Philadelphia’s iconic Art Museum is hosting “Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100.” through February 16. There was considerable crossover between ceremonial magick and Surrealist art in both personnel and conceptually with prime example being the great Leonora Carrington (who is prominently featured in this exhibit). But even Salvador Dali published a tarot deck as well as an instructional manual – 50 Secdrets of Magic Craftsmanship. Andre Breton, the author of the seminal “Manifesto of Surrealism” was practitioner of automatic writing, a popular form of mediumship, embraced by people like the Golden Dawn’s W.B. Yeats. The New York Times noted:
“the show is organized thematically to display topics that obsessed the Surrealists: visions that come in dreams, glimpses of the uncanny in the natural landscape, premonitions and consequences of World War II, the practice of magic, and, most of all, the inescapable pull of sexual desire.”
The posted descriptions says:
In his Manifesto of Surrealism of 1924, André Breton celebrated the unbridled imagination as the key to freedom in all aspects of life. Artists responded by inventing a wide variety of new expressive forms designed to stir up the human capacity for wonder and amazement. Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100 will feature approximately two hundred works by more than seventy artists associated with the international Surrealist movement.
The Philadelphia Art Museum will be the only U.S. venue for this traveling exhibition, following distinct iterations at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which launched this project to celebrate Surrealism’s centenary, and three other European museums. Philadelphia Art Museum highlights will include Joan Miró’s Dog Barking at the Moon (1926), Salvador Dalí’s Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936), and Dorothea Tanning’s Birthday (1942).
https://www.visitpham.org/exhibitions/dreamworld-surrealism
