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A ‘Fantastic’ Exhibition

Research into the Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism (1936-37) Exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in New York

Author: Wilko Ruijter

This article was made possible thanks to the Surrealism Fund of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Please refer to this digital article with the following bibliographical citation:
Wilko Ruijter, A 'Fantastic' exhibition, Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) 2025, accessed [date of access], <https://www.boijmans.nl/en/collection/research/a-fantastic-exhibition>

On 9 December 1936, the day on which the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York opened its doors for the Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition, journalist Edward Alden Jewell of the New York Times wrote ‘as the public little by little gets wind of what is in store for it there, the doors will probably have to be closed at frequent intervals to prevent trampling. The show is that “marvelous”.’1 The exhibition not only showed Dadaist and surrealist art, but also examples of ‘fantastic art’ from previous centuries, and works by children and psychiatric patients. Jewell had not been exaggerating because the exhibition soon proved to be a succès de scandale: it shocked the majority of the American visitors to the museum, but for that very reason also generated a great deal of publicity. The outraged reactions were understandable: never before had works by Hieronymous Bosch, animations by Walt Disney and a birdcage filled with sugar cubes been seen in the same exhibition.2 The presentation featured around 700 objects, and after six weeks a slimmed-down version of 500 or so works travelled to six other American museums.3 The touring version was so successful that in 1938 a smaller overview of around 150 objects was shown at a further four venues.4

Nowadays Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism is regarded as one of the most important exhibitions that Alfred H. Barr Jr., the first director of the MoMA (1929-43), put together, and it is for this reason that quite a lot has already been written about it.5 But there has rarely been a separate publication devoted to the exhibition, which prompted me to conduct further research into this specific exhibition and to paint as complete a picture of it as possible.6 In addition to consulting the exhibition catalogue and existing literature, the study relies on extensive research into the material that is available by way of the MoMA’s online archives. This material includes such things as annual reports, collected press cuttings and Barr’s correspondence relating to the exhibition. Among other things the article covers the realization, title, content, reception and impact of the exhibition.

Barr staged a wide variety of exhibitions in the first years after the opening of the MoMA in 1929. Initially the subjects varied from nineteenth- and twentieth-century painting to modern architecture, but he gradually wanted to introduce more consistency into the programming and in 1936 he devised a series of exhibitions ‘to present in an objective and historical manner the principal movements of modern art’.7 The first in this series was Cubism and Abstract Art in the spring of 1936.8 It showcased various European movements that pursued abstract art, in which Cubism, as the title indicates, played a central role. To a large extent Barr placed these movements outside the social and political contexts in which they arose, and approached the art that they produced from a strictly formalistic viewpoint: in other words the focus was on form, line and colour.9

He was aware that museum visitors had difficulty appreciating abstract art and, to make it more accessible, he compared works with generally easier-to-understand figurative painting.10 For example, he wrote in the catalogue that ‘an “abstract” painting is really a most positively concrete painting since it confines the attention to its immediate, sensuous, physical surface far more than does the canvas of a sunset or a portrait’.11 The overview not only consisted of abstract painting, but was characterized by the presentation of many forms of media, including photography, film, theatre and typograph.

Barr’s vision was ground-breaking: he was one of the first to strive for an art historical presentation of modern art movements, and this approach would have a major influence on later exhibitions and the historiography of modern art.9 He approached the modern art movements in a schematic way and made a flow chart for that purpose especially for the exhibition. It was used as the cover of the catalogue and also hung on the walls throughout the exhibition (figs. 1 and 2). The arrows in Barr’s diagram showed the complex interactions and differences between the various movements and artistic schools from 1890 onwards, including Dada and Surrealism. However in view of the exhibition’s formalistic approach, only abstract examples from those two movements were shown. Evidently Barr did not think it was problematic that ‘from a strictly Surrealist point of view an abstract design is merely a by-product’.13

Fig. 1 Alfred Barr, flow chart for 'Cubism and Abstract Art', 1936, illustrated in a later version of the exhibition catalogue of 1966, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Fig. 1 Alfred Barr, flow chart for 'Cubism and Abstract Art', 1936, illustrated in a later version of the exhibition catalogue of 1966, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Fig. 2 Installation photo of the 'Cubism and Abstract Art' exhibition with Barr’s flow chart on far left of the wall, 2 March-19 April 1936, Museum of Modern Art, Photographic Archive, New York, photo Beaumont Newhall
Fig. 2 Installation photo of the 'Cubism and Abstract Art' exhibition with Barr’s flow chart on far left of the wall, 2 March-19 April 1936, Museum of Modern Art, Photographic Archive, New York, photo Beaumont Newhall

Dada and Surrealism were given a more prominent place in the second exhibition in Barr's intended series. On 12 March 1936, ten days after the opening of Cubism and Abstract Art, he contacted the poet Paul Éluard, who, like writer and poet André Breton, was and is seen as a driving force behind the Surrealist movement. Until then, they had always been closely involved in exhibitions of surrealist art and played an important role in the realization of the International Surrealist Exhibition (1936) in London.14 Around four hundred works by surrealist artists from fourteen different countries were presented in this exhibition. It was the first major overview of Surrealism in England and attracted more than 23,000 visitors.15 Barr asked Éluard if it was possible to bring that exhibition to New York in November or December, but, even though Éluard agreed to do so, the plan never went ahead for unclear reasons.16 Instead, in early May 1936 Barr began to organize his own exhibition about Surrealism and he did not do this on his own. His wife, the art historian Margaret Scolari Barr, acted as his interpreter and represented him in Europe. Art historian Janice Loeb was also involved in the realization of the exhibition: she made contact with artists and collectors in Paris. Barr also regularly discussed his ideas for the exhibition with colleagues from the museum world.17 Ultimately, however, he was fully responsible for it, which is why the exhibition is usually entirely accredited to him.           

Quite early on Barr made it clear to artists and colleagues that this exhibition would not only focus on the work of surrealists, but would have a broader art historical approach. On 11 May, for example, he stated in a letter he wrote to the German Dadaist Georg Grosz that the museum was planning to stage ‘a show of surrealism and its ancestors’.18 One week later Barr arrived in Paris and in the months that followed he and his wife travelled throughout Europe to meet artists and collectors. In order to gain support from the surrealists, the couple first went to see Breton, who gave a curt response to the plans, causing the conversation to inevitably end in failure.19 For example, Breton insisted that the exhibition be limited to Dada and Surrealism and wanted full control over the works to be included in the exhibition, something that Barr did not agree to.19

After this disappointing visit the couple approached Éluard, who at that time had a difficult relationship with Breton. For example, they had both planned their lectures during the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in such a way that they would not need to see one another.15 Barr had hoped that Éluard’s support would have been enough to get other surrealists on board, but this conversation too did not go as he had wished. Even though Barr had a more friendly relationship with Éluard than with Breton, Éluard made it known that as far as he was concerned the exhibition should only be about Surrealism.22 After this conversation Éluard and his wife went to Avignon where he sent a letter to Barr once again stating his position and making several demands; the exhibition had to be entitled Surrealist Exhibition, for example, and it was fundamentally wrong to exclude the surrealist artists proposed by himself or Breton.23 Éluard said that he was convinced that Breton would also feel the same way: neither of them wanted everything they had defended for decades to be classified under a different name.24 Their correspondence makes it clear that, in spite of their chilly personal relationship, they wanted to act as a common front in the negotiations. They decided to speak to Barr together, but that meeting appears to have never taken place.25        

Barr stuck to his guns and replied to Éluard: ‘I cannot help but find the tone of your letter dictatorial’. Although he did not want to put their friendship at risk, in his opinion their positions were probably too far apart to arrive at a successful collaboration.26 On Éluard’s recommendation Barr also sent a letter to Breton. He hoped that Breton and Éluard would be willing to support the exhibition in an advisory role and that Breton might like to write an essay for the catalogue. However, the organization of a surrealistic event in the museum would be impossible.27 Barr went on to argue that the title Surrealist Exhibition did not entirely cover the overtone, as it would also contain work that could be traced back to the fifteenth century.27 Breton and Éluard were fiercely opposed to this, and these differences in opinion could therefore explain why Barr had previously decided not to bring the International Surrealist Exhibition over from London.

