The Thinker: A CMA Blog

Through 167 photographs and illustrated books, Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography tells the story of a radical social, political, and cultural moment in early twentieth-century art, documented by those such as Hungarian photographer, Brassaï. Photographing night clubs in Paris after-hours, Brassaï captured what Curator of Photography Barbara Tannenbaum calls the "shadow world."

Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography, is on view now through Sunday, January 11 at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Through 167 photographs and illustrated books, the collection tells two stories: one of a radical moment in early twentieth-century art and the other of impassioned collector David Raymond, whose adventurous spirit and vision harmonized perfectly with his subject. In our ongoing video series surrounding the exhibition, we take an inside look at Forbidden Games and examine the definition and influence of surrealist photography.

The library’s rare book collection includes a deluxe edition of the catalogue for the Marcel Duchamp exhibition at Ronny Van de Velde, Antwerpen, in 1991. We’ve installed the volume in the display case in the reference room of the Ingalls Library to celebrate the museum’s fall exhibition Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography in the Kelvin & Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall.

The Cleveland Museum of Art's latest acquisitions include a Virgin and Child, a rare 13th-century wooden sculpture from the Mosan region of Europe; a Standing Female Figure, a clay figure representative of the Classic Veracruz period on Mexico’s Gulf Coast; and Just the two of us, one of contemporary artist Julia Wachtel’s first paintings to employ cartoons. The museum also announced the addition of eight photographs by Ansel Adams, a gift from Frances P. Taft, a longtime museum supporter and trustee.