I wonder: did André Breton enjoy housework? He must have spent many an hour cleaning and tending to the dust that surely gathered on all the 5,300 artifacts he kept, at one time or another, in his Parisian apartment. (Or maybe he hired someone.)

Father of Surrealism, poet, and writer, Breton moved into number 42 rue Fontaine in the 9e arrondissement on January 1, 1922, and lived there until his death in 1966. During his tenancy, he filled his rooms with thousands of “paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, books, art catalogs, journals, manuscripts, and works of popular and Oceanic art,” all of which would require considerable domestic maintenance. Of course he may have been entirely indifferent to the dust and allowed it to beard his belongings and fur the shelves, as Quentin Crisp and J. G. Ballard were said to have done.

Artists and writers’ studios are, by their very nature, fascinating places, as they are the workshops where the real creative toil is won. And the clutter of belongings, books, and pictures reveals at first hand the sources, inspirations, and fascinations that produced the work.

Fabrice Maze created this beautiful short film on André Breton’s apartment in 1994, in which the camera takes the viewer on a tour through all the accumulation of art works, books, and dust.

Sadly, three years after Breton’s third wife Elsa died in 2000, the French government proved unable or unwilling to buy the apartment and its collection. This led to an auction of the “largest single record of the Surrealist movement.” The Pompidou Center in Paris purchased a wall from Breton’s former home, together with 255 works of arts and objects, which are now on display at the museum.