While waiting for a definitive answer from Breton, Barr appears to have put the preparations on hold. His rejection finally came in the first week of August. Breton sent a copy of this letter to Éluard, and mentioned that he would not be manipulated by Barr’s ill-mannered behaviour.29 Éluard agreed with Breton’s decision but realized that Barr actually did have the means and connections to stage an exhibition on his own.30 He therefore felt it necessary to convince the surrealist artists not to get involved with Barr. Although this made the organization more difficult for Barr, it also gave him more freedom.

In the days that followed, while staying with his wife in a German health resort, he sent out many requests for loans for the exhibition.22 In those letters Barr tried to convince surrealist artists to lend their support, in spite of the disapproval of Breton and Éluard. For example, he wrote to Jean (Hans) Arp that he was surprised that the pair assumed they could impose their will on the artists, and to Roland Penrose he wrote that Max Ernst had had enough of the attitude of the two poets for some time.32 This strategy appears to have been quite successful, as most of them responded positively and were prepared to lend artworks. Only Wolfgang Paalen, Penrose and E.L.T. Mesens formed an exception to this; they indicated that they would prefer not to get involved as long as Breton and Éluard had not given their approval.33 What played a role in Barr's success was the good rapport he had built up with artists during his travels through Europe. During visits to the studios of Arp, Ernst and Joan Miró he made a great impression by carefully studying those artists’ works and asking questions that showed his close observations and appreciation for their work.34        

While his wife stayed in Europe until the end of September, Barr departed for New York on 12 August, inspired by everything he had acquired during his travels.22 He and his wife had, for instance, visited the Exposition Surréaliste d’Objets in Paris and at the end of June had travelled to London where they had viewed the International Surrealist Exhibition and had made contact with the English surrealists. A few weeks later Barr asked Penrose if he could send him an example of the catalogue in preparation for his own exhibition.36 In at least four loan requests, Barr indicated that he had seen the work in question in London and on that basis he would like to exhibit it in New York.37 In retrospect, it was therefore also no coincidence that the International Surrealist Exhibition and Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism partly overlapped: at least 40 works were present in London as well as in New York.

After a family visit in Italy, Scolari Barr returned to Paris in September, where with the help of Marcel Duchamp she arranged a meeting with Breton hoping that he would reconsider his earlier decision.38 This meeting seems to have gone well, because on 21 September she mentioned a reconciliation dinner with Éluard in a telegram to her husband.39 Éluard and Breton would ultimately not be closely involved in the organization, but they did agree to lend their assistance: they both decided to loan works, and Breton promised to write an essay for the catalogue. Further preparations also appear to have gone well: the surrealist poet and artist Georges Hugnet wrote two essays for the catalogue and in early October many works arrived in New York.

However, Barr still had to deal with some setbacks. A large shipment of works from Europe had been delayed, and because they still had to be photographed for the catalogue, its production also had to be postponed. Barr then decided to delay the opening of the exhibition, originally planned for some time in November.40 Furthermore, Breton ultimately failed to provide any text for the catalogue, even though an unfinished manuscript from 1936 indicates that he had in fact been working on it.41 Breton had probably been pressed for time as he had only started writing after reading Hugnet’s essays to prevent an unnecessary overlap.42 These had also arrived too late to be included in the first version of the catalogue; they were finally printed in a bulletin of the museum which was available to visitors to the exhibition.43 After a number of weeks of hectic final preparations the museum opened its doors on 9 December, which meant that Barr, with the aid of his wife and Janice Loeb, had organized the entire exhibition in six months, something that nowadays would be unthinkable for a project of this size.

The earliest available source in which Barr directly outlines his plans for Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism dates from 2 May 1936. In this letter Barr told his colleague James Thrall Soby that he wanted to organize a Surrealism exhibition, but that he was not yet sure whether the term Surrealism would also actually appear in the title. He thought that ‘marvellous’ or ‘fantastic’ might be more suitable.44 The terms are derived from the French words merveilleux and fantastique, and differ in connotation.45 From as far back as the beginning of the nineteenth century there had been discussion about the difference between these concepts and their use in French literature.46 This discussion had yet to be resolved when the surrealists started to write about these perceptions. From Breton’s Manifeste du Surréalisme it is evident that he had a clear preference for ‘marvellous’, because he discussed the term extensively, but only mentioned ‘fantastic’ in a footnote.47 ‘Marvellous’ also predominates in subsequent surrealistic texts, whereas ‘fantastic’ is rarely used. In the summer of 1936, in a lecture for visitors to the International Surrealist Exhibition, Breton did, on rare occasion, express himself further about the fantastic. According to Surrealism expert Gavin Parkinson, Breton did so because he was aware of Barr’s plans for an exhibition about ‘fantastic art’ and wanted to maintain control about how ‘fantastic’ would be defined in relation to Surrealism.48

Discussions about the meaning of the words ‘marvellous’ and ‘fantastic’ are very complex, mainly because the definitions constantly changed.49 Even though Barr was aware of these discussions, also within the surrealistic context, his use of language in the run-up to Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism suggests that he did not want to go into it too deeply.50 Barr used the terms ‘fantastic’ and ‘marvellous’, along with ‘anti-rational’/‘irrational’, as if they were interchangeable. In his first loan requests in August, Barr often used a combination of the three terms, and more than once even all three of them, to indicate what the exhibition would encompass.51 Moreover, he totally omitted these concepts in loan requests to some Dadaists and surrealist artists, apparently deliberately; he simply told them that it was going to be a Dada/Surrealism exhibition in order to convince them to cooperate.52

The fact that Barr used a variety of titles for the exhibition in the first requests for loans, indicates that at that time he had yet to choose a final title, which calls into question Parkinson’s aforementioned assumption that Breton was trying to gain control over the term ‘fantastic’ in his lecture during the International Surrealist Exhibition. Breton had given that lecture on 16 June, and as Barr was not yet consistently using ‘fantastic’ as the central concept for his intended exhibition, it is doubtful whether Breton felt compelled to claim the term for that reason.53 However, towards the end of the summer Barr did become more and more consistent in his use of ‘fantastic’. Other titles faded into the background and he regularly spoke about an Exhibition of Fantastic Art, for example in letters to the English artists Henry Moore and Paul Nash.54 Moore then made it known that he would like to participate, but had doubts about the proposed title because the term ‘fantastic’ evoked negative associations in him.55 Most of the artists however, accepted the concept without any objection.

From the end of September 1936 onwards ‘Surrealism’ was given an equal place alongside ‘fantastic’ in the titles proposed by Barr, such as Exhibition of Fantastic-Surrealist Art.56 This change coincided with the time when the Parisian surrealists became reconciled to the exhibition, which suggests that Breton and Éluard had demanded that the term ‘Surrealism’ be included in the title as a condition of their support. 'Dada' then appears to have been included in the title for similar reasons. On 6 October, Barr received a letter from Tristan Tzara, the revolutionary Romanian Dadaist, who was one of the pioneers of the movement. Tzara was having second thoughts about his previously pledged support for the exhibition after hearing that it would be called Fantastic-Surrealist Exhibition and that Breton would be writing an essay for the catalogue. He was fiercely opposed to the subordination of Dada to Surrealism which the title suggested at that time.57 Furthermore, Tzara’s personal relationship with Breton was currently far from cordial. A few weeks later, on 23 October, Barr mentioned the final title Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism for the first time in two different letters.58 With more than 30 artworks, it would be Tzara who would lend the most works for the exhibition, and this is why it is extremely likely that it was his letter that made Barr decide to include the word ‘Dada’ in the title.

Yet it remains hard to discover why it was that in August 1936, Barr decided not to opt for ‘marvellous’ or ‘anti-rational’ but to choose ‘fantastic’. His introduction in the exhibition catalogue offers little help; he failed to provide a comprehensive definition of fantastic art, and again used ‘anti-rational’, ‘marvellous’ and ‘fantastic’ as interchangeable terms. He wrote, for example, ‘that at no time in the past four hundred years has the art of the marvelous and anti-rational been more conspicuous than at the present time’, which proves that these concepts had a similar meaning to him as fantastic.59 In view of Barr’s interchangeable terminology in the catalogue, as well as in his correspondence up to mid-August, it is hard to argue that he had a clear preference for one of the terms.

