SURREALISM BEYOND BORDERS: THE MEDIA - PART ONE, THE STORY SO FAR
I thought that a running commentary on the media attention to the exhibition might be instructive and possibly fun. Or possibly not... Most of the journalism is of a rather low order, but some has redeeming features.
Waldemar Januszcak didn't like it:https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/surrealism-beyond-borders-tate-modern-cant-tell-good-art-from-bad-9j3cmrpk3
Sadly, you can't read the whole article without registering with the Times who want your credit card.
The Financial Times was a bit more positive, https://www.ft.com/content/5bdc6907-12f2-4323-bf4b-321d46600598
and you can read the whole thing, a bit of a mixed bag of clichés, enthusiasm and occasional insights.
The Grauniad got Adrian Searle to review it, so thankfully we don't have to endure the ignorant posturing of Jonathan Jones, the non-thinking man's non-thinking man. Searle does at least know a fair bit about art:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/feb/22/surrealism-beyond-borders-review-tate-modern-london-raging-sea-strangeness
The Torygraph is surprisingly sympathetic:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/surrealism-beyond-borders-tate-modern-review-visionary-celebration/
considering that "Too often, museums demonstrate a weakness for repetitive “blockbusters” devoted to the same handful of names. It’s brave and original to try something different. This is Surrealism reanimated, unleashed."
The Mail seems to have ignored it so far...a sadly missed opportunity to excoriate 'degenerate art'?
There's a second review from the Times! One Rachel Campbell Thompson grasps a little more than Waldemar, it seems and shows a bit more enthusiasm before one hits that paywall:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/surrealism-beyond-borders-review-tate-modern-x7j5xwrgf
and no bad jokes about fish either...
The Observer's reviewer felt the excitement of the show's bold ambitions, while not knowing quite enough to always be accurate. Still, not a bad review: https://observer.com/2022/01/a-cynics-fairy-tale-on-the-mets-surrealism-beyond-borders/
It's like she almost gets it: "The ultimate achievement of this exhibition is its hypnotic offering to the viewer. On my second visit, I couldn’t make it through half the exhibit in two hours. It’s an incredible achievement, exposing many to work they would never have seen otherwise. Walking through these works, we may feel thousands of tiny eyes peering back at us, asking us who holds the baton beyond the corner, and what will we do about it?"
and then slightly ruins it by saying:
"Exiting the Met, I suddenly wanted to put on riding clothes and go in search of a submarine. I wanted to unlearn anything my art teachers in strange hats ever told me and follow my psychic intuition. I looked at the horses tied up in the park and wondered if they needed a dose of the surreal as badly as I did."
If you are fed up with reading, try You Tube for an oddly unsettling - I assume CGI review of reviews:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws1ijeXzEPk
If you want to see how your 'surreal' investments are doing, this slice of meretricious trash may beguile you with its sheer vacuousness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQHbPN_rGGc&t=683s
(I had not grasped just what a complete idiot Tim Marlow is. I find it rather sad to learn that he is the director of the Design Museum.)
There's also a number of reviews of the Met's iteration of the show:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=surrealism+beyond+borders
More to come, I expect. Feel free to point out reviews I have missed.
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