PERSIAN SURREALISM
A Study on Surrealism in the Short Story Oldooz and the Crows Written by Iranian Writer Samad Behrangi
Aazam Jahangiri
English Literature, Shoushtar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shoushtar, Iran.
ABSTRACT
This study attempts to analyze Surrealism in Oldooz and the Crows, a short story written by
the Iranian author Samad Behrangi. Surrealism is a cultural movement founded in 1920s by
the French poet and critic Andre Breton. The surrealists favored in the function of the world
of unconscious mind in integrating fancies and dreams to the phenomenal world in order to
elaborate a higher reality. They also were interested in Freud's theories about unconscious
mind and the power of free imagination especially in Children. Moreover, they insisted on
the automatic writing avoiding regular artistic conventions and restrictive rule. In this
regard, the researcher tries to discuss the imaginative freedom and childhood dreams
propounded in Behrangi's short story Oldooz and the Crows to consider whether this literary
work can be considered as a surrealist work or not.
Friday, February 14, 2020
The Surrealism of the Photographic Image: Bazin,
Barthes, and the Digital Sweet Hereafter
by Adam Lowenstein
Cinema Journal, 46, Number 3, Spring 2007, pp. 54-82 (Article)
Abstract:
This essay analyzes the influence of surrealism on Bazin and Barthes to argue that their commitment to photographic realism is more accurately described as an investment in surrealism. This revised take on the work of Bazin and Barthes is tested against notions of cinema in the age of new media by examining The Sweet Hereafter within an “intermediated” context.
by Adam Lowenstein
Cinema Journal, 46, Number 3, Spring 2007, pp. 54-82 (Article)
Abstract:
This essay analyzes the influence of surrealism on Bazin and Barthes to argue that their commitment to photographic realism is more accurately described as an investment in surrealism. This revised take on the work of Bazin and Barthes is tested against notions of cinema in the age of new media by examining The Sweet Hereafter within an “intermediated” context.
THE SURREALIST NOVEL: ITS PRINCIPLES AND STRUCTURES
IN ANDRE BRETON'S NADJA, L'AMOUR FOU AND ARCANE 17
by Carol Elizabeth Lang
"La liberte n fest pas, comme la liberation, la lutte contre la maladie, elle est la sante."
Andre Breton Arcane 17
"Freedom is not like liberation, the fight against disease, it is health."
ABSTRACT
Surrealist principles and structures in Nadja, L TAmour fou and Arcane 17 reveal the continuing preoccupation of Andre Breton with the liberation of the unconscious and its communication to the reader. The purpose of this dissertation is to trace the evolution of such structures and to demonstrate the contribution of Breton’s early medical background to these works including the influence of J. Babinski.
In the Introduction the lack of interest in these works on the part of key critics is considered. Passages from Clair de terre, LesPas perdus and the Manifeste du Surrealisme are seen, on the other hand, to suggest the early concern of Breton with the potential of the Surrealist novel.
Each of the three works is then treated in depth. The explicit intentions of Breton are cited (except in the case of Arcane 17). N e x t , the physical structures of each work are examined. These are considered to be spatial indications of Breton’s thought. Primary and secondary divisions, paragraphing, sentence length and illustrated matter are discussed.
Special attention is given to Breton’s continuing attempt to provide the work as a ’’glass house” to the reader. Physical structures are seen to be original, varied, uneven, open and groping in Nadja.
They are more even but more eclectic in L ’Amour fou. In Arcane 17 they
are structures capable of communicating Breton’s most mature, intense
expression.
Thematic structures are explored in detail. In Nadja these are many. Self-expression via the unconscious, surrealist space, attraction and repulsion, the four elements, the promenade, the encounter and liberty and creation receive attention. Particular study is made of the
principal themes of the unconscious, the promenade, the encounter and liberty. In L^Amour fou, Breton is seen to have gathered these loose thematic structures into a tighter framework. From the earlier themes of Nadja four principal notions are shown to have developed: objective chance, the encounter, mad love, and woman and child.