Nevertheless it is important to discover why Barr decided to use ‘fantastic’ in the title, for this designation would have significant consequences for the perception of the art that was exhibited in the MoMA. This is why in 2017 Tessel Bauduin offered various explanations for Barr’s choice of ‘fantastic’ and argued that Barr was familiar with Louis Maeterlinck’s Le genre satirique, fantastique et licencieux dans la sculpture Flamande et Wallone, and E.M. Benson’s article ‘Phases of Fantasy’.60 Both art historical texts discuss artists from the past such as Bosch, Pieter Bruegel and James Ensor who had worked in a 'fantastic' genre. Barr probably found inspiration in these works, and seems to have found ‘fantastic’ appropriate for his own exhibition because of the significant parallels.                

Maeterlink and Benson mainly linked their fantastic genre to depictions of Hell, dreams, witches and demons: scenes that all arise from fantasy. Benson also emphatically links this genre to the surrealists, which is in line with Barr’s ideas that he had associated Surrealism with fantasy for years.61 Bauduin argues that the fantastic-fantasy link may therefore have been another deciding factor in Barr’s choice of ‘fantastic’.62 He possibly thought that this link to fantasy would also appeal to a wide public, whereas ‘marvellous’ would perhaps be too intellectual.63 However, Barr’s understanding of Surrealism based on the relationship with fantasy was radically different to surrealist thinking in which reality took centre stage. In the end, practical considerations may also have played a role in Barr’s choice of ‘fantastic’. He was aware that he also had to satisfy the relatively conservative Board of Trustees, which might regard terms such as anti-rational and irrational as too radical or negative.63 These terms, and to a lesser extent ‘marvellous’, would also not be good enough to fully cover the overtone of the surrealist predecessors that he wanted to present in conjunction with contemporary art. These predecessors will be discussed in more detail below in order to better understand what exactly Barr meant by the fantastic.

Fig. 3 Man Ray, 'A l’heure de l’observatoire, les amoureux', 1932-34, oil on canvas, 99 x 251 cm, private collection
Fig. 3 Man Ray, 'A l’heure de l’observatoire, les amoureux', 1932-34, oil on canvas, 99 x 251 cm, private collection

Man Ray’s painting A l’heure de l’observatoire - les Amoureux (1932-34, fig. 3) hung above the entrance to the exhibition: a canvas two and a half meters wide which is dominated by the sensual lips of Man Ray's former lover Lee Miller and which must have been a shocking start to the exhibition for many visitors.65 The precise layout of the exhibition is not known, but from installation photos it is clear that the work was only intended as a surrealistic foretaste. In the first rooms, fantastic art from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century could be seen in chronological order, a layout that moreover guaranteed that explicit comparisons between those artworks and surrealist art could not take place (figs. 4 and 5).

However, such comparisons were made in a space that was dedicated to fantastic architecture and in which prints by the eighteenth-century graphic artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi were displayed alongside sculptures by the surrealist Alberto Giacometti (fig. 6). Barr also names some parallels in the catalogue, for example between the complex double images by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1566, fig. 7) and Salvador Dalí (1935, fig. 8). In the catalogue Barr also included a list of the different techniques that the artists had used in the exhibition, and on the basis of the examples he used, he also implicitly made connections between fantastic art from the past and surrealistic art. Nevertheless reviewers felt that Barr did not make these connections clear enough.66

The chronological overview of fantastic art from the past started with works from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Even though there were works by some Italian artists to be seen in the first rooms of the exhibition, they were overshadowed by a huge number of works by artists belonging to the Northern Renaissance. Barr primarily wanted to give the work of Bosch a central role, as can be seen from correspondence for loans in which he repeatedly stated that, in his opinion, Bosch was the archetype of fantastic art.67 However, he had difficulty getting hold of works by Bosch for his exhibition, which may have been partly due to the Jeroen Bosch, Noord-Nederlandsche primitieven retrospective which was being staged in Museum Boymans in that same autumn. This is why Barr only showed one single authentic print and photographic reproductions of Bosch’s work, and combined them with work by his followers, such as The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Pieter Huys (c. 1545-80, second from the left in fig. 4).68    

The exhibition continued with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century art, largely consisting of prints by artists such as Piranesi, William Hogarth, Nicolas de Larmessin and Filippo Morghen. The final historical section was called 'the French Revolution to the Great War' and in this section Barr devoted a great deal of attention to the dark scenes of William Blake and Francisco de Goya, satirical drawings by Edward Lear and the symbolist art of Ensor and Odilon Redon. Why Barr chose these artists remains unclear; in the catalogue he hardly commented on the art of the past. In his introductory text he had devoted just one page to five centuries of fantastic art.

The three historical parts of the exhibition contained a wide variety of artworks, ranging from ghostly to caricatural, but nonetheless there were still some recurring themes to be recognized. The first theme was formed by the dark scenes and demonic figures in the works by Bosch and his followers, Goya’s etchings from the series Los Caprichos (1797-98), Johann Heinrich Füssli’s The Nightmare (1781, central in fig. 5) and Morghen’s etchings from the series Viaggio dalla Terra alla Luna (1764).69 In addition there were works in which everyday objects were presented in new and/or unusual ways: inanimate objects which were represented as being human, such as in Arcimboldo’s composite portraits (fig. 7), in Giovanni Battista Bracelli’s etchings Bizzarie (1624, fig. 9) and in engravings from De Larmessin’s series Costumes grotesques (c. 1682-90, fig. 10). The final theme included images that were distorted in such a way that they had to be viewed from a particular angle to be understood. Examples of which are a portrait of Charles V, (1533, on the right in fig. 4) and a photograph of Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors (1533, fig. 11), in which a deformed skull is depicted that can be seen at its best by viewing the work from the lower right corner.

The themes were by no means all-encompassing and could also overlap, as in Le Déménagement de la Censurte, a lithograph by Eugène Delacroix in which demonic figures as well as animated objects (flying scissors) can be seen (1820, fig. 12). However, some of those themes did provide a clearer picture of what Barr meant by 'fantastic'. The fact that several themes could be distinguished also indicates that he did not have a uniform concept of ‘fantastic’. The artists in the historical sections of Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism together formed a varied ensemble of surrealist predecessors. In spite of the fact that Breton and Éluard tried to exclude these 'proto-surrealists' in the run-up to the exhibition, the surrealists themselves regularly wrote about their possible antecedents.70 There is no single publication  that outlines these antecedents, but art historian Kirsten Strom states that literary and visual documents still reveal a clear group of surrealist 'ancestors'.70 In the next section they will be compared to the artists chosen by Barr.72

The surrealists expressed their view of art and society in various publications, such as La Révolution Surréaliste and Le Surréalisme au service de la Révolution, where they also sometimes discussed the art of the past in relation to Surrealism. However, such interactions with old art were far more common in Minotaure. Even though this magazine, which was published in the nineteen-thirties, was not in the hands of the surrealists to begin with, it was surrealistic in tone, choice of subject and layout.73 The artists that Minotaure primarily focused on were not included in Barr's exhibition. Dalí, for example, wrote articles about the Pre-Raphaelites and Jean-François Millet.74 Millet’s work intrigued him because he thought he could recognize powerful subconscious ideas in it that affected him emotionally. In the following issue Edward James, the British poet, publisher and patron of the surrealists, mentioned Lucas Cranach the Younger in the same breath as Surrealism: ‘He possessed certainly a stronger degree of that quality of fantasy which the most awoken of our generation admire the most today because it arises out of the scarcely chartered and mysterious realms of sleep, and which in this periodical, Minotaure, one is accustomed to refer to as “surrealism”.’75

