Meyer Fine Art showcases classic and contemporary Surrealist art
By Will Bowen | Downtown News
Would you like to do something totally irrational and not get in trouble for it? Surrealists did, and a visit to Meyer Fine Art Inc. is in order to contemplate the irrationality inherent in their current art exhibit. Organized by gallery owner Perry Meyer, the exhibit, titled, “Surrealism: A Changing Consciousness,” features some of the major figures in the Surrealistic art movement and will be on view until April 26.
Be prepared, however. In Surrealism, things are startling, surprising, fantastical and, sometimes, unbelievable. Clocks can melt, as in Salvador Dalí; men may have a birdcage for a head, as in René Magritte; or women may have an exposed spinal column, as in Frida Kahlo. The artistic movement includes exotic and mysterious nudes, too, as in the photography of Man Ray.
The current collection at Meyer Fine Art is the first Surrealism show Meyer has done in six years, he said. While proud to say it is the only show of its kind currently on the West coast, Meyer said he is also cautious.
“People often don’t like Surrealism,” he said. “They have difficulty understanding it. The problem is that it makes you think, and of course people don’t like it when you make them think.”
Meyers has organized the show with approximately 30 original, limited edition etchings, lithographs and watercolors from some of the classic Surrealists, including Dalí, Magritte, Joan Miró, Max Ernst and Lucien Coutaud. The most interesting works in the show are pieces by Magritte, Coutaud and Dietrich Schuchardt, a contemporary German surrealist who was born in 1945, as the Russian army raced toward Berlin.
Surrealism as a movement can be characterized by a whimsical, often nightmarish, disregard for tradition. It celebrates irrationality, the unconscious mind, dreaming and eroticism, and developed after World War I as a reaction to the dismal failure of rationality and the idea of the autonomous, rational thinking man.
Surrealism had its roots in the pre-war Dada protest movement, which saw the production of anti-art that defied reason and questioned the direction European civilization was taking. André Breton, a former Dadaist, coined the term Surrealism in 1924 in his “Surrealist Manifesto.”
Breton, who was influenced by Sigmund Freud, thought the unconscious mind was the source of genius. If you could bypass the logical, conscious mind and access the unconscious, letting it to be expressed automatically and without checks and censorship, genius would be the result, Breton felt.
“If you are not afraid of being challenged and not afraid to think, stop by the gallery and take in the show,” Meyer said. “You will never see things in the same way again.”
Meyer Fine Art Inc. is open Tuesdays through Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The gallery is located at 2400 Kettner Blvd. in Little Italy. For more information visit plmeyerfineart.com or call 619-358-9512.
