Objects of Desire: Surrealist Collecting and the Art of the Pacific Northwest Coast

• Main Author: Davis, Karl J
• Other Authors: Harris, Steven (Art and Design), Lowrey, Kathleen (Anthropology), Greer, Joan (Art and Design)
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Alberta. Department of Art and Design. 2014
• Subjects: art; anthro-se; Pacific; Strauss; First Nations; tlingit; Tsimshian; Tsimshian*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10402/era.37769

Specialization: History of Art, Design and Visual Culture Degree: Master of Arts Abstract: This thesis is an examination of four figures connected to the surrealist movement: André Breton, Kurt Seligmann, Wolfgang Paalen, and the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and their interest in art and objects from the First Nations peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. It includes case-studies of four specific objects that each of them collected: a Kwakwaka'wakw Yaxwiwe' headdress, a Wet'suwet'en Keïgiet totem pole, a Tlingit Chief Shakes Bear Screen, and a Tsimshian Shaman Figure, respectively. While recent scholarship fixes their interest in these objects to their backgrounds in anthropology, philosophy and theory, I will argue that the basis for their collecting was driven by 'surrealist desire' and that other considerations were secondary to this desire. I examine the history of surrealist collecting, the intersection of anthropology and surrealism, and the role of the 'primitive' object in surrealism.