Similar qualities were attributed to the Renaissance artists Piero di Cosimo and Paolo Uccello in Minotaure.76 The surrealists also showed a fascination for Uccello’s work in other publications. In his first manifesto Breton praises him for the surrealist qualities in his work.77 This interest is probably mainly based on the image that Giorgio Vasari sketches of Uccello in his influential Le Vite. Vasari calls Uccello a talented, but also an eccentric and strange artist, who was so obsessed by the question of perspective that he was little understood.78 The surrealist Philippe Soupault wrote monographs about Uccello and Blake and described them as visionaries who worked daringly, but by doing so were doomed to be misunderstood, qualities that the surrealists recognized in themselves.79 The surrealists therefore seem to have chosen their predecessors primarily on the basis of character and their way of thinking. The surrealist poets Robert Desnos (1929) and David Gascoyne (1935) also saw Uccello and Blake as their predecessors.80 Desnos went on to cite Bruegel and Bosch, while Gascoyne also saw Jacques Callot, El Greco, Goya, a number of Pre-Raphaelites and symbolist artists as forerunners.80                                                                

This group of artists has some overlap with those in Barr’s exhibition, but other than that his presentation seems to have had little in common with the surrealists’ views of their own history. Although Barr had delved into surrealistic sources in the run-up to Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, he hardly seems to have followed them in his choices for the first parts of the exhibition. The clearest indication of that is the fact that Barr included several Italian Renaissance artists in his exhibition, but did not exhibit a single work by Uccello, not even as a reproduction. Neither was there any trace of Millet in Barr’s exhibition, and his wide-ranging selection of Northern Renaissance artists did not include works by Cranach the Younger. Perhaps this was simply because he had not been able to obtain any works by these artists, but at the same time nowhere in Barr's correspondence does it appear that he might have made any attempt to do so. By contrast, the surrealists initially showed little interest in Bosch, who for Barr was quite possibly the most important surrealistic ‘ancestor’. Although Bosch featured in Desnos’s and Gascoyne’s lists, the surrealists did not elaborate further on his work; Breton did not make an explicit connection between Bosch and Surrealism until 1942.82

In contrast to the surrealists, Barr mainly chose artists based on their produced work. He was careful to draw comparisons based on their way of thinking, something that the surrealists regarded as the most important condition for being considered a 'proto-surrealist'. In the exhibition catalogue, Barr wrote that the similarities between old art and surrealist art may only be superficial and technical in nature, and therefore did not arise from psychological similarities.7 Although he included several artists in his exhibition who the surrealists also saw as their predecessors, his choices nonetheless show major differences with this surrealist past history.

Critics in newspapers and magazines expressed their strong disapproval of Barr’s choice of exhibiting surrealistic art alongside art from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. It is true that they appreciated these works of art, but they felt that it was disgraceful that those ‘old masters’ were now apparently being used to defend Surrealism. One of the critics found it objectionable that big names like Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer were being employed to justify surrealistic art.84 There were two woodcuts by Da Vinci based on his designs for the Divina proportione, and as the artist was popular with the wide American public he was repeatedly used as an example by the press (1509, fig. 13). Critics maintained that the appropriation of big names had just one objective: ‘To fortify themselves against that public disregard which would cramp their style and so cut off the notoriety which is their lifeblood, leading eventually to their extermination, they have dug up for themselves an illustrious genealogy.’85 They were evidently unaware that Barr had included these artists in the exhibition on his own initiative, and that this had actually led to dissatisfaction among the surrealists themselves.

Fig. 13 Leonardo da Vinci (design) and Luca Pacioli (woodcut) from ‘Divina proportione’, 1509, illustrated in the ‘Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism’ exhibition catalogue, 1936, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Dada and Surrealism were jointly presented, and with around 250 works this was the largest section of the exhibition: it can therefore be seen as the centrepiece of the exhibition because both art movements were also named in the title. However the fact that those movements needed to be grouped together was not as obvious as Barr would have us believe. The driving forces behind the two movements had been continually at loggerheads with one another during the nineteen-twenties, and those disagreements resurfaced during the realization of Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism.86 The concerns that Tzara had expressed about the possible subordination of Dada to Surrealism in the exhibition in a letter to Barr, were not unfounded.57 The inclusion of Dada in the title was a victory for Tzara, but the title remained problematic. Placing ‘Dada’ after ‘Fantastic’ and before ‘Surrealism’ suggested that the movement only warranted attention because, like fantastic art, it was an important forerunner of Surrealism: the actual focus of the exhibition.88

This idea that Dada was a forerunner of Surrealism is reinforced in Hugnet’s essay about Dada in the exhibition catalogue. Among other things he stated that Breton and his circle had already had an early interest in the marvellous, but that around 1920, despite the fact that the term ‘Surrealism’ had been in vogue for years, they had sided with Dada for pragmatic reasons in the fight against all existing norms that would stand in the way of a possible surrealist movement.89 Dada was therefore portrayed as an intermediate step towards the ultimate goal, Surrealism, which is not surprising as Hugnet considered himself to be one of the surrealists. Hugnet’s view was in line with Barr’s, and fitted in seamlessly with his pursuit of a genealogical description of modern art movements.86

Still, in the exhibition itself, Dada was presented in a separate room. In an installation photo, it can be seen that Barr presented Dadaist works on the basis of the city in which they were produced; because Dada was not a uniform movement but had different centres (fig. 14).91 This would mean that Barr was the first to use this classification for exhibiting Dada, a format that is one of the most commonly used ways to represent the movement today.92 Presenting Dada within an institutional and museum setting such as the MoMA is contradictory, because the Dadaists were initially strongly against museums and the historical presentation of 'masterpieces'. However, Barr probably did not experience this as a problem as he wanted to present all modern art movements, including Dada, to visitors to his museum in a historical way.93 Art historian Kathryn Floyd argues that, compared to the Dadaists, Breton adhered more to notions of 'high art and culture', making the presentation of Surrealism in a museum setting a lot less contradictory.94

Fig. 14 Installation photo of the ‘Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism’, 7 December 1936-17 January 1937, Museum of Modern Art, Photographic Archive, New York, photo Soichi Sunami

Within surrealist painting, Barr made an explicit distinction between abstract surrealist representations and 'hand-painted dream photographs', fantastic representations depicted with great deal of detail and precision.95 This division between figurative and abstract surrealist representations is still often made. Barr's preference for certain artists became clearly evident in the rooms dedicated to surrealist art. Whereas the exhibition featured 47 works by Ernst, 25 by Arp and 15 by Miró, Nash and Victor Brauner, for example, had to make do with just one work each.96 Work was also exhibited by twentieth-century artists who were not allied to Surrealism, but it was explicitly mentioned that they did not form part of the surrealist movement. This was probably a requirement of Breton and Éluard in order to lend their support.

Fig. 15 Cover of ‘Time magazine’ with a portrait of Salvador Dalí by Man Ray, 1936
Fig. 15 Cover of ‘Time magazine’ with a portrait of Salvador Dalí by Man Ray, 1936
Fig. 16 The shop window designed by Dalí for Bonwit Teller, 1936, 42.7 cm × 52.9 cm, Museum of the City of New York, New York, Worsinger Photo
Fig. 16 The shop window designed by Dalí for Bonwit Teller, 1936, 42.7 cm × 52.9 cm, Museum of the City of New York, New York, Worsinger Photo

Although Dalí was not disproportionately represented with 14 works, he received a lot of attention in the press, and a photo portrait of him by Man Ray graced the cover of Time magazine on 14 December 1936 (fig. 15). This was partly due to the reputation he had built up for himself in the United States in the nineteen-thirties, and because the Julian Levy Gallery simultaneously devoted a solo exhibition to him.97 Dalí gained even more attention through a successful promotional stunt by the Bonwitt Teller department store, where the shop windows in Fifth Avenue were set out as surrealist installations. Seven of the eight installations were made by professional designers, but Dalí was invited to furnish the last window. His contribution was the most radical, which was among the reasons why  almost all the attention was focused on that design (fig. 16).98

Nevertheless it was not a work by Dalí that gained the most coverage in the press, but one by Meret Oppenheim: Object (Le Déjeuner en Fourrure) (1936, fig. 17). This fur-lined cup and saucer stimulated two sensory experiences in an unusual way: taste and touch. The work, in which an everyday object had been given a completely different dimension, was experienced as shocking and set tongues wagging like no other. It became such a symbol for the exhibition and Surrealism that several reviewers described the surrealist movement as the Fur-Lined-Cup School of Art.99

Fig. 17 Meret Oppenheim, ‘Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure)’, 1936, with fur-lined cup, saucer and spoon. Cup diameter 10.9 cm, saucer 23.7 cm, spoon length 20.2 cm, total height 7.3 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

