Een blauwlipmossel opent zich en onthult een paard / Une moule à lèvres bleues s'ouvre et révèle un cheval
Digital posters
From
100 Years of Surrealism
1080 x 1920px mp4 video, colour no sound
Belgium October 2024
100 Years of Surrealism
marks 100 years since the publication of the first manifesto of the surrealist art movement.
On 15th October 1924, André Breton (1896-1966) published his now-famous
Manifeste du surréalisme.
Less widely known is Yvan Goll’s (1891-1950) manifesto of surrealism, the movement’s very first document, published 14 days earlier on 1st October 1924.
Yvan Goll's surrealism was less fanciful than Breton’s, rooted in the fundamental nature of reality, rather than the world of dreams and chance.
Firrell’s digital posters reflect the distinctive character of Yvan Goll’s version of surrealism. For example,
Een blauwlipmossel opent zich en onthult een paard / Une moule à lèvres bleues s'ouvre et révèle un cheval (A Blue-Lipped Mussel Opens and Reveals a Horse)
is neither random nor fanciful but based on the similarity in shape between a mussel shell and a horse's skull.
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Lorsque la dernière orchidée sauvage est cultivée, l'orchidée sauvage n'existe plus / Als de laatste wilde orchidee gecultiveerd is, bestaat de wilde orchidee niet meer
2024
In his magazine
Surréalisme
, Yvan Goll called not for fantasy but for a critical examination of reality in order to understand it in its highest form.
Lorsque la dernière orchidée sauvage est cultivée, l'orchidée sauvage n'existe plus / Als de laatste wilde orchidee gecultiveerd is, bestaat de wilde orchidee niet meer (When the Last Wild Orchid Is Cultivated, the Wild Orchid Exists No More)
is a critical assessment of the value we ascribe to a thing (in this instance, a wild flower).
We want the flower because of its wild beauty and we cultivate it to possess it. But if it subsequently disappears from the wild, even though the plant itself persists, the wild flower is lost forever.
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Alles wat ik niet ken is onvoorstelbaar, bestaat op een onvoorstelbare plaats / Tout ce que je ne sais pas est inimaginable, existant dans un lieu inimaginable
2024
Goll's surrealism was an investigation into the essential nature of reality, which he believed would lead to a profound understanding of reality's inner structure and, in turn, to a higher or
sur-reality.
Alles wat ik niet ken is onvoorstelbaar, bestaat op een onvoorstelbare plaats / Tout ce que je ne sais pas est inimaginable, existant dans un lieu inimaginable (Everything I Don't Know Is Unimaginable, Existing in an Unimaginable Place)
expresses a Gollian-surrealist truth about the nature of the unknown.
What we do not know, we cannot imagine. And what we cannot imagine exists in a place, which is itself beyond imagination. This seems a self-evident, rock-solid and specifically Gollian-surrealist truth.
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The First Manifesto of Surrealism
2024
To mark the 100th anniversary of surrealism, the Cambridge Queer Press has re-published Yvan Goll's first manifesto of surrealism in the original French with a new English translation.
This volume includes an essay by Martin Firrell exploring the distinctive character of Yvan Goll’s surrealism.
read
The First Manifesto of Surrealism
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100 Years of Surrealism
is presented in public space in partnership with Clear Channel Belgium. The three digital posters in the series are the work of acclaimed Franco-British public artist Martin Firrell, 'the conscience of the 21st Century' ~
International New York Times
view more Martin Firrell works
selected by Barbara Ulbrist
