The Mystery … The Blood … The Age of Gold: Sculpture in Surrealist and Surreal Cinema
Figurative sculpture had a special status within the visual universe of Surrealism. Iconographically, statues are a prominent element in the dreamlike spaces of Giorgio de Chirico’s paintings of 1913–14 that so enchanted André Breton and friends after the end of the war and became among the first and most paradigmatic images associated with the movement. Statues appear in many other Surrealist paintings, including those of Salvador Dalí, where, although they might stand on plinths or pedestals, they equivocate between the appearance of inanimate and living bodies, through the impression of liquidity and putrefaction that infects all his visions. In Surrealist collages, too, bodies are often rendered equivocally sculptural through fragmentation, for instance in photographic or printed images of the female nude rendered headless or otherwise dismembered to resemble antiques, in the works of Max Ernst and others. René Magritte, Paul Delvaux, Man Ray, Pierre Boucher, Picasso, and Jean Cocteau, among others associated with Surrealism, also incorporated statuary into their paintings, drawings, and photographs.