The Hamburg Kunsthalle is presenting an extraordinary exhibition titled "Rendezvous of Dreams" that explores the intimate connections between Surrealism and German Romanticism. This massive summer exhibition celebrates the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Surrealist movement while revealing the profound spiritual and intellectual relationships between these two influential art movements.
The exhibition features an impressive collection of 230 iconic works from international Surrealism, showcasing masterpieces by renowned artists from Max Ernst to René Magritte, and from Meret Oppenheim to Dorothea Tanning. These 20th-century works are presented alongside 70 masterpieces of German Romanticism, creating a dialogue that spans centuries of artistic expression.
However, this "Rendezvous of Dreams" has become what could be described as a "rendezvous of the gigantic." The exhibition sprawls across 2,000 square meters, displaying 300 artworks alongside numerous literary documents. The curatorial concept seems to embrace a "more is more" philosophy, which while comprehensive, may overwhelm visitors seeking a more intimate artistic encounter.
The genesis of this mega-exhibition actually has quite modest origins. In the early 1960s, Max Ernst, one of the most important Surrealist artists, visited the Hamburg Kunsthalle. He was deeply impressed by a painting titled "Morning" by the Romantic painter Philipp Otto Runge. This encounter inspired Ernst to create his own response: "A Beautiful Morning" from 1965.
Both paintings have been in the museum's collection for 60 years, and they are now being presented together for the first time. Yet one might question whether this intimate meeting between two artistic souls required such a large cast of additional participants. After all, "rendezvous" in its original meaning refers to a meeting between lovers – often secret, unobserved, and characterized by intimacy. This sense of intimacy is somewhat lost in the current exhibition's overwhelming scale.
The display is densely packed with paintings, objects, installations, and photographs, supplemented by documents, books, and both historical and contemporary film material. Sixty-five Surrealist artists meet with 30 Romantic positions across three sections comprising 15 chapters total. This is hardly the intimate tête-à-tête that the title suggests.
Despite the overwhelming scope, the exhibition offers remarkable discoveries and rediscoveries. One standout is the Surrealist painter Toyen (1902-1980), who was already featured in a solo exhibition at the Hamburg Kunsthalle in 2021, curated by Annabelle Görgen-Lammers, the curator of the current show. Toyen, who used an artistic pseudonym to escape normative gender assignments early in their career, is represented by the painting "Dream (Sen)" from 1927. The work depicts a lonely figure in a wasteland, where time, indicated by pendulums on a rock formation, seems to gnaw at the figure, which partially dissolves into an ambiguous black substance.
A particularly positive aspect of the exhibition is the equal representation in the Surrealist section. With a balanced gender ratio of 50-50, the exhibition makes significant strides in terms of visibility for female artists. This thoughtful approach to inclusion demonstrates a commitment to presenting a more complete picture of the Surrealist movement.
The exhibition's organization within the challenging architecture of the building is also cleverly conceived and conceptually coherent. The theme of dreams, closely linked to the unconscious, forms the opening section in the basement level. The "Forest" section follows on the main floor, while the finale in the domed building is dedicated to the cosmos.
In the first dream section, visitors can metaphorically and spatially lose themselves in the many cabinets filled with the confusions and abysses of the intermediate world below consciousness. What initially appears curatorially justified soon becomes a test of endurance. The sheer density of works and accompanying texts makes it increasingly difficult not to lose the thread. The compact idea that the Surrealists were significantly influenced by the intellectual attitude of Romanticism is supported by a wealth of documents that might not have been strictly necessary within an art exhibition.
A standout element amid the theoretical foundation is a video work showing an excerpt from the installation "Manifesto" by German artist Julian Rosefeldt. The starring role is played by cinema royalty, Cate Blanchett. In the shown sequence, she recites the Surrealist Manifesto published in 1924, written by French writer André Breton. The text is conveyed in an accessible way through this work. As a visitor, one wishes for more such artistic devices and fewer overwhelming literary testimonies.
The second part of the exhibition also presents well-intentioned hurdles. Again, the architecture serves its purpose flawlessly, leading visitors straight through several small rooms. Under the motto "Passages," the corridor connects the first and second sections. Flanking was an important source of inspiration for the Surrealists, and the architectural passage references Walter Benjamin's standard work of the same name. In this work, the philosopher and cultural critic describes the transformation from the Romantic wanderer to the urban flaneurs of Surrealism.
However, in Hamburg, this unfortunately becomes a matter of getting lost rather than productive wandering. Art historical side plots offer additional information that is interesting in itself but tends to distract from the exhibition's theme. For example, there's the story of a forged work by de Chirico. "Melancholy of a Street" (1941-1945) from the Hamburg Kunsthalle's collection was not painted by the master of empty streets and long shadows, Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), but by Spanish painter Óscar Domínguez (1906-1958). Only in 1970 did de Chirico himself provide the hint that the painting was not from his hand.
Similar to Domínguez, other Surrealists also copied de Chirico's works – during the Nazi occupation of France, creativity was required to secure one's own income. Sometimes the proceeds also supported the resistance group La Main à plume. The transparency that the Kunsthalle provides with the processing of the de Chirico case is partly amusing and extremely self-reflective. However, it does not contribute to understanding the exhibition.
The moving story of Max Ernst's 1922 painting "Rendezvous of Friends" is also told cinematically here. The significance of this key work of the Surrealist movement, in which Ernst portrayed 17 of his colleagues, is unquestionable. How it survived National Socialism with Ernst's former gallery owner Johanna Ey is also important. However, given its scope, the topic would deserve its own chapter rather than a marginal note.
The density of themes and facts remains consistently high in the following sections. Motifs are compared, and the images are supposed to provide visual arguments for the influences of Romantic thought on Surrealist art, which are proclaimed in texts. Sometimes the juxtapositions seem somewhat arbitrary. The intellectual impetus is not really reflected in the pictorial comparison in many places.
The art historical and intellectual historical subtext, however, is so comprehensive that it requires an enormous amount of time, an audio guide, and ideally prior knowledge of both movements to cope with the wealth of information. One catches oneself thinking that less is sometimes more. Perhaps the Kunsthalle would have done better to focus more strongly on the exhibition's starting point: the rendezvous between Max Ernst and Runge.
The exhibition "Rendezvous of Dreams" runs at the Hamburg Kunsthalle until October 12. While the show offers an unprecedented opportunity to see these two influential art movements in dialogue, visitors should be prepared for an intensive, almost overwhelming experience that demands significant time and attention to fully appreciate the curatorial ambitions and scholarly depth of this remarkable but perhaps overly ambitious artistic encounter.