The final rooms in the exhibition included an eclectic array of works and objects that Barr had brought together under the heading 'comparative material'. This material included art made by children and psychiatric patients. Barr claimed that these works in an exhibition about fantastic art were very suitable as comparative material: ‘For many children and psychopaths exist, at least part of the time, in a world of their own unattainable to the rest of us save in art or in dreams in which the imagination lives an unfettered life.’100 By doing so Barr was one of the first to introduce ‘outsider art’ in a museum setting. However, these works were not given the same status as the other works in the exhibition. For example, in the catalogue, works by psychiatric patients were only referred to as psychopathic drawings/watercolors, and no information about the maker was given.101 The surrealists regularly included work by children and psychiatric patients in their own exhibitions, in the Exposition Surréaliste d’Objets in Paris and in the International Surrealist Exhibition in London, for example, which Barr had visited in the summer of 1936. This was probably where he came up with the idea of exhibiting similar works.102 However, a great many American visitors to the exhibition found those works shocking. The artist and collector Katherine Dreier even decided to demand the return of the items she had loaned. She was afraid that those additions would lead to the public not taking Surrealism, and in a wider sense modern art, seriously. In a letter to Barr she said that she believed that his exhibition had destroyed some of the growing acceptance of modern art.103

From installation photos it appears that the layout of the exhibition resembled that of Cubism and Abstract Art, which is perhaps little strange since Barr had argued that art in both exhibitions was to be shown from completely opposing viewpoints (compare fig. 2 with figs. 4 to 6). According to Lewis Kachur, the similarity between the two exhibition designs could be explained above all by a lack of time: there was simply too little time to reorganize the route through the galleries.38 The way of exhibiting, where works were hung at eye level against a neutral background with sufficient distance from each other, however, was not only characteristic of those two exhibitions, but of Barr’s set-up of exhibitions in general.105 Nowadays this form of presentation is very common, but when Barr used such designs for his first exhibition in the MoMA in 1929, it was still fairly new. The fact that this design became increasingly popular in the nineteen-thirties can largely be attributed to him.105

Yet the surrealists found the styling of Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism quite conventional and in subsequent years seized upon this to oppose Barr’s exhibition. Towards the end of the nineteen-thirties they were increasingly occupied with the idea that exhibition design should promote the expression of surrealistic thinking.107 In 1938 they staged the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris, in which they used a number of exhibition techniques revolutionary at that time, which were described as surrealistic. Visitors had to navigate through dimly-lit rooms using torches. In one of the rooms there were sacks of coal hanging from the ceiling, which caused many of the visitors to complain about dust.108

Despite the lack of surrealistic installation techniques in Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, the exhibition could nevertheless be described as surrealistic due to the eclectic and unexpected combination of different works. For example, one reviewer summarized the presentation as a combination of ‘Leonardo da Vinci, a fur-lined cup and saucer, Mickey Mouse and an empty tin can’, almost as if he were describing the exhibition as a surrealist collage.109 It is unclear whether Barr saw the exhibition in the same way, but it is certain that he was consciously occupied with the effect that the exhibition as a whole would have on visitors. In a letter to MoMA president A. Conger Goodyear he wrote that the exhibition had been put together with a great deal of care, and that each individual object had a relationship with the whole presentation.110

As previously indicated, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism was not exactly received with praise by the press. Based on statements by the 'Defenders of Democracy' organization, the New York Herald Tribune even published an article claiming that the exhibition was part of a Communist plot, with the aim of undermining the norms and values ​​of American society.111 Barr was disappointed with the criticism of the exhibition and decided to thank all authors who had written objective and/or positive reviews in a letter. He informed them that he wasn’t concerned about the large number of negative reviews, but that he was concerned about the irresponsible and sometimes deliberate criticisms based on poorly informed viewpoints.112 Even though the publicity in the press was for the most part negative, a lot was written about the exhibition, and thereby it reached a wide readership.

With 50,034 visitors, attendance was well above the average at the MoMA in the nineteen-thirties.113 The exhibition also played host to twenty thousand more visitors than Cubism and Abstract Art, which had attracted 29,272 visitors.114 However, attendance was far lower than that of the MoMA's most popular exhibitions during this period: American Painting and Sculpture, 1862-1932 (1932-933, 102,415 visitors) en Van Gogh: Oils, Watercolors, Drawings (1935-36, 123,309 visitors).115 As Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism could also be seen in two different versions in ten other places in 1937 and 1938 the exhibition attracted even more visitors there. It additionally generated a lot of attention by way of commercial campaigns which, like Bonwit Teller’s surrealistic shop windows, wanted to capitalize on the touring exhibition.116 The catalogue was also popular, and to meet demand a second edition was published after just six months. A third edition followed ten years later, which suggests that even then the exhibition still appealed to a wide public. As relatively little is known about the precise layout of the exhibition, the catalogue came to symbolize what Barr was trying to convey.92

The American public therefore came into contact with Barr's presentation in a variety of ways, which in certain respects differed sharply from the views of the surrealists themselves. Barr understood Surrealism and its principles very well, as he had shown, for example, in a letter to a friend in 1929.118 However, he made little use of intellectual principles in order to present a simplified version of Surrealism to his public.119 He not only avoided giving a precise definition of ‘fantastic’, but also gave little interpretation of Surrealism itself; for the most part the art had to be self-explanatory. This ensured that the increasing familiarity with Surrealism in the United States was not accompanied by a clear understanding of what the movement stood for.120 Barr’s simplified presentation of Surrealism also elicited condescending responses from critics, making it easier to write off the movement.121       

The exhibition gave commercial companies the idea of ​​using surrealistic imagery in advertisements. In January 1937, Mehemed Fehmy Agha of Condé Nast Publishers claimed that the surrealists and advertisers were trying to capitalize on the public's feelings in the same way.122 He maintained that this made surrealistic imagery, and Dalí’s in particular, very suitable for advertisements. Dalí played along with it, and towards the end of the nineteen-thirties deliberately combined aspects of art and commerce, for example by designing Bonwit Teller’s shop window display.123 Barr also indirectly justified the use of Surrealism in advertisements, by including different advertisements with fantastic imagery in the comparative material spaces (1936, fig. 18). Hence the exhibition and the accompanying publicity greatly contributed to the commercialization of Surrealism in the United States.124

Fig. 18 ‘Object made from a Sears-Roebuck Catalog’, 1936, illustrated in the ‘Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism’, exhibition catalogue, 1936, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Since the MoMA was still a relatively young museum in 1936 and Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism was the first exhibition in which Dada and Surrealism were showcased, this exhibition played an important role in the forming of collections of both movements. Initially the MoMA had seven Dadaist works in its collection, a number that had grown to thirty-one by the end of 1937 as a direct result of many purchases (mainly from Tzara’s Dada collection).125 This extensive acquisition of Dadaist works in that year is still unparalleled in the museum's history; hence the core of the MoMA’s Dada collection is strongly based on Tzara’s specific view of Dada.126 

One year before the exhibition, MoMA purchased two significant bibliophile surrealistic collections, one from Éluard and the other from Camille Dausse, a Parisian doctor who had many surrealists among his friends. The Éluard-Dausse Collection contains around 700 books, magazines and other publications and still forms the core of MoMA’s bibliophile Surrealism collection.127 The purchase of both collections was made public at the time of the exhibition, most probably in order to promote it. From the annual reports of 1936 and 1937 it is evident that the MoMA purchased dozens of works in those years, the majority of them straight from the exhibition in which Surrealism predominated.128 For example, eight works by Miró alone were purchased in this period, and even eleven works by Ernst (some of which were from his Dadaist period). The exhibition therefore also played an important role in the formation of a Surrealism collection in the MoMA.

