In this work, Ubac removes everyday objects—an egg, knife, coin, and cord—from their usual contexts, stripping them of their meaning as items of consumption, utility, or exchange, and assembles them according to his own flexible logic. When Ubac exhibited this photograph with the knife pointing up, he subtitled it “Night Landscape,” but when he displayed the photograph inverted, with the knife pointed down, he called it “Alphabetical Order.” By populating his image with common items surrounded by an eerie glow and giving it changeable subtitles, Ubac demonstrates the associative dream logic of Surrealism.
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Inscription: Inscribed in ink on print, verso UL: "les objets 1939 // Solarisation"; inscribed in ink on print, verso UR: "7 [encircled]";
Serge Vandercom (Belgian artist); [Prakapas Gallery to Waddell, October 23, 1987]; John C. Waddell
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 23–December 31, 1989.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 28–April 22, 1990.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," May 10–July 15, 1990.
High Museum of Art. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 5–April 28, 1991.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art," June 8–August 4, 1991.
IVAM, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia. "The New Vision, IVAM, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia," January 20, 1995–March 26, 1995.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Modern and Contemporary Art. "Reimagining Modernism - Photographs Rotation 1," July 21–November 16, 2014.
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