A dream collection - Surrealism in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

This is a rather tricky foreword, something of a cadavre exquis, full of questions that are not that easy to answer. Question number one. In the early 1960s Salvador Dalí made a video with the photographer Philippe Halsman. You see Dalí in a film studio that looks like Piet Mondrian’s studio in Paris; he tugs at his moustache, points to a Mondrianesque composition on a painter’s easel, looks wide-eyed at the camera and says: ‘Pyet, Pyet? Pyet Nyet!’ Then he turns to the viewer and says charmingly, questioningly: ‘Dalí? Dalí? Dalí Si!’ What prompted Dalí, hardly deprived of fame or attention himself, to ridicule Mondrian, one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, in such a grotesque way more than fifteen years after his death?

Another question. Another time, another place. Sigmund Freud, practising psychoanalyst in Vienna before the First World War and during the interwar years, inventor of the therapy generally known as the interpretation of dreams. Could Freud ever have imagined that his method would be hijacked by the practitioners of the last great avant-garde ‘ism’ of the twentieth century? Which focused on the subconscious and dug for treasure in the human mind? To the benefit of all? This because of the need for a new world order, the abolition of hierarchy, the revolt against bourgeois attitudes and the reassessment of irrationality and chance – like Dada in reaction to the inhuman events on the battlefields of the First World War?

And what then – another shift in time and place – prompted head curator Renilde Hammacher-Van den Brande and director J.C. Ebbinge Wubben in the 1960s and 70s to focus the museum’s attention on the south – on Surrealism? Being mindful of the grand definition the American museum director Alfred H. Barr Jr formulated in 1936 – to strive for a collection of publications and artworks by artists in the circle of André Breton, and at the same time establish the broader connection between Surrealism and art history, from Jheronimus Bosch to, say, the art of psychiatric patients and children? Yes, what actually makes Surrealism – irrational, unpredictable, individual, imaginative, cadavre exquis playing, automatic drawing practising, unconventional, ethnographic inspiration seeking and eroticizing Surrealism – so irresistible?

At that time something new was wanted, and Breton and his circle were at one and the same time social animals and individualists who on the whole did not warm towards the collective style limitation the Modernists stood for. Mondrian, God of Modernism? An oak that had to be felled. Freud? He looked on, I imagine, mildly amused, but also aloof. And the museum saw the gap in the Dutch public collections and began something new.

Now, after more than fifty years since the first purchase, Surrealism still enjoys our permanent attention. Over the generations the museum has put together a dream of a collection that can be described as unique. Read this magnificent catalogue raisonné for all other questions and more.

Demarcation

The museum has always conceived of Surrealism as a broad-based development that influences artists and designers to this day. The museum frequently acquires works that are in one way or another related to Surrealism or a Surrealist way of thinking, such as Untitled (1992) by Robert Gober, a child’s shoe made of wax with an insole covered with real human hair. However, these artworks and objects are not included in this catalogue raisonné. We wanted to confine ourselves here to the first group of Surrealists around Breton and the first generation of followers, along with some of the early Dutch Surrealists. This group is in fact less stable than it might appear: artists often had a Surrealist period and committed themselves to the movement for a while, but had previously pursued or went on to pursue other paths. This sometimes raised thorny questions during the compilation of the book. The small sculpture Jean (Hans) Arp made in 1958, for example, was removed from the selection at least three times before finally being included in the book.

Surrealism still has many international followers, in literature and in the visual arts. Nevertheless we decided to concentrate on artists who had at least had direct contact with Breton or whom he considered part of the group, like Roberto Matta, Wifredo Lam and Enrico Baj. Artists who did not regard themselves as Surrealists, but were seen as such by art historians – or by Breton – with relevant work in the museum’s collection were likewise admitted. They include Félix Labisse and Paul Delvaux. There is also work by artists such as Giorgio de Chirico, who was a major source of inspiration for the Surrealists. The museum has a large collection of prints by Pablo Picasso dating from the nineteen-forties and fifties, some of which are included on the list of works on paper at the back of the book, as well as the paintings Femme assise à la terrasse d’un café (1901) and Couple (1970) and a sculpture from his non-Surrealist period, which do not appear in this catalogue raisonné.

In setting the limits of the period, we have – with occasional exceptions – confined ourselves to artworks made between 1924, the year the first Surrealist manifesto was published, and 1966, the year Breton died. This means that the list of the bibliophilic collection does not commence until 1924 and consequently excludes a number of Dadaist publications that are in the library collection. As far as artworks are concerned, works prior to 1924 have been included in a few cases, such as Francis Picabia’s 1921-22 Radio Concerts and Max Ernst’s Le couple of 1923. We allowed ourselves this freedom as the transition from Dadaism to Surrealism was not, after all, instantaneous. The second issue of the Dadaist magazine Littérature (1922-24), for example, edited by Breton, marks a period of transition between the two movements. Unfortunately, the museum does not yet have a copy of this magazine in its bibliophilic collection. There are also a number of exceptions when it comes to the final year, 1966.We have included, for instance, later replicas of Surrealist objects originally made by Man Ray in the nineteen-twenties, thirties and forties, which the artist reproduced in the seventies, two commercial products by Salvador Dalí dating from 1967, and the 1968 publication / artwork The Large Glass and Related Works (Volumes I & II) by Marcel Duchamp. Although we are aware that defining the period by date may sometimes be problematic, it provides compilers with a framework within which to achieve a logical publication.

