Seventh Annual Sunday Lecture Series, The Visionary Eye: Surrealism from Europe to North America.

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A perennial favourite, the Seventh Annual Sunday Lecture Series, The Visionary Eye: Surrealism from Europe to North America takes place over the course of four Sunday afternoons: March 7, 14, 21 and 28. Each illustrated lecture runs from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. via Zoom.

The first lecture is Understanding the Surrealist Imagination with Dr. Celia Rabinovitch. In this introduction to surrealism, Dr. Rabinovitch discusses the surrealist revolution in Europe in the 1920’s and shows how its incendiary call to arms for the power of imagination is captured by artists such as Giorgio de Chirico, Rene Magritte and Joan Miro.

Wolfgang Paalen’s Northwest Passage with Colin Browne is the second lecture. During the summer of 1939, the artist Wolfgang Paalen, his wife, the poet Alice Rahon, and their companion, Eva Sulzer, a photographer, travelled the length of the Pacific Northwest Coast to study the monumental and ceremonial art of the First Nations in the post-colonial entities of Alaska and British Columbia. Browne will consider the intersection between surrealism and Northwest Coast cultures such as those of the Haida, Ts’msyan, Pentlatch, and theLekwungen speaking peoples, the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. In this talk, Browne will also reflect on Paalen’s efforts to develop a contemporary art that would help restore equilibrium to the world.

The third lecture is Salvador Dalí’s Paranoiac Vision with Dr. Elliott H. King. “It is the greatest painting since Raphael. As a matter of fact, it is very much like Raphael.” Salvador Dalí was speaking here of his own Santiago El Grande (1957). Controversial since its arrival to the Beaverbrook Gallery (Fredericton, NB) in 1959, Dalí’s nuclear depiction of the Spanish Saint appears in many ways the antithesis of his early-1930s miniatures steeped in psychoanalysis. But perhaps the division is not so straightforward. In this presentation, Dr. King will discuss the trajectory of Dalí’s career from surrealism to ‘mysticism,’ including the longevity of the ‘paranoiac-critical method’ – Dalí’s means of ‘voluntary hallucination,’ conceived in the early 1930s. 

The final lecture is titled Women Surrealists Through Their Own Eyes with Dr. Celia Rabinovitch. This lecture introduces the work of several women artists associated with surrealism between the 1930’s and 1960’s in Europe and North America, looking at their roles in the movement and the originality of their ideas. Whereas male artists often viewed women as muses or erotic objects, women artists countered that dominant visual narrative. Drawing from archaic goddess myths, alchemy, occultism, and their own self-perceptions, artists such as Leonora Carrington, Meret Oppenheim, Lucita Hurtado, and Dorothea Tanning created imposing visions of enchantment and mystery.

The Sunday Lecture Series is a fundraiser for the AGGV by the Gallery Associates whose role is to volunteer, promote and support the AGGV through fundraising events and programs. Proceeds from the series go toward supporting Gallery exhibitions and programs.

Dr. Daniel Mato, professor emeritus of art history, University of Calgary, will moderate the seventh annual Sunday Lecture Series

Tickets cost $60 for the series for Gallery members/students or $75 for non-members, each individual lecture, $20 for Gallery members/students; $25 for non-members and are available online at https://aggv.ca/gallery-associates-sunday-art-lecture-series-2021/