The most important consequence of the exhibition may have been the recognition of the fantastic as an artistic genre. In the decades after Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism the term ‘fantastic’ became more and more popular and critics and academics devoted many publications to it.129 In its ‘Basic Art Series’, a series of works with concise descriptions and illustrations of the major art movements and artists, art publisher Taschen even included a book entitled Fantastic Art. This indicates that Taschen saw this as a genre, a message which would reach a wide readership.130 However, the advance of the fantastic was not greeted with approval by everyone. Quite early on Breton had criticized the fact that 'fantastic' was also increasingly being used in relation to Surrealism, and that as a result of Barr's exhibition 'surrealistic' and 'fantastic' had become almost interchangeable.124 He spoke about this scathingly in 1962: ‘The marvellous, nothing defines this better than setting it in opposition to “the fantastic,” which, unfortunately, our contemporaries tend more and more use as its replacement. The problem is that the fantastic nearly always falls under the order of inconsequential fiction, while the marvellous illuminates the furthest extreme of vital movement and engages the entire emotional realm.’132

Nonetheless, Barr’s use of the term ‘fantastic’ was also employed by countless exhibition makers after him. For example, the fantastic was the central theme of the Venice Biennale in 1954, and in 1957 Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux in 1957 staged the Bosch, Goya et le fantastique exhibition.133 One year earlier Museum Boymans had put together an exhibition about this genre, entitled Het Fantastische in de Prentkunst. Exhibitions of the same kind were staged elsewhere in the Netherlands, such as Fantasmagie in Galerie Mokum in 1963 and Fantastisch Realisme in the Gemeentelijke van Reekum Gallery in 1976. Surrealists were sometimes included in those exhibitions, but other movements were also represented, such as the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism which was founded in 1959. More research is needed to determine to what extent these later exhibitions are indebted to Barr's exhibition. Did the later exhibition makers refer to Barr's exhibition and in which way? Who were classified as ‘forefathers’ in these exhibitions, and were the artists who emerged after 1936 included as well? How did the exhibition makers try to put their spin on the fantastic and in doing so influenced the perception of this genre? A follow-up study could clarify how the presentation of the fantastic genre changed in the second half of the twentieth century, and how this genre was specifically presented in the Netherlands.

This article was made possible thanks to the first grant to be awarded by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s Surrealism Fund. The fund, formed on the initiative of a private benefactor and active patron of the arts, provides a generous annual gift and was created with 500 Years of Fantastic Art in mind, the exhibition the museum is planning to stage after its reopening. The first grant was awarded to Wilko Ruijter. In the summer of 2024 he completed his MA in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where he specialized in the art and culture of the former Soviet Union. He wrote his dissertation about the Landscape Masterpieces from Soviet Museums exhibition (Royal Academy of Art, London, 1975). This study in the field of exhibition history formed the prelude to the research into Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism. The research was supervised by the producers of 500 Years of Fantastic Art: Saskia van Kampen-Prein the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and Peter van der Coelen the Curator of Prints and Drawings.

Please refer to this digital article with the following bibliographical citation:
Wilko Ruijter, A 'Fantastic' exhibition, Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) 2025, accessed [date of access], <https://www.boijmans.nl/en/collection/research/a-fantastic-exhibition>

Author
Wilko Ruijter
 
Supervision
Peter van der Coelen
Saskia van Kampen-Prein
 
Text Editing
Yvonne Brentjens
 
Translation
Philip Clarke
 
Image Editing and Production
Esmee Postma
Sabine Terra
 
Photographic Credits
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Collection: figs. 1, 9, 10, 12, 13, 18
Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence: figs. 2, 4-6, 14, 17
 
The museum has endeavoured to trace all copyright holders. Anyone who believes they may have rights is requested to contact Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or made public, in any form, or by any means, without the prior written permission of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.
 
© 2025 Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
The author, the artists and the photographers
 
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Footnotes

1 E.A. Jewell, ‘Exhibition Opens of “Fantastic Art’’’, The New York Times, 9 December 1936, in: Museum of Modern Art Archives, A. Conger Goodyear Scrapbooks, folder 42.4.

2 The last object is an ‘assisted readymade’ by Marcel Duchamp entitled Why Not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy?

3 These were the Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Boston Institute of Modern Art, Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, Milwaukee Art Institute, University of Minnesota Gallery and the San Francisco Museum of Art.

4 These were the Grand Rapids Art Gallery, Middlebury College, Duke University and the Junior League of Binghamton.

5 L. Kachur, Displaying the Marvellous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and Surrealist Exhibition Installations, Cambridge (Ma.) 2001; S. Zalman, ‘The Vernacular as Vanguard Alfred Barr, Salvador Dalí, and the U.S. Reception of Surrealism in the 1930s’, Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 1 (2007); A. Umland, A. Sudhalter, Dada in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York 2008.

6 Exceptions are T.M. Bauduin, ‘Fantastic Art, Barr, Surrealism’, Journal of Art Historiography 17 (2017); D. Adès, ‘Surrealism and Fantastic Art’, in: Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art, exh. cat. New York (Gallery David Zwirner), 2018.

7 A.H. Barr, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, exh. cat. New York (Museum of Modern Art), 1936, p. 7.

8 The exhibition was opened for the public from 2 March to 19 April; other exhibitions in this series were Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism (1936-1937), Masters of Popular Painting (1938), American Realists and Magic-Realists (1943), and Romantic Painting in America (1943).

9 S.N. Platt, ‘Modernism, Formalism, and Politics: The “Cubism and Abstract Art” Exhibition of 1936 at The Museum of Modern Art’, Art Journal 47.4 (1988), p. 284.

10 A.H. Barr, Cubism and Abstract Art, exh. cat. New York (Museum of Modern Art), 1936, p. 13.

11 A.H. Barr, Cubism and Abstract Art, exh. cat. New York (Museum of Modern Art), 1936, p. 11.

12 S.N. Platt, ‘Modernism, Formalism, and Politics: The “Cubism and Abstract Art” Exhibition of 1936 at The Museum of Modern Art’, Art Journal 47.4 (1988), p. 284.

13 Hence the two movements are described as (abstract) Dadaism and (abstract Surrealism) in the flow chart; A.H. Barr, Cubism and Abstract Art, exh. cat. New York (Museum of Modern Art), 1936, p. 179.

14 The exact dates of that exhibition which was staged in the New Burlington Galleries, were 11 June to 4 July 1936; telegram from Alfred Barr to Paul Éluard, 12 March 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.4; telegram from Paul Éluard to Alfred Barr, 13 March 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.4.

15 L. Kachur, Displaying the Marvellous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and Surrealist Exhibition Installations, Cambridge (Ma.) 2001, pp. 14-15.

16 There appears to be no archival material available regarding the exhibition from Éluard's response until early May, when Barr was already making plans to stage his own exhibition.

17 For example, Agnes Morgan of the Fogg Museum and Pierre Janlet from the Paleis voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels; however, the American Janice Loeb was not related to the Frenchman Pierre Loeb, who staged the first Surrealism exhibition in 1925.

18 Letter from Alfred Barr to Georg Grosz, 11 May 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.2.

19 M.S. Barr, ‘Our Campaigns’, New Criterion special issue (1987), p. 44.

20 M.S. Barr, ‘Our Campaigns’, New Criterion special issue (1987), p. 44.

21 L. Kachur, Displaying the Marvellous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and Surrealist Exhibition Installations, Cambridge (Ma.) 2001, pp. 14-15.

22 M.S. Barr, ‘Our Campaigns’, New Criterion special issue (1987), p. 48.

23 Letter from Paul Éluard to Alfred Barr, 13 July 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.4.

24 Letter from Paul Éluard to Alfred Barr, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.4.

25 É.A. Hubert (ed.), Paul Éluard - André Breton, Correspondance 1919-1938, Paris 2019, pp. 402-406.

26 Letter from Alfred Barr to Paul Éluard, 18 July 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.4.

27 Letter from Alfred Barr to André Breton, 16 July 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.4.

28 Letter from Alfred Barr to André Breton, 16 July 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.4.

29 In this letter Breton wrote that he would no longer be manipulated by such sagouins: a French insult literally meaning a type of monkey; É.A. Hubert (ed.), Paul Éluard - André Breton, Correspondance 1919-1938, Paris 2019, pp. 402-406.

30 É.A. Hubert (ed.), Paul Éluard - André Breton, Correspondance 1919-1938, Paris 2019, pp. 416-417.

31 M.S. Barr, ‘Our Campaigns’, New Criterion special issue (1987), p. 48.

32 Letter from Alfred Barr to Hans Arp, 7 August 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.4; letter from Alfred Barr to Roland Penrose, 11 August 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.6.

