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An automated performance of György Ligeti’s Poème symphonique for 100 metronomes at Ubuweb.
Since its world premiere in the Netherlands in 1963, Poème symphonique for 100 metronomes has been very rarely performed in public. The complicated scenographic staging, the detailed preparation by hand, the need for around ten technicians to activate more or less simultaneously the [...]

The Fencing Team by Bruce Sargeant.
Artists in the 20th century used to be multifarious in their activities, often taking their work through different stages or periods of evolution; Picasso and Max Ernst are two good examples of this. In today’s inflated art market this is no longer a wise move. As Brian Eno has [...]

One of the best—and most entertaining—films to come out of the Dada/Surrealist period, Entr’acte (1924) is also worth watching for the appearance of notable figures such as Francis Picabia (who initiated the project), Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Erik Satie.
This extraordinary early film from director René Clair was originally made to fill an interval between [...]

Cadeau Audace by Man Ray (1921).

L’amour fou
Fur teacups, wheelbarrow chairs, lip-shaped sofas … the fashion, furniture and jewellery created by the Surrealists were useless, unique, decadent and, above all, very sexy.
Robert Hughes
The Guardian, Saturday March 24th, 2007
THE VICTORIA AND Albert’s big show for this year, Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design, is—well, maybe we don’t much [...]

The riddle of the rocks
It was the art movement that shocked the world. It was sexy, weird and dangerous—and it’s still hugely influential today. Jonathan Jones travels to the coast of Spain to explore the landscape that inspired Salvador Dalí, the greatest surrealist of them all.
Jonathan Jones
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
I AM SCRAMBLING over the [...]

The Guardian profiles the wonderful Leonora Carrington, one of the last of the original Surrealists. There’s little excuse for the Tate’s neglect as recounted below, Marina Warner has championed her work for years and she was the subject of a TV documentary in the BBC’s Omnibus strand in the 1990s. Maybe the Tate curators should [...]

(left) “Mechanical Head (Spirit of Our Age)” by Raoul Hausmann.
‘Dada’ at MoMA: The Moment When Artists Took Over the Asylum
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: June 16, 2006
NOW is as good a time as any for a big museum to take another crack at Dada, which arose in the poisoned climate of World War I, when governments were [...]

Portrait of Charles Henri Ford in Poppy Field by Pavel Tchelitchew (1933).
View magazine was an American periodical of art and literature, published quarterly from 1940 to 1947 with heavy emphasis on the Surrealist art of the period. The jaw-dropping list of contributors included: Pavel Tchelitchew, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, André Masson, Pablo Picasso, Henry Miller, [...]