L’Ultrameuble, (The ‘Ultra-furniture’), 1937
Price range: $295.00 through $540.00
A stool that stands on four women’s legs, in stockings and heels, with a birdcage on top and, inside it, two hands pretending to be birds. Kurt Seligmann made it in 1937 for the surrealists’ great exhibition of 1938, and as far as we know the object itself no longer survives. This is one of only two known photographs of it, and the only one showing it complete, birdcage and all.
In black and white it is quiet enough to hang anywhere and strange enough that nobody walks past it. Put it where people will stop: a hallway, beside a bar, above a reading chair.
The print
Print Quality: True photographic C-type print, made to order
Media: Fuji Matt photographic paper
Texture & Tone: Semi-matte finish with a fine stipple
Longevity: Archival photographic paper, made to last
A real photographic print suits a real photograph. The soft greys of the gallery wall, the sheen of the stockings and the fine wires of the cage keep their depth, with no glare.
Sizes available:
42×59cm, 17×23″, fine art photographic print, open edition
59×84cm, 23×33″, fine art photographic print, open edition
70×100cm, 28×39″, fine art photographic print, open edition
Safe, tracked delivery guaranteed worldwide, with sustainable packaging.
The story
In January 1938 the surrealists took over the Galerie Beaux-Arts in Paris for the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme. André Breton and Paul Éluard organised it; Marcel Duchamp was billed as “generator-arbitrator”, Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst as technical advisers, and Man Ray ran the lighting. Visitors passed Dalí’s Rainy Taxi and a street of sixteen surrealist mannequins into a hall hung with 1,200 coal sacks; on the opening night they were handed torches to find their way.
Seligmann’s Ultra-furniture was shown there alongside sculpture by Alberto Giacometti and objects by Meret Oppenheim. That June the exhibition travelled to Galerie Robert in Amsterdam, where an unknown photographer took this picture. The original print, inscribed in Dutch “a typical example of surrealism”, is in the Rijksmuseum.
