Male Surrealists objectified and fetishized different parts of the female body, but women also made Surrealist objects in the 1930s, which often commented on sexual objectification or explored facets of the object resonant with gendered experience. Man Ray, Cadeau 1921, editioned replica 1972 Marcel Duchamp & Enrico Donati, Please Touch 1947Ĭhadwick notes that “Surrealist objects by male artists often have an explicitly erotic content ( Bellmer’s Dolls, Duchamp’s Please Touch), disturb by means of violent juxtapositions ( Man Ray’s Gift, Dominguez’s Conversion of Energy), or combine both functions (Dominguez’s Arrival of the Belle Epoque)” (118). As Whitney Chadwick argues, “Capturing the images of the dream in reality, crystallizing the objects of desire and affirming the magic link between the unconscious and the real world, the Surrealist object became the perfect meeting point of Surrealist theory and practice” (118).
Interest in the Surrealist object grew in the 1930s. Surrealist Objects and the Objectification of the Female Body