In terms of content, we could also have incorporated Dada in this catalogue raisonné – this might have clarified the inclusion of artists like Picabia and Duchamp. However, we expressly chose not to do this, in part because of the focus on the thinking of the Surrealist movement, which in certain respects differs fundamentally from Dadaism, and in part for the practical reason that the overview of Dadaism the museum can provide is far from comprehensive. The inclusion of Duchamp consequently provoked some debate, as he is better known as a Dadaist or non-conformist who did not want to be associated with any group. His work has nonetheless been included because of his close involvement in various Surrealist activities and exhibitions.

The emphasis in the selected works lies on paintings, drawings, sculptures, objects, assemblages and photographs. The collection of Surrealist prints is so large that it is included at the back of the catalogue raisonné in the form of an anthology with a list of the names of the artists with prints in the collection. The bibliophilic Surrealism collection is listed separately, with illustrations. Finally, the museum also has some films by or about the Surrealists in its collection, which are referred to where possible in relation to the artworks discussed.

Structure

The catalogue raisonné contains three introductory essays. Sandra Kisters, the current Head of the Collection and Research Department, provides an outline of the Surrealist movement. Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Saskia van Kampen-Prein, explains the acquisition history and establishment of the museum’s Surrealist art collection. Surrealism expert Laurens Vancrevel examines the museum’s unique, often neglected collection of Surrealist publications. The essays are followed by the catalogue, consisting of short texts about individual and, occasionally, groups of artworks. As far as possible we have traced the direct – and where possible also the indirect – provenance of the works, as well as a large number of exhibitions where the works were shown and publications in which they are discussed. References to sources about artworks of which there are, or were, several versions in circulation, are marked with an asterisk [*]. In these cases the reference is not to the actual object owned by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. For the research into the object information and provenances we would like to thank Katinka Duffhuis, Maarten van ’t Klooster, Susan Veldmeijer and Renée Volkers, who worked at the museum as researchers, interns or volunteers in recent years.

Most of the texts were written by Marijke Peyser, who was awarded her doctorate in 2008 with her dissertation on the Zodiaque, a circle of patrons around Dalí. The Duchamp texts are by Bert Jansen, who obtained his doctorate with his thesis on Duchamp in 2015. Other entries were written by Saskia van Kampen-Prein, Esmee Postma, Sandra Kisters and Katinka Duffhuis. The degree of attention devoted to the development and oeuvre of the various artists depends on the number of their works in the museum’s collection. Dalí, Duchamp, René Magritte, Man Ray and Picabia are conspicuously present in large numbers.

A Dream Collection originally appeared in 2017 as a printed catalogue raisonné of the museum’s Surrealism collection. This publication, beautifully designed by Rick Vermeulen and Marjolijn Verbist, reflects the importance of the book as part of Surrealist practice. It is available as a reference work in the webshop. Because the Surrealism collection is still growing, however, there is now also a digital version, enabling us to keep the catalogue up to date with new acquisitions as well as updating existing works with new data.

An Artists’ Collective

Surrealism was one of the last movements to have been called the historical avant-garde: movements of artists who drew up a programme collectively, often in the form of manifestos in which they proclaimed their ideas about art, and about the relationship between art and society.8 These literary and art movements campaigned against the idea of art for art’s sake that had become fashionable in the nineteenth century; the idea that art was autonomous and could be produced free from a moral, didactic or other compelling message.9 The whole point of art was to mean something, unleash a revolution or at least ridicule the prevailing norms, as Dada started to do in 1916.

With hindsight, we can see that the historical avant-garde (1909-40) began with the Italian Futurist manifesto written and published by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909, in which he called for the overthrow of existing institutions like museums and libraries and urged people to embrace the political revolution.10 But the First World War confronted artists, and not only them, of course, with the horrors and senselessness of war and violence. Dada, founded by Hugo Ball, his lover Emmy Hennings and others in the famous Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916, consequently expressly broke with its Futurist predecessors and preached anti-art. With humour, irony and nonsense, expressed in performances and noise concerts, artists like Tristan Tzara and Arp protested against the insanity of war.

As early as 1919, Breton and Soupault were experimenting with automatic writing, producing poetic texts without the intermediary of reason, some of which they published in the first series of Littérature (1919-21). This resulted in 1920 in the book Les champs magnétiques. During the First World War Breton had worked as an orderly in a psychiatric hospital, where he encountered the thinking of the Viennese neurologist and father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and was inspired by his ground-breaking ideas about the subconscious. Beneath their consciousness, said Freud, human beings had a much greater subconscious, full of fears, passions and fantasies, which were kept in check by reason, but could lead to numerous neuroses and other psychological problems.15 One of the conversation techniques Freud used with his patients, free association – where he got patients to talk freely and without inhibition about their feelings, fears and frustrations – was appropriated by Breton and Soupault in the literary technique of automatic writing. The interest in psychic automatism, the meaning of dreams and the effects of trance were thus inspired by psychoanalysis – but used as a means of liberating the mind, not curing it.16