33 Letter from Wolfgang Paalen to Alfred Barr, 23 August 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.5; letter from Roland Penrose to Alfred Barr, 27 August 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.6; letter from Alfred Barr to E.L.T. Mesens, 3 November 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.8.

34 M.S. Barr, ‘Our Campaigns’, New Criterion special issue (1987), p. 45.

35 M.S. Barr, ‘Our Campaigns’, New Criterion special issue (1987), p. 48.

36 Letter from Roland Penrose to Alfred Barr, 14 July 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.6.

37 Letter from Alfred Barr to Grace Pailthorpe, 27 August 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.6; letter from Alfred Barr to John Banting, 11 August 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.6; letter from Alfred Barr to Edward Burra, 27 August 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.6; letter from Alfred Barr to Basil Wright, 26 August 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.6.

38 L. Kachur, Displaying the Marvellous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and Surrealist Exhibition Installations, Cambridge (Ma.) 2001, p. 16.

39 Telegram from Margaret Scolari Barr to Alfred Barr, 19 September 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.4.

40 Letter from Barr’s secretary Eleanor Howland ton Grace Pailthorpe, 2 December 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.6.

41 In November Barr wrote to Breton that he was sorry that it was too late to still publish a possible text; A. Breton, “La peinture animée”, unfinished manuscript, 1936, Archives of Atelier André Breton; letter from Alfred Barr to André Breton, 29 November 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.4.

42 Letter from Georges Hugnet to Alfred Barr, 19 October 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.4.

43 Hugnet’s essays were actually included in later editions of the catalogue.

44 Letter from Alfred Barr to James Thrall Soby, 2 May 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.3.

45 The cognates ‘marvellous’ and ‘fantastic’ can be used in English language literature. In Dutch language literature the translation of ‘fantastique’ as ‘fantastic’ speaks for itself, but a Dutch translation of ‘merveilleux’ is less obvious. In this article I have chosen to use ‘marvellous’ on the basis of earlier Dutch language texts about Surrealism, but the connotations of this term may not completely correspond to that of the original French term.

46 C. Darie, Victor Brauner and the Surrealist Interest in the Occult, diss. University of Manchester, pp. 38-47.

47 ‘Ce qu'il y a d'admirable dans le fantastique, c'est qu'il n'y a plus de fantastique: il n'y a que le réel’ (The admirable thing about fantasy is that there is no longer anything fantastic: there is only reality); A. Breton, ‘Manifesto of Surrealism’, in: R. Seaver, H.R. Lane (ed.), Manifestoes of Surrealism, Ann Arbor 1969, p. 15.

48 G. Parkinson, Futures of Surrealism: Myth, Science Fiction and Fantastic Art in France, 1936-1969, New Haven 2015, p. 7.

49 G. Parkinson, Futures of Surrealism: Myth, Science Fiction and Fantastic Art in France, 1936-1969, New Haven 2015, p. 6.

50 C. Darie, Victor Brauner and the Surrealist Interest in the Occult, diss. University of Manchester, p. 71.

51 For example, Barr wrote to Dalí: ‘The exhibition will study the fantastic, marvellous, anti-rational art of the past just like that of the present’; letter from Alfred Barr to Salvador Dalí, 6 August 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.4.

52 See, for example, the letter from Alfred Barr to John Heartfield, 10 July 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.9; on the other hand, Barr did not mention Dada and Surrealism at all in loan requests for old art, see: T.M. Bauduin, ‘Fantastic Art, Barr, Surrealism’, Journal of Art Historiography 17 (2017), p. 10.

53 In addition, the time span between Barr's arrival in Europe and Breton's lecture was also very short, and Bauduin therefore endorses the doubts about this argument; T.M. Bauduin in conversation with the author, 12 November 2024.

54 Letter from Alfred Barr to Henry Moore, 27 August 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.6; letter from Alfred Barr to Paul Nash, 27 August 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.6.

55 Letter from Henry Moore to Alfred Barr, 19 September 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.6.

56 For example, in a letter from Alfred Barr to Etienne Bagnou, 3 October 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.2.

57 Letter from Tristan Tzara to Alfred Barr, 6 October 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.5.

58 Letter from Alfred Barr ton Albert Eugene Gallatin, 23 October 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.2; letter from Alfred Barr to Robert Sturgis Ingersoll, 23 October 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.3.

59 A.H. Barr, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, exh. cat. New York (Museum of Modern Art), 1936, pp. 9-10.

60 T.M. Bauduin, ‘Fantastic Art, Barr, Surrealism’, Journal of Art Historiography 17 (2017), pp. 11-12, 15-16.

61 T.M. Bauduin, ‘Fantastic Art, Barr, Surrealism’, Journal of Art Historiography 17 (2017), pp. 11-12.

62 T.M. Bauduin, ‘Fantastic Art, Barr, Surrealism’, Journal of Art Historiography 17 (2017), pp. 5, 11.

63 T.M. Bauduin in conversation with the author, 12 November 2024.

64 T.M. Bauduin in conversation with the author, 12 November 2024.

65 ‘The trustees are shocked and feel that the picture should be hung less prominently’; M.S. Barr, ‘Our Campaigns’, New Criterion special issue (1987), pp. 47-48.

66 G.R. Benson, ‘The High Fantastical’, periodical and date unknown, in: Museum of Modern Art Archives, A. Conger Goodyear Scrapbooks, folder 42.4; L. Mumford, ‘Surrealism and Civilization’, The New Yorker 22 (19 December 1936), in: Museum of Modern Art Archives, A. Conger Goodyear Scrapbooks, folder 42.4.

67 Letter from Alfred Barr to M. de Lorey, 6 August 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.5.

68 In the catalogue Pieter Huys is named as the maker, but this cannot be established with certainty and hence the Metropolitan Museum of Art now describes the work as ‘attributed to Pieter Huys’.

69 Füssli's work is a later version of his most famous work, which he decided to paint due to the popularity of the first work.

70 K. Strom, Making History: Surrealism and the Invention of a Political Culture, New York 2002, pp. 54-55.

71 K. Strom, Making History: Surrealism and the Invention of a Political Culture, New York 2002, pp. 54-55.

72 This section is limited only to predecessors in the visual arts; the Surrealists also regularly referred to literary predecessors, including Lewis Monk, the Marquis de Sade, Arthur Rimbaud and Isidore Ducasse (Comte de Lautréamont), see K. Strom, Making History: Surrealism and the Invention of a Political Culture, New York 2002.

73 This publication was founded in 1933 by the publishers Albert Skira and E. Tériade, who worked closely with André Breton and other surrealists from the start. Surrealism took on an increasingly central role over the years and the last three editions were entirely in the hands of the surrealists; D. Adès, Dada and Surrealism Reviewed, exh. cat. London (Hayward Gallery), 1978, p. 280; T.M. Bauduin, J.W. Krikke, Images of Medieval Art in the French Surrealist Periodicals Documents (1929-1931) and Minotaure (1933-1939)’, Journal of European Periodical Studies 4 (2019), p. 152.

74 S. Dalí, ‘Interpretation Paranoiaque-critique de l’Image obsédante de L’Angélus de Millet”, Minotaure 1 (1933); S. Dalí, ‘Le Surréalisme spectral de l’éternel féminin Préraphaélite,’ Minotaure 8 (1936).

75 E. James, ‘The Marvel of Minuteness’, Minotaure 9 (1936).

76 G. Pudelko, ‘Piero di Cosimo, Peintre Bizarre’, Minotaure 11 (1938); G. Pudelko, ‘Paolo Uccello, Peintre Lunaire’, Minotaure 7 (1935).

77 Uccello is the only artist from pre-modern times named in the manifesto; A. Breton, ‘Manifesto of Surrealism’, in: R. Seaver, H.R. Lane (ed.), Manifestoes of Surrealism, Ann Arbor 1969, pp. 26-27.

78 G. Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, Oxford 1998, pp. 74-83.

79 T.M. Bauduin, ‘The Incomparable Artist: Renaissance painter Paolo Uccello in Surrealist Discourse around 1930’, 21: Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und visuellen Kultur 3 (2022), p. 666.

