Surrealist's property to be auctioned

PARIS -- Writer Andre Breton, founder of the surrealist movement, spent a lifetime filling his apartment with trinkets and treasures -- from butterflies on stickpins to tribal masks to paintings by Magritte and Miro.\nBreton's wife, Elisa, lovingly preserved the small apartment in the lively Pigalle neighborhood of Paris, clutter intact, for decades after he died in 1966.\nNow that she, too, has died, the 4,100-piece collection is to be auctioned. The sale has started an impassioned debate about culture, money and French history.\nCritics say Breton's eclectic treasures were meant to be seen as an ensemble -- a surrealist manifesto -- and shouldn't be parceled off. On Monday, as bidding opened, dozens of protesters banded together outside the Drouot auction house to block the doors.\nOne protester handed out flyers and admonished visitors: "Don't buy anything!"\n"They're destroying his work," said the man, a writer who goes by the name Laurent Laurent. "The objects he chose have meaning because they're placed together. They're tearing it apart."\nBreton himself never gave any indication of what he wanted done with the collection, now worth about $30 million. His family tried for years to have it preserved -- but the French government never bought into the idea.\nCritics, who circulated a petition and wrote to President Jacques Chirac, say the state is letting cultural treasures slip away from France. Some say the apartment at 42 rue Fontaine, where Breton spent his time writing, entertaining and smoking his pipe, should have been opened to visitors.\nOthers argue Breton -- who hated museums -- would have bristled at the idea of a public shrine but might have enjoyed the idea that his bric-a-brac would find new owners.\n"It's interesting, the idea that all these objects will have a new life," said Henri-Claude Randier, one of the sale's art experts.\nOutside France, many people are most familiar with surrealism's visual artists: Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau. In France, every teenager studies Breton's literature, and many take his message of nonconformity to heart.\nThe Georges Pompidou Center already owns a part of Breton's collection -- a wall of tribal masks and modern paintings. The Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris has set aside about $1 to $2 million to try to keep more works in the capital.