Alongside the écriture automatique, Littérature also published puns and word play by, for instance, Duchamp, sometimes under the name of his ‘female’ alter ego Rrose Sélavy. One of the first visual artists to experiment with automatic writing around 1924 was André Masson. In that same year Breton published the Manifeste du surréalisme.17 In it he explained, not coherently, but rather associatively, that Surrealism wanted to free not just art, but society too, from rationalism, logic and bourgeois thinking. In the manifesto, Breton stressed physical automatism, the expression of true thought, free of control by reason or moral and aesthetic notions, and the importance of the dream, and named those whom he believed belonged to the Surrealists. Breton wrote almost as if it were a confession of faith:

I believe in the future resolution of those two seemingly contradictory states, dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, of surreality, so to speak. I look forward to its consummation, certain that I shall never share in it but too indifferent to my death not to taste, at least slightly, the joys of such possession.18

It was the poet Guillaume Apollinaire who actually coined the word surrealism. He used the term ‘sur-réalisme’ for the first time in 1917 and Breton adopted it soon afterwards. Later in the manifesto Breton gave a much-quoted definition of Surrealism:

SURREALISM, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, verbally, in writing, or by other means, the real functioning of thought. The dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.19

Surrealism as a collective art movement can be described as erratic. Collaboration proved a rocky road, the Surrealists held different opinions about what was and was not Surrealist and whether a direct connection between creative actions and political activism was or was not permissible. An initiative like the Bureau des recherches surréalistes (Surrealist Research Bureau, 1924-25) at 15 Rue de Grenelle in Paris, where the Surrealists wanted to get together to debate and to coordinate Surrealist activities, was wound up because in practice it proved difficult to keep the office manned at all times. Little by little Breton emerged as the absolute leader, and he decided who could and who could not be regarded as belonging to the movement. In 1929, for instance, when he published the Second manifeste du surréalisme in the last issue of La Révolution surréaliste, he excommunicated some members without pardon because they no longer wanted to conform to his conception of Surrealism.20 Paradoxically, Surrealist thinking was non-conformist, against any form of consistency. Among other things, in the manifesto Pour un art révolutionnaire indépendant he compiled in 1938 with Leon Trotsky and the Mexican mural painter and Communist Diego Rivera, Breton fiercely opposed both rising Fascism and the Communism of the USSR, even though in earlier years he himself had been a member of the Communist Party.21 The manifesto ends with two demands: independent art for the revolution and revolution for the total liberation of art.22 It is therefore all the more remarkable that he was so prescriptive as to what and who could and could not be regarded as Surrealist. Inevitably the composition of the group changed continually.

In painting there was both a figurative and an abstract development in Surrealism. Most familiar are Dalí’s hyper-realistic dream images, where ponderous elephants can walk on gossamer-thin legs and a body can be made of drawers that refer to the subconscious. The abstract side of Surrealism is represented by artists like Picabia, Miró and Tanguy. Painting, however is just one of the components of the Surrealists’ expressive universe – collages, for instance, were frequently used to create strange compositions like Ernst’s famous 1934 novel Une semaine de bonté ou Les sept éléments capitaux (A Week of Kindness).

The Surrealists also experimented with new media like photography and film and developed a wholly individual form of sculpture, where found objects or materials were combined in the same associative way. This resulted in completely irrational objects, like the famous fur-covered cup and saucer Meret Oppenheim made in 1936, which must have produced a quite extraordinary mouthfeel, and Man Ray’s flatiron studded with sharp nails, titled Cadeau (1921).

Most Surrealists were very versatile. Dalí, for instance, worked with film, photography, sculpture, painting, drawing and printmaking, alone and in collaboration with others. Among the successful examples of his cooperative works are the avant-garde experiment Un chien andalou (1929) in association with Louis Buñuel, the Dream sequence in the Hollywood film Spellbound (1945) by Alfred Hitchcock, his collaboration with fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, resulting among other things in the Lobster Dress and a Shoe Hat (both 1937), and a long-lasting partnership with the photographer Philippe Halsman (see Métronome, Midsummer Night’s Mare and Le Roy Soleil). Like the oft-quoted line about the beauty of a chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table from Les chants des Maldoror (1868), the poem by the Comte de Lautréamont (pseudonym of Isidore Ducasse) that was a major source of inspiration for many Surrealists, they were constantly on the cutting edge between disciplines. This was perhaps most evident at Surrealist exhibitions.

As well as the objects exhibited, like Dalí’s Taxi pluvieux (Rainy Taxi) with two tailor’s mannequins in it – a blonde and a chauffeur with a shark’s head over which live snails crawled on lettuce leaves – in the Exposition internationale du surréalisme, the venue itself was invariably an element of the show. In 1938 the exhibition-goers in Paris went down a long corridor (rue surréaliste) with mannequins decorated by the artists (fig. 6), to arrive in a space where the ceiling was covered with coal sacks filled with paper and coal dust that drifted down on their heads. In the centre of the gallery stood a burning stove. Paintings were fastened to walls and graphic art to doors erected in the space, there were some beds, a small pool (in which the dancer Hélène Vanel gave a performance during the opening) and twigs and leaves on the floor. The aroma of roasting coffee filled the space and there was sound, although opinions as to its nature vary – from a gramophone playing hysterical laughter to the sound of marching soldiers.32

Although Duchamp is known to many as the forerunner of conceptual art and is not necessarily associated with Surrealism because of his individualistic attitude, he was closely involved with the movement and with the installation of the exhibitions in Paris in 1938 and in New York in 1942. In the two publications that accompanied the exhibitions he was described respectively as ‘Générateur-Arbitre’ (referee) (1938) and as the ‘twin brother’ of André Breton (1942), whatever that might mean.33 At the opening in New York he also had children running around bouncing balls.34 The idea behind this was to disorient, confuse and unnerve the visitors.

