In 1977, the photographer (and “Bright Young Thing”) Barbara Ker-Seymer wrote to Len Lye scoffing that a curator from Hayward Gallery had arranged the loan of her copy of Lye’s No Trouble for the 1978 exhibition Dada and Surrealism Reviewed. Lye would have risen to the bait, always given to downplaying his connections to the surrealist movement. I’ve previously briefly written on his involvement with British Surrealism in this article, particularly around the London International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936. A year after this blockbuster, Lye featured in Surrealist Objects & Poems at the London Gallery organised by Roland Penrose and ELT Mesens.

What fascinated me about Lye’s work in this exhibition was its obscurity. The exhibition catalogue (above) indicates two pieces by Lye, Long Strips and Colour Cuts. After more than ten years working with Lye’s archives with the Len Lye Foundation, these two works were always a mystery. It seemed logical that the titles were a rather prosaic reference to film materials given Lye was by this point well established with his experimental film practice. Lye also had a precedent of refashioning film-related imagery into exhibition materials (see his inclusion of enlarged frames from Tusalava in the 10th Seven and Five Society exhibition in 1931). Beyond that assumption, I did not think further detail on these works would ever appear.
Several years ago while browsing the Lee Miller archives (online, although held at Farleys House & Gallery), I realised their holdings of exhibition documentation by Miller’s husband (and organiser of the International Surrealist exhibition), Roland Penrose, might turn up something connected to Lye. His documentation of the Surrealist Objects & Poems was a welcome sight. Slowly browsing these photographs, I was confident I’d recognise Lye’s work and fairly quickly located Long Strips and Colour Cuts.
The above photo shows these two works mounted in the corners of the Gallery’s archway. Each involves a pane of glass arranged with a collage of 35mm film strips and various other media including drawings, photographs and possibly other printed materials. It is possible these items were sandwiched between panes of glass in the manner of Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. Which work is which isn’t clear but I’d suggest Long Strips (given the uniformity of its strip length) is on the left and Colour Cuts the right (given its shorter and varied strip length).
It is tempting to identify the film imagery included in these works, although they may well not connect to a specific film or films. What interests me is the other materials included in these collages. Long Strips includes an illustration of a man in costume with the title “Anthony Universe”. The (unreadable) type set around this image on the page suggests it is from a magazine – a found object strangely pasted over Lye’s more careful verticle arrangement of film strips.
Moving on to Colour Cuts, things are a little clearer even though the arrangement is more chaotic. On the right of this work there is an illustration or photograph of a figure too obscure to identify – possibly taken from an ethnographic book or magazine given Lye’s interests at the time. In the centre of the work is another image, again too unclear to identify but possibly a portrait of a woman given the subject’s clothing. I’ve spent a great deal of time trying to confirm if this is a portrait of Gertrude Stein on account of their acquaintance, or perhaps Lye’s wife Jane or mother Rose.
Firmer territory with Colour Cuts is the final element in the upper left. This is unquestionably a drawing by Lye himself, one that has been identified in the Len Lye Foundation archive.

The photograph of this drawing (above) made by or for Lye in the 1970s indicates these two collage works either perished or were disassembled at some point. You can see the tape (and resulting damage) around several edges as an indication of how these works were assembled. Happily, this drawing confirms the two works in the exhibition documentation as Lye’s works, even if it suggests the works had a temporary life.
For more detail on the Surrealist Objects and Poems exhibition, see this this text by Dr. Katia Sowels.
(This is an archived article from a previous website originally posted on 30 May 2024)
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