The event is the famous auction of André Breton’s collection in Paris
during the spring of 2003, a complete scandal: the dispersion of one of
the most astonishing modern collections, put together by the father of
surrealism over half a century of roaming flea markets, auctions,
artists’ ateliers, and the world at large. Rather than a classic
“cabinet of wonders” (whose study has become so fashionable these days),
Breton’s collection may be considered a “cabinet of wanders.” Beyond
the apparently random selection and fortuitous disposition of natural,
artificial, and in-between objects (
objet trouvés,
objets interpretés,
objets mathématiques,
objets naturels,
objets ready-made,
objets mobiles…),
staple processes for assembling any curio cabinet worth its name, the
collection that Breton amassed from 1922 to 1966 attests to his multiple
interests and restless spirit, to the capacity to change (political
alliances, love partners, objects) in order to remain true to oneself,
and, above all, to a subversive desire that chose representation as its
privileged territory of combat.
At once departure and landing point, refuge and escape, Breton’s
collection was a “magical continent” that contained his heart and mind
in fragments, much like a domestic shrine where relatives’ photos are
placed side by side with saints’ effigies and votive objects, except
that in Breton’s case, the latter two were replaced by the
quintessential artists of his time—
European and “primitive” alike—and
the residues of an organic universe animistically invested by both
Western and non-Western cultures: De Chirico and Ernst alongside Hopi
dolls and Polynesian fetishes, insect
collections and African totems, a
Victorian bird-tree and a photograph of Elisa Claro (his third wife,
whom he met during his five-year World War II exile in New York). In the
midst of it all, Breton himself, sitting at his desk like a ruling
divinity for whom the whole universe is at hand.
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