The thematic intensity of Arcane 1 7 , finally, is seen to depend on the integration of
three structures, that of disintegration and reintegration, woman and the child and liberty and creation. Use of generative images to document and communicate these notions to the reader is noted.
In addition, lexical elements and syntactical structures are examined since they play a unique role in the Surrealist documentation of the unconscious in these works. Interplay of proper nouns, juxtaposition of psychological, scientific, poetic, casual and Biblical terms,
as well as an often utilized "springboard" technique are explored.
These elements, as well as the creative use of open-ended sentences,
italics and suspension points permit simultaneous documentation of objective and subjective realities.
In the Conclusion these principles and structures are found to provide for the liberation of the unconscious and the consequent evolution of the dream. At the same time they involve closely superimposed objective and subjective documentation of this process. Both aspects
must be considered characteristic of the Surrealist novel as envisioned by Breton.
by Carol Elizabeth Lang
"La liberte n fest pas, comme la liberation, la lutte contre la maladie, elle est la sante."
Andre Breton Arcane 17
"Freedom is not like liberation, the fight against disease, it is health."
ABSTRACT
Surrealist principles and structures in Nadja, L TAmour fou and Arcane 17 reveal the continuing preoccupation of Andre Breton with the liberation of the unconscious and its communication to the reader. The purpose of this dissertation is to trace the evolution of such structures and to demonstrate the contribution of Breton’s early medical background to these works including the influence of J. Babinski.
In the Introduction the lack of interest in these works on the part of key critics is considered. Passages from Clair de terre, LesPas perdus and the Manifeste du Surrealisme are seen, on the other hand, to suggest the early concern of Breton with the potential of the Surrealist novel.
Each of the three works is then treated in depth. The explicit intentions of Breton are cited (except in the case of Arcane 17). N e x t , the physical structures of each work are examined. These are considered to be spatial indications of Breton’s thought. Primary and secondary divisions, paragraphing, sentence length and illustrated matter are discussed.
Special attention is given to Breton’s continuing attempt to provide the work as a ’’glass house” to the reader. Physical structures are seen to be original, varied, uneven, open and groping in Nadja.
They are more even but more eclectic in L ’Amour fou. In Arcane 17 they
are structures capable of communicating Breton’s most mature, intense
expression.
Thematic structures are explored in detail. In Nadja these are many. Self-expression via the unconscious, surrealist space, attraction and repulsion, the four elements, the promenade, the encounter and liberty and creation receive attention. Particular study is made of the
principal themes of the unconscious, the promenade, the encounter and liberty. In L^Amour fou, Breton is seen to have gathered these loose thematic structures into a tighter framework. From the earlier themes of Nadja four principal notions are shown to have developed: objective chance, the encounter, mad love, and woman and child.
The thematic intensity of Arcane 1 7 , finally, is seen to depend on the integration of
three structures, that of disintegration and reintegration, woman and the child and liberty and creation. Use of generative images to document and communicate these notions to the reader is noted.
In addition, lexical elements and syntactical structures are examined since they play a unique role in the Surrealist documentation of the unconscious in these works. Interplay of proper nouns, juxtaposition of psychological, scientific, poetic, casual and Biblical terms,
as well as an often utilized "springboard" technique are explored.
These elements, as well as the creative use of open-ended sentences,
italics and suspension points permit simultaneous documentation of objective and subjective realities.
In the Conclusion these principles and structures are found to provide for the liberation of the unconscious and the consequent evolution of the dream. At the same time they involve closely superimposed objective and subjective documentation of this process. Both aspects
must be considered characteristic of the Surrealist novel as envisioned by Breton.
The Re-Enchantment of Surrealism:
Remedios Varo’s Visionary Artists
RICKI O´RAWE
Queen’s University Belfast
Abstract
The visionary prowess of the artist was established, in both the visual and verbal arts, by the Symbolists in fin de siècle France. This article asserts a continuity between the avowed spiritual dimension of their work and the visionary power of surrealist art asserted—despite strong resistance from the centre—by a group of renegade surrealists in the 1920s and beyond. To do so, it explores the representations of artists that Spanish-born Mexican painter Remedios Varo (1908- 1963) depicts in her work, demonstrating how they might be better understood when analysed in relation to Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff’s (1866?-1949) esoteric aesthetics. In doing so, it reveals a neglected, postsecular trajectory in the history of surrealism.