Barr’s exhibition Fantastic Art. Dada, Surrealism, by contrast, provided an art historical context for Dadaism and Surrealism and was a pendant to the influential exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art staged earlier in 1936. It contained some seven hundred works of art by around a hundred artists. The emphasis was on the fantastical element of Surrealism. Alongside the work of the movement’s pioneers, the exhibition explored their art historical influences, including Jheronimus Bosch, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Henri Fuseli and William Blake, and work by children and the mentally ill. A considerable proportion of the works of art were for sale, as a gesture to the lenders. MoMA did not ask for any commission on the sales.35

‘Early Magritte Goes to Boijmans,’ read the headlines in Dutch newspapers in January 2016.42 Since the purchase of René Magritte’s Le miroir vivant (The Living Mirror, 1928) in 2015, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s renowned Surrealism collection has boasted yet another masterpiece. What many readers may not know, however, is that the acquisition of important works of art of this kind by public institutions is often preceded by a long search and a period of negotiation and decision-making. If there is one thing that the compilers of such collections have in common, it is boundless patience – like former museum director J.C. Ebbinge Wubben and senior curator of modern art, Renilde Hammacher-Van den Brande, who were there at the start of the Surrealism collection in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.43

The Museum’s First Surrealist Gems

Ebbinge Wubben wanted to create a collection in Rotterdam that was just as spectacular. It had to include old and modern art which would be hung side by side, emulating the Kunstmuseum Basel. To achieve this, he needed works of art that could have a ‘connecting’ effect,48 and around 1965 he believed he could find such works in the famous collection of the Belgian couple Joseph Berthold (Bertie) and Gaëtane (Gigi) Urvater (fig. 3). Bertie Urvater was a wealthy Antwerp diamond merchant, who had started to collect art by predominantly Belgian artists like James Ensor, Constant Permeke and Edgard Tytgat when he was in his twenties. After his marriage in 1948, he and his wife added to the collection together. Influenced by their good friend E.L.T. (Edouard Léon Théodore) Mesens – whom they probably first met in the early nineteen-fifties – they gradually shifted the emphasis towards Surrealism.49 An artist, collector, gallery owner and publisher, Mesens was also one of the most prominent promotors of Surrealism and he regularly tipped off the Urvaters when important paintings came up for sale. He also sold the couple a number of pieces from his own collection, including Le thérapeute (The Healer, 1937), a painting that is part of a series of well-known works in Magritte’s oeuvre.50 Bertie and Gigi Urvater rapidly amassed a collection that contained many Surrealist masterpieces. They owned paintings by the likes of Dalí, Ernst, Magritte, Joan Miró and Yves Tanguy. At the beginning of the nineteen-sixties there were significant changes in their circumstances that impacted on their collecting practices. To begin with, Bertie retired from his business as a diamond merchant. Soon afterwards he and his wife moved from the town of Sint-Genesius-Rode in Belgium to Paris, where they became enthralled by the French abstract art being produced by artists like Roger Bissière and Pierre Soulages. In 1965, with no more earnings coming in to fund new purchases, combined with the fact that they maintained ‘a luxurious champagne lifestyle’, the couple decided to sell their Surrealist works.51

Like Ebbinge Wubben, Hammacher must immediately have recognized the significance of the opportunity to acquire this collection. Before she was appointed senior curator in Rotterdam, she had already built up a considerable body of knowledge about Surrealism in another job. In 1947 Hammacher won a competition and was rewarded with the offer of a job as a research assistant with the Belgian ‘Dienst voor Kunstpropaganda’, a department to promote art, headed by Emile Langui.52 He was an expert on Expressionism and Surrealism and introduced Hammacher to the most important artists and collectors in the run-up to exhibitions.53 The network she built up during her ten years working at the department had a primarily Belgian focus, because the organization was chiefly concerned with promoting the country’s ‘own’ art. For this reason, the department staged a travelling exhibition about the Urvaters’ collection in 1957.54 It was one of a series of exhibitions titled De grote Belgische verzamelingen (The Great Belgian Collections). From 29 June to 2 September 1957 the exhibition ran at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, where Hammacher’s husband, Bram, had been in charge since 1947.55 Renilde Hammacher was consequently well acquainted with the Urvaters’ collection long before 1965.56

