Speed Inspired: Other Ways

The arts provide the opportunities for inspiration, reflection, and connection needed now more than ever.

The Speed Inspired series invites local actors, creative writers, dancers, musicians, poets, visual artists, and creatives of all kinds to produce an original work in response to artworks from the Speed’s permanent collection. 

Yves Tanguy
French, 1900 ‑ 1955
Other Ways, 1939
Oil on panel
Museum purchase with funds given by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Horner 1964.5

FROM THE COLLECTION

Erika Holmquist-Wall, Mary & Barry Bingham Sr., Curator of European & American Painting & Sculpture

Dave Harrity’s insights and commentary on Yves Tanguy’s approach are spot-on from a curatorial perspective. The relationship between word and image was a key component of Surrealism, and titles of artworks often complicated rather than clarified the meaning of a work. Not so with Other Ways; as Dave rightly points out, it is the perfect summation of Tanguy’s artistic philosophy. André Breton, the charismatic “leader” of the French Surrealists, believed that one day Tanguy’s images “will be made clear with a language that is not yet understood but which people are still going to read, which they are going to talk, and which they are going to perceive is best adapted to the new changes.” Perhaps, knowing and understanding our own shadow sides is the best way to access the language of which Breton spoke.

FROM THE COMMUNITY

Dave Harrity is a writer, artist, and teacher from Louisville, Kentucky. FULL BIO HERE