Europe After the Rain. Dada and Surrealism - ACE066.9

Photograph of Breton with several small sculptures. Commentary notes his increasing preoccupation with the occult. VO quotes him on "… the infinite system of correspondences that lies at Man’s disposal…"; a wooden idol, Winter (c.1573) from the school of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, painting of Krishna, several Tibetan mandalas. Magritte’s Le Fils de l’Homme / Son of Man (1964), The False Mirror (1928), quoted over as saying he couldn’t think of any relationship between his life and his art and that "the problem lies precisely in not accepting any explanation of the world, either through chance or determininsm…" Work by Magritte including a version of The Domaine of Arnheim / Le Domaine d'Arnheim, Personal Values, The Listening Room, Gonconda, photograph of Magritte holding The Great War (1964). Photograph of Breton, "increasingly hostile" to the use of the term Surrealism to describe anything "weird or fantastic". Advertising images for Benson & Hedges cigarettes, the "Hollywood" sign on a fruit jelly, and similar odd images, some closely copying works by Surrealist artists. Double photograph of Duchamp and The Pleasure Principle used for book cover designs, Spike Milligan painting over the Mona Lisa, a race by several Queen Victorias and animation from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, etc. Photographs of André Breton, who died in 1966; quoted over saying, "there is every reason to believe that there exists a certain point in the mind at which life and death … cease to be perceived in terms of contradiction…" Duchamp quoted on Breton, extolling his "love for life". Breton portrait from Ernst’s Friends’ Reunion; photographs of Breton. Moving propeller behind Bottlerack by Duchamp who was described in the 1960s as "the most radical thinker in modern art", and other works, photograph of Duchamp with Bicycle Wheel; a gallery lecture with a reproduction of The Large Glass. Duchamp, interviewed for BBC TV by Joan Bakewell (1968), says he doesn’t "care about the word art as it’s been so discredited…" and wants to get rid of it. Duchamp’s gravestone. Slow-motion footage of Duchamp; film of Trotsky arriving in Mexico, of Tibetans prostrating themselves, Entr’acte, German crowds, front-line soldiers disappearing into smoke. Credits.