iMuseum of Modern Art (MoMA)Midtown Manhattan
The Surrealist Book: Tomorrow Lives in Mirrors
A survey of Surrealism's book-as-art-object experiments by André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Claude Cahun, Max Ernst and others, built around a major gift of rare artists' books from the Helen and Sam Zell Collection.
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One book cover in this show is a pool of liquid mercury. For L'Air de l'eau, the binder Georges Hugnet sealed it between two glass plates made to look like a seabed with fish. Every time the book is opened, the mercury shifts and the cover redraws itself, curator Jodi Hauptman told EFE.
The galleries are on MoMA's third floor, their walls written over with lines of poetry facing cases full of books. The show is anchored by the Zell Collection, about 100 artists' books given to MoMA in 2022 and shown here for the first time. You walk it in date order: Breton, Dalí and Éluard making books together in the 1920s and 30s, Toyen printing in secret in Nazi-occupied Prague, then Burroughs and Gysin after the war. Some books stand on pedestals like sculpture.
Expect glass between you and the pages: the most fragile volumes can only be leafed through on interactive screens. The catalogue is $75 at the MoMA store.
Look for
Hugnet's mercury binding
Look for L'Air de l'eau, whose cover holds liquid mercury between glass plates painted as a seabed with fish, so the picture changes whenever the book moves.
The book-objects on pedestals
Look for bindings treated as sculpture: one book holds sand and works as an hourglass when turned over, others have mirrors, seahorses or fossils set into their covers.
Toyen's wartime books from Prague
Made in secret under Nazi occupation with homemade photographic techniques; of one volume only six or seven copies survive, and four of them are here.
Man Ray and Éluard's Facile (1935)
Man Ray's solarized nudes run into the lines of Éluard's love poems on the same page.
Miró's A Toute Épreuve (1958)
Miró's colourful, blob-like woodcuts float around Éluard's poems across the spreads.
Good for
- Going Solo
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want paintings on walls: this is books in display cases, with fragile pages turned only on screens.
With kids
The curators say the Surrealists often cut up erotic and pornographic material, and nudes appear throughout, so check it suits your kids first.
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Image credits
6
- The Surrealist Book: Tomorrow Lives in MirrorsCourtesy of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
- Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450-1500The Frick Collection
- Splendido, As Seen by Chris RhodesCourtesy of Aperture
- Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)hibino via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- The Frick CollectionJim.henderson / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- The Morgan Library & MuseumMike Peel, CC BY-SA 4.0