Surrealist Georges Malkine's embrace of Surrealism’s anti-consumerism extended to a willful self-obscurity that was an act of “perfect surrealist behavior.” Curator Deryn Tanyol notes that “his disdain for self-promotion amounted to an evasive refusal of his own place in history” and quotes the artist himself as saying “I did everything I could to escape the attention of my contemporaries.” Eschewing commercial success of the sort that had the Surrealists anagramming the name of ultra-self-promoter Salvador Dali into ‘Avida Dollars’, Malkine’s life wended through any number of unplanned detours, side roads and dead ends.
Filmmaker Stephen Blauweiss talks with Tanyol and Gilles Malkine, the son of the painter, about the life and work of the artists with "perfect Surrealist behavior."
On October 11, the opening reception will be preceded by lectures by both exhibition curator Derin Tanyol and noted Surrealism scholar and translator Mary Ann Caws. The talks begin at 2:30pm in WAAM’s Towbin Wing; the reception will run from 4:00 to 6:00 pm. The exhibition continues through January 4. Woodstock Artists Association Museum, Woodstock.
Film by Stephen Blauweiss. Produced by ArtistFilmDocs.
