pencil, torn-and-pasted paper, dried plant material, feathers, envelopes, playing card, embroidery-thread winder, and thread; pamphlet binding with red paper wrapper over paper cover with ink on torn- and cut-and-pasted papers, pages: 12 13/16 × 9 13/16″ (32.5 × 25 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Helen and Sam Zell. Photo: Ben Blackwell. © Verlag Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin, Germany
