Surrealist objects Disturbed object Peeled mountain - Eruption 1902 H : 15,5 cm Charles Ratton, above all an antique dealer and expert in Primitive Arts, presented in 1936, on a proposal from André Breton, a surrealist accumulation of objects melted down following the eruption of Mount Pelee in Martinique in 1902, "disturbed objects" as the artist called them. The objects are classified as follows: natural/natural interpreted/natural incorporated/disturbed/found/found interpreted/American/Oceanic/mathematical/ready-made and ready-made aided/surrealist. This exhibition, important in the history of primitivism, places ethnographic objects alongside objects created by Surrealist artists, thus becoming, according to Sophie Leclerc, "linked by analogy to Surrealist objects, combined with them for subversive purposes, and finally appropriated to become 'full-fledged Surrealist objects' thus allowing the Surrealists to assert their formal and symbolic interest in primitivism." Preserved in its original wooden box and name tag, the "disturbed object" we present was probably exhibited at this exhibition. Surrealist objects True to the principle of their aesthetic, illustrated by Lautréamont's phrase: "Beautiful as the chance meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissection table", the surrealist object is the result of the collage of the most unexpected objects, resulting from the meeting of two different realities on a plane that does not suit them. The effect sought is always surprise, astonishment, disorientation, like that provoked by the irruption of dreams in reality. The association of objects is made in the name of the free association of words or ideas which, according to Freud, dominates unconscious activity and in particular dream activity. As early as 1924, André Breton, in his Introduction to the Discourse on the Little of Reality, proposed to make "certain objects that one can only approach in a dream". The Surrealists, artists and writers, were to devote themselves passionately to this practice. The surrealist object is a double of the surrealist image, this time in three dimensions. Its author associates the most heterogeneous elements in an unusual and provocative way in order to trigger the shock of surprise and transport the spectator into a dream world. Thus, at the Charles Ratton exhibition in 1936, Breton reports in a short article that serves as a catalogue: "There are natural objects - minerals (crystals enclosing fossil water), plants (carnivorous plants), animals (oepyornix egg anteater) - natural objects interpreted (monkey in ferns) or incorporated in assemblages - disturbed objects (modified by natural agents such as fire or earthquake, found objects, exhibited as they are or interpreted - mathematical objects discovered at the Poincaré Institute by Ernst and photographed by Man Ray - wild objects (fetishes and masks) and finally surrealist objects proper. "Breton adds: "The surrealist conception of the object gives way to the creation of the surrealist object, as just defined by Dali, who, for his part, offers under this label his Aphrodisiac Jacket covered with glasses filled with liquor. The three objects we are pleased to present to you are the synthesis of the definition of the "surrealist object" as André Breton conceived it. Although they cannot be formally identified in the images that have come down to us from Charles Ratton's exhibition in 1936, their historical their historical interest is no less unmistakable.