Real and Surreal Collide in new Madison Exhibit

Thewoman in painting seems anxious as she makes her way through tiled passagesthat end in oddly angled forced perspectives. Gates, turnstyles and stairwayrailings form a cage while men in trench coats, many sharing the same face,lurk all around her.

Despiteits highly realistic style, the visual context in George Tooker’s The Subway, painted in 1950, may well beproduct of the woman’s fearful mind. The painting is one of the cornerstonepieces in “Real/Surreal,” the new exhibit at the Madison Museum of ContemporaryArt (MMoCA).

Theexhibit, which opened Jan. 25, offers 70 works that explore the collision betweenrealistic style and imagined concept. On loan from New York’s Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art, the exhibit features some of the more imaginative works byfamiliar American artists such as Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Thomas HartBenton and others.

The Whitney collection occupies the second floor of themuseum, located in Overture Center for the Arts west end. The first floor showcaseswork by Wisconsin surrealists such as Aaron Bohrod, Marshall Glasier, WalterHamady and John Wilde drawn from MMoCA’s collection. The companion exhibit explores the lasting traditions ofSurrealism and Magic Realism as they developed in Wisconsin during the 20thCentury.

“The exhibition takes an unusual approach,” says MMoCAcurator Richard Axsom. Rather than featuring just one well-known art movement, “Real/Surreal” focuses on the tensionand connections between two powerful currents in 20^th century art.”

The term realism broadly refers to believabledepictions of what is seen, while at the heart of Surrealism lays the subversionof reality through the imagination and subconscious. These approaches aredifferent and even oppositional; however, their convergence encourages new waysof looking at American art of the 1930s and ‘40s, Axsom says.

The curator even reconfigured the gallery space in ways thathighlight the works while creating its own surrealistic environment. Theexhibit, which runs through April 27, was possible only because the Whitney ismoving to new quarters in New York and decided to send part of its collectionon tour. MMoCA’s “Real/Surreal” exhibition is the collection’s only Wisconsinappearance.