The Surrealists were well represented at this exhibition, with paintings by Dalí, Ernst, Magritte, Miró, Delvaux, Giorgio de Chirico, Oscar Domínguez, Victor Brauner and others. No one could have suspected then that two of the works in the show would later play an important role in the construction of the Surrealism collection in Rotterdam – Ernst’s Le couple (1923) and Au seuil de la liberté (On the Threshold of Liberty, 1930) by Magritte.57 Accompanying the exhibition was a small, practical catalogue, for which Hammacher compiled all the object data and Langui wrote the introduction.58 In it he remarked  that the couple had ‘brought together in less than no time, with the love, the passion, the daring and the flair of youthful “aficionados”, an ensemble before which even the most indulged had to doff their hats in awe’.59

A Surrealist Accent

In 1967 the ‘Commissie van toezicht op het Museum Boymans-van Beuningen’ felt the need to get a clear view of the museum’s modern art acquisitions policy. Over the years, members of the committee had come and gone, so not everyone was familiar with all the agreements that had been made. Some wondered what plan was actually being pursued in terms of purchases. They also raised the question as to what the director had in mind for the future of the modern art collection.69 Ebbinge Wubben suspected that these doubts had arisen because since 1963 the resources he had available had been spent almost exclusively on modern art, while lack of space meant that virtually none of it could be seen in the galleries. In September 1968, to ensure that the committee unanimously backed the museum policy, he wrote a policy statement. Besides the integration of old and modern art, he wanted to create the broadest possible overview of modern art. In his view, the emphasis should be placed on postwar art because the budget would not stretch to making up the arrears in the area of the historical avant-garde. This was not to say, however, that no purchases of pre-war art would be made in the future. However, these acquisitions would form a small nucleus, which would consist solely of representative works by the most eminent artists. Some steps towards this had been taken in previous years, including the purchases from the Urvaters’ collection.

In February 1970 – just two years after Ebbinge Wubben had submitted his policy statement – the museum suddenly wanted to pursue a different course. This change may have been related to the fact that by now Hammacher had been working at the museum for several years. As time passed, she had increasingly come to realize what she felt was needed. Hammacher believed that Surrealism should be a focal point in the museum’s collection and tried to persuade the city council of this in a new policy statement. One of her most important arguments was that Surrealism was almost wholly absent from Dutch museum collections – with a few exceptions, including Ernst’s painting La horde (The Horde, 1927), which museum director Willem Sandberg had purchased for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1949, and Miró’s Composition avec des cordes (Composition with Strings, 1950), which had been in the collection of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven since 1960.70 Moreover, argued Hammacher, the museums maintained a clear division of tasks: the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag concentrated chiefly on Piet Mondrian’s oeuvre, the Van Abbemuseum focused on pre-war abstract art and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam followed the latest trends in Pop Art. She therefore felt that it made sense ‘to focus attention where it was lacking’.71 Over and above this, Hammacher reasoned, it was unrealistic to think that a representative collection of Cubism or Expressionism could still be put together at that time. Masterpieces were as good as impossible to find, and anything that did come on to the market was generally too expensive.72

Another important argument, according to Hammacher, was that Surrealism was not a closed historical period. This meant that it would be possible to create an ongoing line in the collection – precisely what Ebbinge Wubben had been seeking since his visit to the Kunstmuseum Basel. To illustrate her point, Hammacher cited Jheronimus Bosch. The museum was the only Dutch public institution to hold any of the artist’s work and, echoing Alfred H. Barr Jr, founder and former director of the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), she regarded him as one of the Surrealists’ most important ‘forefathers’.73 In 1936-37 Barr had staged the legendary exhibition Fantastic Art. Dada, Surrealism at MoMA, in which he had presented several ‘old masters’ as predecessors of the Surrealists. Over and above this thread, Hammacher was interested in the way Surrealism had also evolved into later schools of art, such as Cobra.74 She therefore wanted to broaden the scope of what Dutch museums offered by devoting regular exhibitions to Surrealism – and she wanted extra financial resources from the city council so that she could realize her vision in the acquisitions policy.

The initial response to Hammacher’s policy statement was to reject it. The council thought that the Dutch people were too Calvinist for this type of art.75 This may have been prompted by the Magritte exhibition Hammacher mounted in the museum in the summer of 1967, which had attracted a rather disappointing number of visitors (fig. 5).76 Almost immediately after her appointment, Hammacher had suggested devoting an exhibition to Magritte. The artist was one of her personal favourites who, she believed, had ‘produced … the most rich and varied oeuvre’.77 Nevertheless it was to be some years before René Magritte. Het mysterie van de werkelijkheid (René Magritte: The Mystery of Reality) opened. This was because not one, but two Magritte retrospectives took place in the United States in the early nineteen-sixties, so the paintings were not available for Rotterdam.78 The retrospective MoMA put together in 1965 was particularly warmly received by the press and established Magritte’s name in the United States.79 This was not to say, however, that the artist enjoyed the same sort of recognition in Europe. In 1967, when Hammacher endeavoured to change this situation with an exhibition, it appeared that it was still too soon for the Dutch public.80 Three years later, visitors were able to summon up considerably more enthusiasm for Surrealism. In November 1970, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen opened the first European retrospective devoted to Dalí. It generated a huge stream of visitors: in the space of eight weeks more than 190,000 people came to see the exhibition. In the face of this overwhelming success, the city council no longer had any reason to doubt the tenor of Hammacher’s policy statement. When the exhibition closed and the museum actually proved to have made a profit, Ebbinge Wubben and Hammacher bought Dalí’s white-painted bronze statue Vénus de Milo aux tiroirs (Venus of Milo with Drawers, 1936/1964). At the same time, the city council used funds from the G.J. Verijssel Estate – which had been established to boost the purchase of modern fine art – to buy Dalí’s painting Le visage de la guerre (The Face of War, 1940) for the museum collection. Dalí’s work was in fact already represented in the Rotterdam collection by then: in 1969 the museum had purchased his gouache Shirley Temple, le plus jeune monstre sacré du cinéma de son temps (Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time, 1939), which had been seen a year earlier at a group exhibition, Hedendaagse Spaanse kunst van Picasso tot Genovés (Contemporary Spanish Art from Picasso to Genovés), in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Rotterdam had actually scored a first here, because it was the first work by Dalí in a Dutch museum collection.

