Surrealism in Bruges poses an incongruous culture shock. The streets of the venerable city present an impressive kaleidoscope of medieval architecture, while the picturesque canals recall an era of immense mercantile importance and affluence. In the Groenige Museum a collection of Flemish Primitives documents one of the peaks of Netherlands art, all piquantly at odds with the major Surrealist/Expressionist exhibition now claiming the attention of townspeople and visitors alike.
This two-fold exhibition is designed to illustrate opposing trends within the same period, but the more startling confrontation remains the presence of so much wayward work displayed inside the otherwise historic harmony of Oud Sint-Jan. To be sure, the galleries of Bruges are no strangers to manifestations of this kind, and it is merely their concentration in such strength that challenges established perceptions of the city.
The wilfully-deranged aberrations of imagination through which the Surrealists sought "total freedom of the individual" provide riveting entertainment. Their virtuosity is beyond question, and their inspiration is matter for the wildest speculation - though, in fact, there is nothing unduly provocative about de Chirico's elegant Troubadour or Picabia's easily-accessible Spanish Women, while Severini's enchanting Pierrot makes only a modest gesture of mockery in the direction of convention in the form of an egg balanced precariously on the edge of his guitar. Hard-boiled perhaps, or maybe Faberge forsaking his customary exercise of elaborate ornamentation?
Dali, however, tackles more unlikely and happily, often jokey territory. With typical brash malice, he denounced his fellow-Surrealists as "a coterie of pederasts, all in love with Andre Breton" before going on to become high priest of the movement... "Henceforth," he proclaimed after his spectacular arrival in America during the mid-1930s, "Surrealism was to be more and more identified with me, and with me only."
His arrogance proved well-founded, and the substantial body of his work displayed in Bruges demonstrates its validity. The power and vigour of his painting defy convincing reproduction as his outlandish imaginings range with wholesale abandon from the grim evocation of Spain in 1938 and the horrific Face of War, to the humorous reproduction of the Venus de Milo "with drawers' and the "white aphrodisiac telephone". The culminating point is the macabre and comic gouache of Shirley Temple, describing her as "the youngest sacred monster of the cinema of her time". Equipped with the body of a sphinx, the child star reposes among a grisly assembly of bare bones, indifferent to the bat perched on her head. In the background, a few tiny human figures are shown fleeing in panic from the stark carcass of a ship.
Max Ernst and Paul Delvaux are scantily represented in the exhibition, while Miro and Man Ray achieve greater prominence, with the latter's cloth, rope and metal Enigma of Isadora Ducasse and his Venus Restored taking pride of place, but despite a major retrospective of his prolific output in Brussels last year, Magritte occupies considerably more space. The most novel and appealing of his inconsequential fancies in this collection has to be The illustrated youth, which features an unmade country road curving through tranquil lowland meadows to provide transport for a procession of wholly unrelated objects. They are led by a barrel followed by a truncated torso; then a lion couchant, then a billiard table, a small tuba and a bicycle, with further items becoming indistinguishable as they stretch as far back as the eye can see.
The exhibition changes course as it veers, almost gratefully, towards recognisable mainstream art represented by the Expressionists.
THERE is no mystery attached to van Dongen's study of a voluptuous, swarthy female resting her cheekbone on a forefinger, nor about Dufy's pretty coach travelling through the Bois du Boulogne; none either about Munch's unexpectedly sentimental picture of two prim maidens posing beside a flowering cherry, nor about Herman Kruyder's handsome, jewel-eyed hound - verily a dog to die for!
Kokoscha, too, is explicit in the vivid execution of his "double portrait" and his extremely dangerous-looking ape, while Ensor's few decorative still lifes serve to whet the appetite for the exhaustive collection of his work to be mounted in Brussels this coming autumn. But Kandinsky is something else again.
It is not easy to reconcile the colourful imagery and detail that characterise his impression of Sunday in Old Russia, which dates from 1904, with his later passion for abstract forms. However, this highly-articulate man owned a lively intellect and enthusiastically explained his attraction to the abstract in terms of music which he loved deeply - which may also account for the distinctively operatic nature of the earlier Russian painting.
Supporting Walter Pater's assertion that all art aspires to the condition of music, Kandinsky was determined to create a correspondence between sound and sight through the medium of visual abstraction. His style evolved with extraordinary rapidity as he moved towards the brilliant compositions that are now a familiar landmark of our artistic heritages, and its several states are well served by the exhibition - starting with the fluid eloquence of Lyrics in 1911, and working with increasing enterprise to the daring and complex inspiration of Caprice, which is, to my mind the crowning achievement of his career.
The Surrealist/Expressionist exhibition, which is on loan from Rotterdam's Boijmans-Van Beuningen Museum, continues at Oud Sint-Jan in Bruges until October 17th
