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What better
way to spend an hour in the middle of the workday than to immerse
oneself in the crepuscular light of ‘30s Paris by dropping in at
the ICP at lunchtime to take in the must-see
Twilight
Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris.
On the cover of the accompanying catalogue is Brassaï‘s Paris
from Notre Dame—a night-scene of Paris, taken from the top of
the cathedral, gargoyles watching over the city.
This
photograph doesn’t actually appear in Brassaï ‘s classic
Paris de Nuit,
now a collector’s item, 60 black and white photographs, with text
by Paul Morand, which begins with the lovely line that opens up
the night to all its possibilities—La nuit n’est pas le négatif
du jour—the night is not the the negative of the day.
Born Gyula Halász, Brassaï was born in Transylvania and took the
name of Brassaï (from Brasso); Henry Miller called him the ‘eye
of Paris’ and said of him: “...perhaps the difference which
I observe between the work of Brassaï and that of other
photographers lies in this – that Brassaï seems overwhelmed by the
fullness of life...” What a beautiful idea we thought,
are the best artists the ones who have their fingers on the pulse
of the ecstatic? He was also called the ‘man of the
night,’ this Transylvanian who ventured out like some vampire,
feeding on the city’s nocturnal landscape. In
Paris de Nuit
there is a dark romanticism, an element of danger, a gothic and
ghostly poetry. Brassaï said, like a true vampire: "Night
suggests, but it does not show. It frees the forces in us
that, during the day, are subdued by reason."
Andre Kertesz, Eiffel Tower, 1929
The
show also has photographs by the usual suspects—Andre Kertesz,
Ilse Bing, Man Ray.... Surrealism—the literary and artistic
movement that attempted to capture some hidden or deeper reality,
and here, in these photographs, Paris is the evocative subject,
exaltation lurking beneath the ordinary, puddles on a pavement, or
in the Eiffel Tower’s shadow.... These surrealist
photographers (from the late 20’s to the Second World War) turned
their lenses on people, buildings, and monuments. A city
that was an artistic Mecca as well; Kertesz was Hungarian, Bing
was German, Man Ray was American....
Writing a
century earlier in Notre Dame de Paris, in his love letter
to the cathedral and to the city, Victor Hugo called the creatures
that stood guard over the city: “...fantastically carved stone
gargoyles which bristle all over Gothic buildings....” and one
realizes that these gargoyles have watched Paris changing from the
medieval city Hugo describes to the city it is today, and perhaps
Brassaï who bribed his way up to the gargoyles at night to
take his picture, in doing what photographers do, capturing the
ephemeral moment, somehow captured eternity as well . . . eye of
the vampire indeed . . . .
See:
Twilight
Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris @ICP
Read:
Paris de
Nuit, 60 photographs by Brassai, text by Paul Morand, a
collector's item
Tags:
paris
surrealism
photography
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Notre Dame, 1933, Brassaï (from Paris
de Nuit) |
