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Posted on 04/08/2003 12:39:17 PM PDT by vannrox
Surrealist's collection to be sold despite outcry
02 Apr 2003 12:02
By Caroline Brothers
PARIS (Reuters) - Some 5,500 objects considered talismans of the French Surrealist movement from Breton to Magritte will go on sale in Paris this month despite an outcry from artists opposed to splitting up the works. The entire contents of poet Andre Breton's 70-square-metre workshop, except for a wall of "primitive" art objects which has been donated to Paris's Pompidou Centre, are going under the hammer because his descendants can no longer manage the legacy.
The sale at famed auction house Drouot is expected to fetch as much as 30 million euros ($33 million).
Breton's family have made a number of requests for help over the 37 years since the poet's death, including participating in plans for a Surrealism Foundation, but no project to preserve the collection came to fruition. Breton's daughter Aube, a social worker now in her seventies, has finally decided to place the entire collection on a sophisticated website and sell off the objects at Drouot.
"She is selling because she can't do otherwise -- it's impossible to throw the collection open to the public in 70 square metres," said Amy Pinel, spokeswoman for the CalmelsCohen autioneers who are carrying out the sale. Breton's studio at 42 rue Fontaine, near the Paris district of Montmartre, was so small and so packed with objects that "there would have been room for about three people," Pinel said.
"People forget how heavy an intellectual heritage can be," she added, as art lovers and buyers flocked to the auction house on the first day of public viewing on Tuesday.
A small group of demonstrators gathered outside Drouot's entrance on Tuesday to condemn the sale.
Critics deplore the lack of state aid to preserve so rich a collection -- on sale are works by Rene Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Jean Arp, Francis Picabia and naif master Hector Hippolite.
It also includes photographs of Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera with Leon Trotsky, manuscripts of Breton's poems and letters, his collection of primitive sculptures and Mexican paintings, and quirky objects like 90 enormous waffle irons, a pack of tarot cards and a butterfly collection.
Some 3,000 signatories have backed a petition run by artists and writers urging the collection be saved in its entirety.
"No to the Andre Breton bargain sale," they said in leaflets handed out outside the auction building.
"In the face of the silence of the authorities...and just a few weeks ahead of the start of the sale, the time has come for serious action," it added, urging artlovers to visit the petition site at www.remue.net.
Some of the proceeds of the sale will be ploughed back into the "virtual foundation" documenting all Breton's collection online, and some may be given to French museums.
The French government also intends to use its pre-emptive rights to purchase some of the works at the auction, a Drouot spokeswoman said, though the state has given no indication of what those works will be.
The sale is due to take place over several days between April 7 and 17.
Charity is easy when it ain't your own money. I would expect no less from parasitical artists and Frenchmen. Let them cough up their own money, otherwise shut their faces and let an old lady do as she pleases with her private property.
-ccm
Indeed.
Sounds like the French have discovered eBay.
The mediocrity of French intellectualism mascarading as something significant. These artists were in a perpetual state of revolution. The result--simply revolting "art".
éBay?
This says it all. And I would say to all those French "artistes" who now weep over the sale of this crap that they've all had decades to head off this auction. They chose not to and now they don't like their own decision. Too bad.
Magritte--The Surprise Answer
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