Page 21 - Studio International - February 1968

`Le Muse Inquietanti'

Charles Harrison

Le Muse Inquietanti' —the Disquieting Muses
—was the title of an exhibition of the 'Masters of
Surrealism', sponsored by the Amici Torinesi
dell Arte Contemporanea, organized by Luigi
Carluccio and held at the Museo Civico in Turin
from November 1967 to January 1968.

If Turin is not the first Italian city one would associate
with the visual arts of this or any century, there is much,
apart from the interest shown in the exhibition itself and
the efforts made to ensure that it was seen by a consider-
able number of representatives from abroad, to testify to
a lively and varied interest in twentieth century art
among the Turinese. There are several important
private collectors in the area, and a surprising number of
galleries dealing in modern art. The well-established
Galleria Narciso staged a Dada to Surrealism exhibition,
to run current with 'Le Muse Inquietanti', which would
have considerably brightened the season in England. A
comparatively new gallery, the Galleria Sperone, was
some time ago the scene of a one-man exhibition devoted
to Tom Wesselman, an American artist who has yet to
get a showing in London.
The exhibition at the Museo Civico contained a high
proportion of first-rate works. That understood, I'll get
a few complaints out of the way. There was a certain lack
of coherence. A case could have been made for taking de
Chirico as an appropriate starting point and tracing one
tendency from there. This would have had to be done
largely in the hanging, but was not. Alternatively one
might expect an exhibition beginning with Fuseli, sub-
titled 'Maestri del Surrealismo', and with 272 works
catalogued, to be comprehensive in essentials. There were,
in fact, some serious omissions. No examples from the
Ernst collage 'books' (this was repaired in the Galleria
Narciso exhibition) ; a representation of Masson which
grossly underplayed his role in the Surrealist movement;
four works by Picasso none of which were really surrealist;
it would have been good to see included one of his studies
for the Apollinaire monument, so seminal for European
sculpture in the thirties. In fact the inclusion of two
Salvador Dali isolated pieces of sculpture—a curious piece by Dali and a
Venus with drawers 1936 decidedly post-surrealist Giacometti—served to underline
painted bronze with fur how important for the understanding of Surrealism are
38½ x 12½ x 13½ in.
Coll: Max Clarac Serou, the sculptures, objects and fetishes of the period.
Paris One would not expect a very large English contingent