Le jeu de Marseille
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Opens 31 August 2012, 6 to 9pm, and every Friday-Sunday from 12 to 6pm
news of the world, enclave 3, 50 Resolution Way, London SE8 4NT
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Victor Brauner, Andre Breton, Oscar Dominguez, Max Ernst, Jacques Herold, Wilfredo Lam, Jacqueline Lamba, Andre Masson
The reason for existence, the singularity of news of the world ’s permanent and physical art space can now be discerned. As we observed the initial, inaugural installation by celebrated artist Angel Vergara suffer entropic dissolution and decay, it metamorphosed, in fits and starts, leading to the production of another installation through transmogrifying spurts in process over the last couple of weeks.
The scent of marjoram, of lavender, the ceramic cicades, the made-in-china plastic birds, glasses of Marseille pastis, the provisional garde furniture, stand in as a sketch of a wartime South of France garden. Because, to progress, we have to take you back.
Vergara’s installation suggested art-making as a public act and the political impotence of the artist; our mind now turns to the surrealists’ quest to change life, yet choosing to distance themselves from what they saw as the limitations of the present moment.
The new exhibition at news of the world provides a space for the audience to pass time playing cards with the gallery staff.
The set of cards –le jeu de Marseille- was designed collectively by Brauer, Breton, Dominguez, Ernst, Herold, Lam, Lamba and Masson as they waited in Marseille -along with Duchamp, Peret, Levi Strauss and others-, 1940-1941, for visas to escape Europe for America. This episode will be seen by some as marking the terminal decline of surrealism, whilst others see their migration as a catalyst for experiment in American art.
The immersive disengagement required by card playing, a gap the mind makes, an economically unproductive time, echoes the surrealists’ refusal to engage in the world conflict, when engagement would mean allegiance to a party or to despised institutions, and therefore ethical compromise.
The Jeu de Marseille was designed to change symbolic representation, not to enact change itself. Ending the persistent societal values in a deck of cards, Kings, Queens and subaltern Jacks become Sirens, Genius and Magicians. Reflecting the essence of the surrealists’ interest in language, the hidden, chance and poetry and the creation of new modern mythologies, the four suits are replaced by love, knowledge, dream and revolution.
'Their revolutionary declarations remain purely theoretical as they do not impact on their actions… They remain the parasites of the very class they insult' nauseated Sartre in 1947. Post war surrealists will reply by advocating withdrawal and insubordination as the true responsibility of the artist/intellectual who must look beyond the commentary of current affairs ('l’ecart absolu'), dismissing the idea that work should be dictated by its immediate context.
In inviting you to play cards at news of the world, we are offering the game as a conversation with no narrative, as a tentative synthesis of the cards’ new values with the old games rules, and the option to waste your time as an affirmative artistic act.
