Out of Hours

Context: Tate Modern: Activity 1

Introduction
Activity 1: Surrealism in the Salon
Activity 2: Art and Display
Activity 3: The Gallery Environment

Look at an image of an early 20th-century salon. What is it like? How does it differ to the exhibition spaces at Tate Modern? What sort of people are they? What are they looking at? What kind of reactions do you think they would have had to Dada and Surrealist works? Imagine Salvador Dali's Lobster Telephone had been secretly planted into the salon. Draw into the image. Imagine how the salon audience would have reacted. Add a speech bubble with a comment and stick it on. Opposite, stick a reproduction of Lobster Telephone.

Discuss: Dada and Surrealism. Use picture cards (eg. Duchamp's Fountain, Dali's Lobster Telephone, Man Ray's Indestructible Object) and consider words 'provocative' and 'subversive'. Aim to get pupils to think about why these artists made provocative work. For example, Fountain by Marcel Duchamp could be discussed in terms of how this came to be seen as art, and the reaction it may have provoked at the time. What do we expect an art object to be? Is a urinal something we would usually look at as art? In what context would we usually see a urinal and how would we typically look at it? What happens when Duchamp puts this into a gallery? It could be compared to Monet's Water-lilies, produced in same period... Why did the artists adopt such different approaches?