Documenting the Marvelous: The Risks and Rewards of Relying on Installation Photographs in the Writing of Exhibition History

Many of the exhibitions which have in recent years been heralded as “exhibitions that made art history,” such as those included in Bruce Altshuler’s two-volume study of the same name,[1] have been recognized as such on the strength of photographic evidence. Among the best-documented exhibitions discussed by Altshuler was the 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, organized by Marcel Duchamp, André Breton and Paul éluard for the Galérie Beaux-Arts in Paris. The exhibition showed the work of Surrealist stalwarts including Salvador Dalí and Man Ray, as well as a host of less well-known artists with an affiliation to Surrealism. As shrewd self-publicists, the Surrealists were characteristically savvy in using photography to ensure the legacy of their radical exhibitions. Consequently, there is a wealth of images, which art historians and exhibition studies scholars such as Altshuler, Lewis Kachur and Alyce Mahon have since used to advocate the significance of these exhibitions. In turn, this scholarly attention has reasserted the Surrealists’ canonical status in art history.