In 1976, when the loan agreement was almost at an end, Hammacher wrote to James, asking him to extend the loan. She also let it be known in passing that she hoped the museum would get first refusal were the works ever to be put on the market.83 Contrary to all expectations, this remark bore fruit in May 1977. It appeared that the Edward James Foundation was in financial difficulties and believed it could turn the tide by selling some of its works of art. Ebbinge Wubben and Hammacher seized the opportunity. A few weeks later, with alderman Jan Riezenkamp in tow, they went to the south of England, where the collection was kept in a large country house. There they negotiated for two paintings by Dalí and five by Magritte: Dalí’s Landscape with a Girl Skipping Rope and Table solaire (Sun Table, 1936) and Magritte's La jeunesse illustrée (Youth Illustrated, 1937), La reproduction interdite (Not to be Reproduced, 1937), La saignée (The Blood-Letting, 1939), Le poison (The Poison, 1939) and La maison de verre (The Glass House, 1939).84 The focus was on Magritte because at that time the museum had only one of his paintings – Au seuil de la liberté, which the museum had acquired from Bertie and Gigi Urvater. Almost two months after the negotiations, both the trustees of the Edward James Foundation and Rotterdam city council reached an agreement, and all seven works came to Rotterdam. They were financed by an additional grant furnished by the city council.

Despite this sale, the Edward James Foundation was still having problems a year later, so the trustees decided to offer to sell some more works to the museum. This time, there were works on offer that had previously been off limits. For a while it looked as if the museum would miss out on this chance because one of the councillors thought that the museum should pay part of the purchase price itself. He suggested that the museum could sell a work of art and use the proceeds to fund a number of new acquisitions. Ebbinge Wubben had stepped down as director in 1978 and Hammacher had retired at the same time, so the newly appointed director, Wim Beeren, was faced with a thorny issue as soon as he took up his post. He was so keen to buy Magritte’s Le modèle rouge III (The Red Model III, 1937) that he briefly considered selling La jeunesse illustrée. Fortunately, he succeeded in getting the necessary grants, so in the end he was not compelled to sell this important painting. Eventually, in 1979, the city council agreed to the purchase proposal and the financial contribution, and the museum acquired Magritte’s Le modèle rouge III and Dalí’s Couple aux têtes pleines de nuages (Couple with their Heads Full of Clouds, 1936), Le grand paranoïaque (The Great Paranoiac, 1936), Espagne (Spain, 1938), Impressions d’Afrique (Impressions of Africa, 1938) and two preparatory sketches.

Time to Expand the Collection

What began as a couple of incidental purchases in the nineteen-sixties has grown over more than half a century into a world-class core collection. There are still plenty of desirable acquisitions out there, however. Ebbinge Wubben felt the same in 1987, when he looked back over his years with the museum. He explained in an interview that there were some holes in the Surrealism collection that he and Hammacher had sadly been unable to fill: ‘Of course we should have had Tanguy. And … Miró. The two big gaps are Tanguy and Miró, and I’m afraid that they’ll never be filled.’86 What he thought would no longer be possible nonetheless came to pass in 2007: Tanguy’s fabulous painting Paysage avec nuages roses (Landscape with Pink Clouds, 1928) was purchased for the Rotterdam collection. It is a classic example of patience, or, as current director Sjarel Ex put it: ‘As soon as we know what we want, we have time. If need be, we can wait five generations for a particular painting.’87 When the museum suddenly got on to the trail of one of Tanguy’s ‘dream landscapes’ almost thirty years after Ebbinge Wubben stepped down, Ex did not hesitate for a moment and did everything possible to get hold of the coveted painting. Support was sought from all the important funds, and a benefit gala dinner was held to fund the acquisition of this work – so valuable in more than one way. When, not much later, Paysage avec nuages roses hung in the museum, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen had another first: it was the first Tanguy purchased for the Dutch national collection.

