Unlike anything in the exhibition, Dalí’s diaphanous 1938 pencil drawing Study for “The Image Disappears,” in which we see, depending on how it catches our eye, a man with a beard or a woman holding a piece of paper in her hand, is an especially impressive example of the double images he made on and off for a number of years. They are undeniably tricky (and they bother some viewers because it is hard, if not impossible, to see fully the two images at once). But for me the purely visual tension they create gives these pictures a formal strength that is not so different from the compositional power of a work by Mondrian. Asking us, moreover, to take in two different images almost simultaneously, they could be said to make concrete Surrealism’s quest, which in some way resembles the quest of psychotherapy, to find an alternative reality to the everyday one we think we are saddled with.
Good morning. Here is an article about the “Drawing Surrealism” exhibition, which is now currently at the Morgan Library and Museum of New York City. [via NYRB]
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