First Papers of Surrealism, 1942

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As I was saying a couple of weeks ago, Surrealism will be 100 years old this year, if you mark the movement’s birth from the first manifestoes (there were two different ones) published in October 1924. Surrealism doesn’t really have a definite beginning, however, either in 1924 or earlier on; the movement evolved over several years, with different factions competing for followers while squabbling over intentions. After a great deal of ferment the manifestoes from the opposed groups led by Yvan Goll and André Breton were a declaration that something substantial had been happening that required definition. I’m not sure why all of this interests me as much as it does just now, but I’m looking forward to seeing where the interest leads. Don’t be surprised to see more posts on the subject in the coming months.

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So, then… Fast-forward to 1942 and First Papers of Surrealism, an exhibition of paintings staged in New York City by the Coordination Council of French Relief Societies in October of that year. The exhibition was curated by André Breton with the assistance of Marcel Duchamp, Breton having recently arrived in the United States after escaping from Nazi-occupied France together with a small group of Surrealist artists, some of whom were represented in the show. Duchamp’s main contribution was His Twine, an installation of a large quantity of string threaded around the exhibition space through which the visitors had to peer in order to see the paintings. Duchamp also invited a group of children to play ball games inside the gallery on the opening night. This wasn’t the first Surrealist exhibition to be held in New York—Julien Levy had introduced the city to the latest art movement at his own gallery in 1933, and had been showing Surrealist paintings and Joseph Cornell’s artworks in the years that followed—but First Papers on Surrealism was an important event, with many major artists represented.

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What you see here are pages from the exhibition catalogue, a publication which is more like one of the smaller Surrealist magazines than a mere list of the pictures on display. Marcel Duchamp designed the die-cut cover (those holes make me wonder whether these were also originally threaded with string), while the catalogue interior contains an intriguing collection of quotes, captions, photographs and illustrations. Breton’s “Great Transparent Ones” raise their invisible heads again, while the artists and curators are all depicted in a series of “compensation portraits” which stand in for an absence of suitable photos.

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The Great Transparent Ones

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Le Grand Transparent (1947) by Jacques Hérold.

The Great Transparent Ones

Man is perhaps not the centre, the cynosure of the universe. One can go so far as to believe that there exist above him, on the animal scale, beings whose behaviour is as strange to him as his may be to the mayfly or the whale. Nothing necessarily stands in the way of these creatures’ being able to completely escape man’s sensory system of references through a camouflage of whatever sort one cares to imagine, though the possibility of such a camouflage is posited only by the theory of forms and the study of mimetic animals. There is no doubt that there is ample room for speculation here, even though this idea tends to place man in the same modest conditions of interpretation of his own universe as the child who is pleased to form his conception of an ant from its underside just after he has kicked over an anthill. In considering disturbances such as cyclones, in face of which man is powerless to be anything but a victim or a witness, or those such as war, notoriously inadequate versions of which are set forth, it would not be impossible, in the course of a vast work over which the most daring sort of induction should never cease to preside, to approximate the structure and the constitution of such hypothetical beings (which mysteriously reveal themselves to us when we are afraid and when we are conscious of the workings of chance) to the point where they become credible.

I think it necessary to point out that I am not departing appreciably from Novalis’ testimony: “In reality we live in an animal whose parasites we are. The constitution of this animal determines ours and vice versa,” and that I am only agreeing with a thought of William James’s: “Who knows whether, in nature, we do not occupy just as small a place alongside beings whose existence we do not suspect as our cats and dogs that live with us in our homes?” Even learned men do not all contradict this view of things: “Perhaps there circle round about us beings built on the same plan as we are, but different, men for example whose albumins are straight,” said Émile Duclaux, a former director of the Pasteur Institute (1840–1904).

A new myth? Must these things be convinced that they result from a mirage or must they be given a chance to show themselves?

André Breton, Prolegomena to a Third Surrealist Manifesto, or Not, 1942

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Le Grand Transparent (1947) by Jacques Hérold.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The Surrealism archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
The Execution of the Testament of the Marquis de Sade by Jean Benoît
Chance encounters on the dissecting table
The Marvellous
Surrealist cartomancy

Weekend links 705

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The Seven Lamps (c.1956) by Marion Elizabeth Adnams.

• At Spoon & Tamago: All 54 playing cards reinterpreted through still-life photography by Yuni Yoshida.

• At Colossal: Photographer Mikko Lagerstedt illuminates the magical solitude of the Nordic winter.

• At 3:AM Magazine: Alexander B. Joy explores the 9th minute of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: The Seven Godlike Books of James McCourt.

• Mix of the week: Winter Solstice 5 at Ambientblog.

Entries for the RSPCA Young Photographer 2023.

Artmaker Blog curated by Bruce Sterling.

• New music: Earth Drone by The Owl.

Ace Of Spades (1965) by Link Wray | Jack Of Diamonds (1966) by The Daily Flash | Pack Of Cards (1970) by Nat Cole

The Corset and the Jellyfish

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Cover design by Brian DeVoot and Elizabeth Story.

In the post this week, the latest book from Tachyon, a collection of Oulipo-inflected Surrealism from Nick Bantock:

Little is known of the fascinating manuscript that Nick Bantock has come to possess. It was discovered in an attic in North London, stuffed into a battered cardboard box, and unceremoniously delivered directly to Nick’s doorstep. Inside the package lay one hundred evocatively absurd stories, one hundred humorous drawings of strangely familiar, quirkish glyphs, plus a cryptically poetic note signed only as “HH.” (Possibly the well-known, eccentric billionaire, Hamilton Hasp?)

In these stories—each consisting of precisely 100 words—strange creatures slip through alleyways, and eerie streets swallow people whole. Taken altogether, they may constitute a puzzle that no one has been able to solve thus far. Could there even be one missing story?

I didn’t design this one but I was happy to see a preview copy which I described as “A tapestry of exquisite miniatures”. Each of Bantock’s illustrations is printed in colour, which I think is a first for the publisher. Given the time of year, The Corset and the Jellyfish is an ideal gift for any visitors to Calvino’s invisible cities.

The art of Shin Taga

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The World of Edogawa Rampo (1991).

Ushering in the Spook Season with the dark and strange etchings of Japanese artist Shin Taga. Dark, strange, also meticulously detailed and erotic enough for his work to be featured at Shunga Gallery where they draw fitting comparison with the eroto-Surrealism of Hans Bellmer. As is often the case with older Japanese artists—Taga was born in 1946—there doesn’t appear to be a dedicated website or even much information about the creator of these works. There are, however, a number of online galleries with decent reproductions, also catalogues, including one which presents a series of prints based on the stories of Japanese horror writer Edogawa Rampo.

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Mask 01.

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View with a Face.

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Peerless.

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Fish No. 19.

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