Other wishes were also fulfilled over the years. In 2008, for instance, the museum bought Untitled (for Chiarina) (c. 1958) by the self-taught American artist Joseph Cornell. The work, a white wooden box filled with all sorts of found objects, was acquired because, among other things, it creates a bridge between the Surrealism and Pop Art collections.88 Although Cornell never took part in the activities of the Surrealist group, he did show his work at a number of Surrealist exhibitions. The Surrealists invited him to take part because they approved of his work. At the same time, his little boxes had a considerable influence on Pop Art practitioners. The recent acquisition Le miroir vivant (1928), one of a small group of word and image paintings by Magritte, is both a masterpiece and a link. It as it were threads together the Dada, Surrealism and Pop Art collections. It was this key position that led Ex to ask, in an article he wrote for the Vereniging Rembrandt in 2015, why Hammacher had not collected an early work by Magritte of this kind. ‘Did she overlook it? Was she exclusively fixated by his paintings for the English collector Edward James?’89 Ex concluded that it was probably because building a collection is a gradual process and you look forward as well as back. And so it is. With patience, powers of persuasion, a number of setbacks and a bit of luck, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has collected more than a hundred pieces related to Surrealism since the nineteen-sixties. Today, this part of the collection is of inestimable worth – and not only in terms of artistic merit, quality, value and art historical importance. It is also a bargaining chip in international loan traffic. The museum recently mapped out a Surrealism policy line in which the plans and wishes for this part of the collection are formulated more precisely. One of the first aims has been achieved here: to compile a full catalogue in which the museum’s Surrealism collection is presented to the public in all its diversity.

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s unique and eclectic Surrealism collection includes a select group of paintings, objects and works on paper by luminaries like Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, René Magritte, Salvador Dalí and Yves Tanguy, supported by an important collection of bibliophilic publications, magazines, manifestos and pamphlets produced by the Surrealist movement. The Surrealists’ countless publications are extraordinary in the diversity of their typography and their content. Many of the publications express specific ideas about art, creativity, society, politics and philosophy – ideas that the Surrealists jointly developed into a wide-ranging ‘Surrealist civilisation’, as they sometimes described it.90

Surrealist Libraries

The early collectors of Surrealist art, almost without exception, collected paintings and sculptures, as well as Surrealist books and writings. One of the first great collectors was the French fashion tycoon and patron Jacques Doucet. He was also the ‘silent’ financier of a number of publications, including the journal Littérature (1919-24), which began as a Dada magazine but gradually transformed into the first Surrealism journal. In 1916 Doucet conceived the idea of building up a library of work by modern poets and writers and their immediate predecessors to accompany his famous collection of paintings, and turned to various avant-garde writers for advice. In 1920 he appointed the Dadaists/Surrealists André Breton and Louis Aragon as his librarians. They drew up a plan for the structure of the content of the library – the guiding criterion would be to collect publications that would reflect ‘the origin of the poetic mentality of our generation’.92 On his death in 1929, Doucet bequeathed this unique library of extremely rare Dada documents, Surrealist publications and the principal works of the philosophers and poets who are regarded as the intellectual forerunners of the Surrealists (among them the Marquis de Sade, Emanuel Swedenborg, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Charles Fourier) to the University of Paris, where it remains, is still being added to and is accessible for research.

There were other legendary libraries of Surrealist publications – one belonging to the Belgian writer and collector René Gaffé, who acted as patron to Paul Éluard and Breton for years, and one amassed by Daniel Filippacchi, the great French collector and magazine publisher, whose titles included Paris Match and Lui. The library of the French antiquarian bookseller and art dealer Jacques Matarasso was a monument to his friendship with Surrealists like Breton, Picasso and Miró.93 That of the American grande dame Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, wife of the powerful oil, steel and property magnate John D. Rockefeller Jr, was a declaration of love to avant-garde artists.94 She was also one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 1929 – the first museum in the world for contemporary art, and consequently for Surrealist works, too.95 The avant-garde library of the American collector and automobile tycoon Walter P. Chrysler Jr,96 and that of the patron and collector Peggy Guggenheim were also renowned. The English poet Edward James, who was a very important collector and patron of Dalí, Magritte and others, and was one of the financiers of the magazine Minotaure. Revue artistique et littéraire, likewise amassed an exceptional bibliophilic collection. Gaffé, who increasingly focused his collecting activities on modem painting and African tribal objects, put his library up for auction in 1956. The sale attracted immense interest, and the prices of historical publications of Dada and Surrealism multiplied worldwide at a stroke. Years later, in 2004, Filippacchi’s library was sold at auction and fetched record prices, as did Matarasso’s in 2012. Peggy Guggenheim left her library to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

The collections of books and documents belonging to the Surrealists themselves, with inscribed and dedicated copies and other personal items, are obviously the most interesting, but very few of them have survived: most were sold or dispersed after their owners’ deaths. Part of the library that belonged to Dalí, a passionate reader and writer, eventually went to the Centre d’Estudis Dalinians in Figueres, Catalonia, which was established after his death.97 The book collection, which had suffered losses over time, has since been augmented with books about which Dalí wrote or on which he collaborated.