80 R. Desnos, ‘Peinture Surréaliste’, in: B. Noël (ed.), Écrits sur les Peintres, Paris 1984, p. 109; D. Gascoyne, A Short Survey of Surrealism, Hertford 1935, pp. 104-105.

81 R. Desnos, ‘Peinture Surréaliste’, in: B. Noël (ed.), Écrits sur les Peintres, Paris 1984, p. 109; D. Gascoyne, A Short Survey of Surrealism, Hertford 1935, pp. 104-105.

82 T.M. Bauduin, ‘Bosch als “surrealist”: 1924-1936’, Ex Tempore 35.2 (2016), p. 85.

83 A.H. Barr, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, exh. cat. New York (Museum of Modern Art), 1936, p. 7.

84 R. Cortissoz, ‘Art Turned into a Veritable Puzzle’, New York Herald Tribune, 13 December 1936.

85 E. Genauer, ‘Real Value of Dada and Surrealist Show Rests on Few Good Pictures’, New York World Telegram (12 December 1936).

86 D. Ottinger, ‘Does Dada Dissolve into Surrealism?’, lecture, Museum of Modern Art, 9 September 2006.

87 Letter from Tristan Tzara to Alfred Barr, 6 October 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.5.

88 A. Umland, A. Sudhalter, Dada in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York 2008, p. 16.

89 G. Hugnet, ‘Dada’, in: Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, exh. cat. New York (Museum of Modern Art), 1936, p. 30.

90 D. Ottinger, ‘Does Dada Dissolve into Surrealism?’, lecture, Museum of Modern Art, 9 September 2006.

91 On the right of the object hanging at the top there is the word ‘Cologne’.

92 A. Umland, A. Sudhalter, Dada in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York 2008, p. 18.

93 K.M. Floyd, ‘Writing the Histories of Dada and Surrealist Exhibitions: Problems and Possibilities’, Dada/Surrealism 21 (2017), p. 6.

94 K.M. Floyd, ‘Writing the Histories of Dada and Surrealist Exhibitions: Problems and Possibilities’, Dada/Surrealism 21 (2017), pp. 12-13.

95 This term originates from Dalí; S. Dalí, Conquest of the Irrational, New York 1935, p. 13.

96 The high number of works by Ernst and Arp was probably partly due to the fact that they played an important role in both Dada and Surrealism, so that works could be exhibited from both periods.

97 In 1936 Ernst, Miró and Man Ray also had solo exhibitions in New York, which allowed the American public to come into frequent contact with Surrealism in that year.

98 S. Zalman, ‘“A Way of Life”: The Museum of Modern Art and the Marketplace for Surrealism’, The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-1945 14 (2018).

99 ‘Fur-Lined-Cup School of Art gets Spotlight’, unknown newspaper (9 December 1936), in: Museum of Modern Art Archives, A. Conger Goodyear Scrapbooks, folder 42.4.

100 A.H. Barr, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, exh. cat. New York (Museum of Modern Art), 1936, pp. 12-13.

101 D. de Vlieghere, ‘Alfred H. Barr, MoMA, and the Entrance and Exit of Outsider Art (1936-1943)’, Journal of Curatiorial Studies 10.1 (2021), p. 10.

102 D. de Vlieghere, ‘Alfred H. Barr, MoMA, and the Entrance and Exit of Outsider Art (1936-1943)’, Journal of Curatiorial Studies 10.1 (2021), p. 9.

103 Letter from Katherine Dreier to Alfred Barr, 16 February 1937, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.2.

104 L. Kachur, Displaying the Marvellous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and Surrealist Exhibition Installations, Cambridge (Ma.) 2001, p. 16.

105 M.A. Staniszewski, The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art, Cambridge (Ma.) 1998, pp. 61-62.

106 M.A. Staniszewski, The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art, Cambridge (Ma.) 1998, pp. 61-62.

107 L. Kachur, Displaying the Marvellous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and Surrealist Exhibition Installations, Cambridge (Ma.) 2001, p. 12.

108 L. Kachur, Displaying the Marvellous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and Surrealist Exhibition Installations, Cambridge (Ma.) 2001, pp. 72-74.

109 ‘Modern Museum a Psychopathic Ward as Surrealism Has its Day’, The Art Digest 11.6 (1936), in: Museum of Modern Art Archives, A. Conger Goodyear Scrapbooks, folder 42.1.

110 Letter from Alfred Barr to A. Conger Goodyear, 13 January 1937, Museum of Modern Art Archives, A. Conger Goodyear Scrapbooks, folder 42.1.

111 In the article this organization’s director described the Defenders of Democracy as a national non-political organization with 60,000 members; ‘Surrealistic Art Called Foul Plot of Communists’, New York Herald Tribune (30 December 1936).

112 Letters from Alfred Barr to Jesse Zunser and Lewis Mumford, 23 December 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1929-1959, folder 55.10.

113 ‘Executive Director’s Report, 1936-37, Reports and Pamphlets’, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, folder 1.8.

114 ‘Report to the President for the Year October 1, 1935 to October 1, 1936, Reports and Pamphlets’, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, folder 1.5.

115 ‘Report to the President for the Year October 1, 1935 to October 1, 1936, Reports and Pamphlets’, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, folder 1.5; Progress Report, 1932-33, Reports and Pamphlets, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, folder 1.10.

116 Letter from Irene Bender to Elodie Courter, 29 December 1936, The Museum of Modern Art Department of Circulating Exhibitions Records 1931-1991, folder II.1.59.1.

117 A. Umland, A. Sudhalter, Dada in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York 2008, p. 18.

118 S.G. Kantor, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the Intellectual Origins of the Museum of Modern Art, Cambridge (Ma.) 2003, p. 340.

119 S.G. Kantor, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the Intellectual Origins of the Museum of Modern Art, Cambridge (Ma.) 2003, p. 340; S. Zalman, ‘The Vernacular as Vanguard Alfred Barr, Salvador Dalí, and the U.S. Reception of Surrealism in the 1930s’, Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 1 (2007), p. 52.

120 D. Adès, ‘Surrealism and Fantastic Art’, in: Endless Enigma, Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art, exh. cat. New York (Gallery David Zwirner), 2018, p. 11.

121 S. Zalman, ‘The Vernacular as Vanguard Alfred Barr, Salvador Dalí, and the U.S. Reception of Surrealism in the 1930s’, Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 1 (2007), p. 52.

122 S. Zalman, ‘The Vernacular as Vanguard Alfred Barr, Salvador Dalí, and the U.S. Reception of Surrealism in the 1930s’, Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 1 (2007), p. 49.

123 S. Zalman, ‘The Vernacular as Vanguard Alfred Barr, Salvador Dalí, and the U.S. Reception of Surrealism in the 1930s’, Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 1 (2007), p. 54.

124 T.M. Bauduin, ‘Bosch als “surrealist”: 1924-1936’, Ex Tempore 35.2 (2016), p. 93.

125 A. Umland, A. Sudhalter, Dada in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York 2008, p. 11.

126 A. Umland, A. Sudhalter, Dada in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York 2008, pp. 21-22.

127 S. Bevan, ‘How to Make a Modern Art Library: Selections from the Éluard-Dausse Collection’, MoMA Interactives (2009).

128 ‘Executive Director’s Report, 1936-37, Reports and Pamphlets’, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, folder 1.8; ‘The Annual Report of the Executive Director to the Trustees and Corporation Members of The Museum of Modern Art, 1937-38, Reports and Pamphlets’, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, folder 1.14.

129 A. Jacquiot, Quatre siècles de surréalisme: l’art fantastique dans la gravure, Paris 1973; M. Brion, L’Art fantastique, Paris 1961.

130 W. Schurian, Fantastic Art, Cologne 2005.

131 T.M. Bauduin, ‘Bosch als “surrealist”: 1924-1936’, Ex Tempore 35.2 (2016), p. 93.

132 A. Breton, ‘Foreword: Drawbridges’ (1962), in: P. Mabille, Mirror of the Marvellous, Rochester 1998, vii-xv.

133 T.M. Bauduin, ‘Fantastic Art, Barr, Surrealism’, Journal of Art Historiography 17 (2017), pp. 3-4.

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