Sorry but should have warned you earlier about this one but please ref to NYR #3 -i.e. New Year Resolution #3: anticipate events for blog posts… Anyway, I hope you can catch the lecture today of Midori Yoshimoto at the MOMA at 11:30 a.m. @ The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor

The Erotic Object: Surrealist artists, writers, and poets placed persistent emphasis on the power of the imagination to transform the everyday. Beginning in the early 1930s, the production of elliptically erotic, sexually charged objects and sculptures became central to their concerns. This exhibition features some of the most notorious works, including Salvador Dalí’s bread-and-inkwell-crowned Retrospective Bust of a Woman (1933) and Meret Oppenheim’s fur-lined teacup (1936).

The Fur Cup is my favorite piece, not just because it’s freezing cold but because there is nothing more sensual than fur (sorry PETA!). It is part animal and part sophistication: an explosive blend for Seduction… Check out the video on the Moma’s website and the very interesting comment by the curator (I guess) about the repulsive side of art. The next object by Giacommetti, pictured below has that quality too, the lines are reminiscent of Brancusi and yet the spikes make it dangerous.

This Surrealist object was inspired by a conversation between Oppenheim and artists Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar at a Paris cafe. Admiring Oppenheim’s fur-covered bracelet, Picasso remarked that one could cover anything with fur, to which she replied, “Even this cup and saucer.” Soon after, when asked by André Breton, Surrealism’s leader, to participate in the first Surrealist exhibition dedicated to objects, Oppenheim bought a teacup, saucer, and spoon at a department store and covered them with the fur of a Chinese gazelle. In so doing, she transformed genteel items traditionally associated with feminine decorum into sensuous, sexually punning tableware.

Giacometti’s Disagreeable Object—part caressable object, threatening weapon, and sinuous sculptural form—may be described as a fetish. A fetish is an object of fixation, regarded with irrational reverence or obsessive devotion, be it a commercial product, a ceremonial object, or, as defined by Sigmund Freud, any essentially ordinary item that is the focus of erotic desire. Giacometti’s use of wood powerfully connects Disagreeable Object to the realm of tribal artifacts and ethnographic fetishes, considered by many of the artist’s friends to be “true fetishes” because they were believed by their original owners to possess magic powers.

Giacometti referred to his so–called Disagreeable Objects as “objects without pedestal and without value,” thereby distancing them from the realm of traditional sculpture. Produced at the height of his involvement with Surrealism, this object was intended to be touched, and could be displayed in different positions. The smooth carved wood phallus, with its pointed and spiked tip, embodies the opposing forces of desire and menace.

All Credits: MOMA