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This Is So Surreal

6 artworks from 6 artists across 4 galleries
The tour is ordered to begin from the Michigan Avenue entrance. If you are starting in the Modern Wing, simply do your tour in reverse order.

Wander through the dreams and unique perceptions of these Surrealist artists.

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  • Abstract shapes compose a mustached man and rearing horse against brown background.

    The Policeman

    Joan Miró

    Gallery 398, third level, Modern Galleries

    After moving to Paris in 1920, Joan Miró met a group of avant-garde artists who advocated merging the everyday world with dreams and the unconscious to produce an absolute reality, or surreality. In The Policeman, Miró derives an image of a mustachioed policeman and his horse from seemingly unplanned stains on the canvas and graffiti-like strokes and squiggles, as if composing without conscious intention.

    "Between 1925 and 1927, Miró unleashed a revolutionary series of works called the 'dream paintings,' which straddle abstraction and representation in freely moving, calligraphic compositions."

  • A work made of oil on canvas.

    The Earth Is a Man

    Matta

    Gallery 398, third level, Modern Galleries

    Matta referred to this imaginative landscape—his best-known painting—as an “inscape.” He painted it in honor of the poet Federico García Lorca, who was assassinated in 1936, and used the technique of psychic automatism, developed by the Surrealists, to create the composition's turbulent forms. Exhibited in New York City, the mural-size canvas influenced a new generation of American artists: the Abstract Expressionists.

    "Here the forces of brilliant light seem to battle those of darkness. Matta's vaporous paint washes render the invisible waves of energy that shape and dissolve a molten, primordial terrain. It recalls a volcanic eruption Matta witnessed in Mexico in 1941."

  • Frosted glass box with six compartments for yellow, green, blue butterflies.

    Untitled (Butterfly Habitat)

    Joseph Cornell

    Gallery 397, third level, Modern Galleries

    For nearly 30 years, Cornell worked in relative obscurity in the basement of his home in Queens, New York, creating wondrous miniature worlds within his boxed constructions. These deeply personal and poetic assemblages of found objects and materials often prompt a dizzying array of associations. In Untitled (Butterfly Habitat), these include Christmas decorations, collector’s specimen cabinets, microscopes, natural history displays, and windows.

    "Cornell's deeply personal and elusive work combines the enthusiasms of his childhood—butterflies, marbles, seashells, sky charts, stamps—with adult fascinations such as ballerinas, empty cages, and movie stars."

  • Three-dimensional piece featuring a large eyeball, oriented sideways, on a wooden pin set in a flat piece of yellow wood at upper right, cursive writing in French on the wood. Strands of curly hair and the wooden cutout of a cloud are affixed to the eyeball. Affixed to the wood, at lower left, is a tiny light-skinned hand with fingers reaching upward.

    Object

    Claude Cahun

    Gallery 396, third level, Modern Galleries

    Claude Cahun was closely associated with the Paris Surrealists of the 1930s. Attracted to the group’s desire to transform society through exploring the unconscious, she challenged traditional ideas about gender and sexuality. For Object, Cahun altered a number of seemingly unrelated components—a doll’s hand, a cloud-shaped piece of wood, and a tennis ball painted with a wide-open eye—to produce a work with startling psychological resonance.

    "Cahun's assemblages were typically ephemeral, made to be captured on film. Object is the only sculptural work by the artist known to still exist in its original form."

  • A painting in earth tones features numerous stick-figure drawings that evoke cave drawings. The lines of the drawings are rendered in bright pastels, and the figures rise up the canvas on a zig-zagging line. Green and light-gray smokiness proliferates.

    Self-Portrait and Autobiography

    Alice Rahon

    Gallery 396, third level, Modern Galleries

    In this composition, Alice Rahon represented herself with a palette in hand, standing atop a series of ascending switchbacks lined with animals, human figures, mountains, and trees. The work’s shimmering surface is composed of materials sourced from the natural environment, including sand and volcanic ash. One of just two self-portraits the artist created, the work suggests movement, travel, and her journey to becoming a painter.

    "Originally a Surrealist poet based in Paris, Rahon left France in 1939 for Mexico City, where she took up painting as well as sculpture. Her fascination with the cultures and landscapes of Mexico led her to develop a style inspired by Paleolithic cave art"

  • Dark atmospheric painting of sun, obscured by clouds between two tree groves.

    Forest and Sun

    Max Ernst

    Gallery 395, third level, Modern Galleries

    Surrealist Max Ernst used an unusually wide range of styles and techniques to create his works. In 1925, he developed a method called frottage, which involved rubbing paper or canvas over a textured surface to create an image. In Forest and Sun, the wood grain patterns become a cluster of towering forms recalling a forest, a source of fear and fascination for Ernst since his youth.

    "This dark and mysterious forest scene dates to one of the most creative periods of Ernst’s career. He painted six variations of this theme. As in the other five canvases, the tree trunks suggest a letter in the artist’s name: in this case, a capital M."

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