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Value And Hidden Cost In André Breton’S Surrealist Collection, Katharine Conley

Arts & Sciences Articles

André Breton’s collection provides a unique perspective on the environment within which the principles of surrealism were crystallized. In addition to his collection of European paintings, Breton’s Oceanic object collection grew during World War Two in New York. In essays from the 1950s and 1960s, Breton ascribed a “poetic view” and “prestige” to these things with no reference to their monetary value. And yet his history of acquisition and de-acquisition of such things and paintings show that he also understood collecting as a form of investment, despite his avowed objection to the forces of French colonialism that made it accessible …