Surrealism Beyond Borders

The Met’s “Surrealism Beyond Borders” is more a show of social and political history than art. Surrealism was an expression of nonconformity, even to the point of rebellion, that artists around the world (defined here as Japan, Mexico, South America and Europe) latched onto, often but not always cognizant of the dicta laid down in Paris by Andre Breton. “Surrealism” is itself a slippery term, in general meaning whatever Breton chose it to mean. There is little in common, for example, between the “automatic” drawings of Miro and Ernst made in a semi-conscious state, the fantastical landscapes of Tanguy and Dali, and the very realistic juxtapositions of Magritte. Magnify that by the various traditions of other cultures, and expand the time covered to half a century and you get a sense for how disparate and diverse the exhibition, also exhaustingly big, is.
Using my personal measuring stick for art, the show was fairly skippable. My first test is visual appeal, and that didn’t seem to be important to these artists. Most of these works were about ideas, not looking good. Throwing incongruous elements together may be making a statement, but unexplained it may mean nothing to the viewer and in itself does not create beauty. One label says the artist’s “juxtaposition of scale and incongruous relationships between objects express a belief in a subjective world beyond reason.” Well, yes,  but…
There were familiar Art History icons by Ernst, Magritte and Dali, but they only highlighted the weakness of so much else on the walls. One exception was a large triptych by Remedios Varo–three separated works reunited for the first time–that justified her rising place in the canon. And lastly I’ll mention a strong work by Arshile Gorky from the Met’s collection that had more to do with Abstract Expressionism than Surrealism, which drove home the tenuous nature of the show’s borders.