MoMA holds "Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism"
In 1936, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibition titled Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism. Importantly, this exhibition hosted older works from the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists Arcimboldo and Joost de Momper. The style of these Renaissance-era European artists later influenced the art styles of the surrealists, especially in their representations of faces and figures transforming into non-human objects (Ades 40). Arcimboldo, for instance, created paintings of fruits, vegetables, and other objects arranged in such a way to closely resemble a human face. Joost de Momper similarly made landscapes that came together to form a face, which Dawn Ades refers to as “figure-landscapes,” (40). Importantly, the works of these artists are painted in a realistic, representational form similar to the later style of surrealism found in the works of Dali, Magritte, and many other surrealists. It is this dream-like impression of a human face within completely separate objects that resonated strongly with the surrealists. A particular consequence of Arcimboldo’s and de Momper’s styles is the dehumanization of their subjects. Their subjects are not quite human nor entirely non-human but exist in a strange limbo between. When combined with male surrealists’ tendency to use female subjects, the dehumanization of women within their work leads to a latent misogyny present throughout much of the movement.
Ades, Dawn. “Notes on Two Women Surrealist Painters: Eileen Agar and Ithell Colquhoun.” Oxford Art Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, 1980, pp. 36–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360177. Accessed 19 Mar. 2023.
Arcimboldo, Giuseppe. The Cook. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. 1570. https://www.wikiart.org/en/giuseppe-arcimboldo/the-cook. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.