Collective occasional publications are a separate category of Surrealist literature. They include programmes for stage performances and film screenings, and pamphlets about events on which the Surrealist group wanted to express its opinion publicly. Improvised works like this appeared in small editions and did not go through the book trade, so they are extremely rare. The library has a number of them, including the programme for the première of Luis Buñuel’s notorious film L’Âge d’or (scenario by Dalí) of 1930, with contributions by Breton, Ernst, Arp, René Crevel, Tanguy, Éluard, Man Ray, Aragon, Miró, Dalí and André Thirion. This film – although not until some weeks after the première – gave ultranationalists and Fascists an excuse to cause a riot and damage the exhibition space in the Studio 28 cinema in Paris. The 1933 pamphlet Violette Nozières, full of drawings and texts by Breton, Dalí, Tanguy, Ernst, Brauner, Magritte, Arp, Alberto Giacometti, Man Ray and others, supported the cause of a young woman, Violette Nozières, who was to be executed for the murder of her father after he had forced her to commit incest. Another example is the programme for the performance Ubu Enchaîné in 1937, a humorous play by Alfred Jarry, one of the most inspiring forerunners of Surrealism. Almost all the members of the Surrealist group in that period – Breton, Éluard, Magritte, Miró, Paalen, Benjamin Péret, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Tanguy and many others – contributed writings or drawings. The witty occasional publication accompanying the Exposition internationale du surréalisme in 1938, titled Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme, with ironic entries by the group on a great many themes and concepts, is likewise a remarkable piece (fig. 5). Another unique occasional product in the collection is the 1950 Almanach surréaliste du demi-siècle, a sort of Surrealist book of hours edited by Breton and Péret, with a calendar of ‘tolerable inventions’, essays on great minds like De Sade, Jarry and Arthur Cravan, a chronology of Surrealism up to 1950, drawings by Ernst, Dorothea Tanning, Toyen (the artist’s name of Marie Cerminová), Enrico Donati and others, and poems and stories by writers including Octavio Paz, Julien Gracq and Breton. This surprising book was published as a special issue of the cultural magazine La Nef, and has consequently become almost impossible to find, in part because of the poor quality of the wood-pulp paper. Fortunately, 115 numbered copies were printed especially for collectors on more durable paper and with two signed colour lithographs by Ernst. The library has one of these deluxe copies.

1962

S. Dalí, M. Reynolds, Impressions and Private Memoirs of Salvador Dali, January 1920. A Dali Journal, 1920, Cleveland, OH 1962

1963

Man Ray, Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors, etcetera, Cordier & Ekstrom, inc., New York 1963
Invitation card from the Cordier & Ekstrom gallery.

S. Dalí, Le mythe tragique de l’Angélus de Millet. Interprétation paranoïaque-critique, Paris 1963

Marcel Duchamp: A Retrospective Exhibition, exh. cat. Pasadena, CA (Pasadena Art Museum), 1963

1964

W. Hopps, U. Linde, A. Schwarz, Marcel Duchamp, Ready-Mades etc. (1913-1964), Milan 1964
Printed in a run of 100 numbered copies. This is a copy hors commerce signed by Marcel Duchamp. Together with the original signed ‘Piston de courant d’air’ in a slip-case.
See Marcel Duchamp, Ready-Mades etc. (1913-1964).

1965

R. Benayoun, Erotique du surréalisme (Bibliothèque internationale d’érotologie, vol. 15), Paris 1965
Contains two lists by the publisher J.J. Pauvert, one of them illustrated by Max Ernst.
With the dedication ‘à André Breton, // sans qui, grâce auquel, dont l’exemple, à l’amitié de qui, etc. // avec toute mon affection // Robert Benayoun.’

A. Breton, Manifestes du surréalisme: Manifeste du surréalisme, Second manifeste du surréalisme, Poisson soluble, Lettre aux voyantes, Position politique du surréalisme: extraits, Prolégomènes a un troisième manifeste du surréalisme ou non, Du surréalisme en ses oeuvres vives, Paris 1965 [1962]

Undated

L’affaire Aragon, s.l, s.a.
Cover folder with 5 loose sheets. The folder contains
M. Alexandre, L’affaire Aragon, s.l., s.a.
P. Éluard, Certificat, s.l., s.a.
Stencil: Aragon a publié un poème. Ce poème s’appelle ‘Le Front rouge’, s.l., s.a.
J. Aulit, Protestation, s.l. 1932
R. Magritte, La poésie transfigurée, s.l. 1932

R. Magritte (ed.), La Carte d’après nature, Jette-Bruxelles 1952-54
Present: no. 1 (1952) – no. 10 (1956) including two special editions January 1954, June 1954. Fig. 30

J. Schuster (ed.), Medium. Communication surréaliste, Paris 1952-55
Present: second series, no. 1 (1953) – no. 4 (1955)

A. Blavier (ed.), Temps mêlés, Verviers 1952-77
Present: nos. 31-33 (1958). This was a special issue titled Parade pour Picabia [et] Pansaers.

A. Breton (ed.), Le Surréalisme, même. Revue trimestrielle, Paris 1956-59
Present: no. 1 (1956) – no. 3 (1957)

J. Lacomblez (ed.), edda: Cahier international de documentation sur la poésie et l’art d’avant-garde, Brussels 1958-1964

A. Breton, R. Benayoun (ed.), La Brèche. Action surréaliste, Paris 1961-65
Present: no. 1 (1961) – no. 8 (1965), complete

A. Bosmans (ed.), Rhétorique, Tilleur-lez-Liège 1961-66
Present: no. 1 (1961) – no. 13 (1966), complete