Keywords Remedios Varo; Surrealism; Mysticism; Le Grand Jeu; Gurdjieff; Ouspensky; Modernity; Western Esotericism
RICKI O´RAWE
Queen’s University Belfast
Abstract
The visionary prowess of the artist was established, in both the visual and verbal arts, by the Symbolists in fin de siècle France. This article asserts a continuity between the avowed spiritual dimension of their work and the visionary power of surrealist art asserted—despite strong resistance from the centre—by a group of renegade surrealists in the 1920s and beyond. To do so, it explores the representations of artists that Spanish-born Mexican painter Remedios Varo (1908- 1963) depicts in her work, demonstrating how they might be better understood when analysed in relation to Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff’s (1866?-1949) esoteric aesthetics. In doing so, it reveals a neglected, postsecular trajectory in the history of surrealism.
Keywords Remedios Varo; Surrealism; Mysticism; Le Grand Jeu; Gurdjieff; Ouspensky; Modernity; Western Esotericism
re-reading J. G. Ballard’s
Unlimited Dream Company
GAVIN PARKINSON
Abstract
J. G. Ballard’s novel The Unlimited Dream Company (1979) has not received as much critical attention as the books by Ballard that
preceded or came after it, perhaps because it is even less easy than his other fiction to categorize, entering a world of the fantastic and erotic as
opposed to the more familiar science fiction, dystopic, and urban terrains mapped by the author. In the scholarship on the novel the central
protagonist ‘Blake’ has been connected with some justification to the figure of William Blake, yet this article shows how that identification can
only be fully understood by recognizing the role played by pre-Surrealist writing and Surrealist art as the means towards forging Blake’s
character and behaviour. Using both Surrealist theoretical texts and those by and on the Comte de Lautréamont, it is argued that The Unlimited
Dream Company creates a mythic figure and a world that are motivated by desire as the Surrealists understood that term. This article enhances
and elaborates that reading by demonstrating that in order to give the freest possible rein to the idea of a world given over to desire, Ballard
harnessed the art of Hans Bellmer and Max Ernst and, in doing so, achieved the aim of Surrealism to create a new myth.
#PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY
"Sightseeing in Paris with Baudelaire and Breton"
Benton Jay Komins,
Comparative Literature and Culture 2.1 (2000)
Volume 2 Issue 1 (March 2000) Article 6
Abstract:
In his article "Sightseeing in Paris with Baudelaire and Breton," Benton Jay Komins
discusses the tensions between Charles Baudelaire's acts of modern appropriation and AndréBreton's imaginative seizing of the démodé. While Breton roams the Parisian cityscape with the same aspect of creative gazing as Charles Baudelaire's nineteenth-century dandy, the objects and experiences that he privileges are different from the dandy's fashionable marvels. In texts such as Nadja passé artifacts captivate Breton. Between Baudelaire's revelling in the elegant modern possibilities of dandysme and Breton's imaginative seizing of démodé objects, something significant has occurred: Twentieth-century urbanites like Breton no longer celebrate the experience of the new; rather, they privilege the obsolete, injecting it with inspirational possibilities. Against the cultural frame of Baudelaire's dandy and the social phenomenon of the fetishized commodity, Breton's twentieth-century descriptions of ruined Parisian landmarks, decrepit neighbourhoods, and exhausted everyday objects indeed become political.
"Sightseeing in Paris with Baudelaire and Breton"
Benton Jay Komins,
Comparative Literature and Culture 2.1 (2000)
Volume 2 Issue 1 (March 2000) Article 6
Abstract:
In his article "Sightseeing in Paris with Baudelaire and Breton," Benton Jay Komins
discusses the tensions between Charles Baudelaire's acts of modern appropriation and AndréBreton's imaginative seizing of the démodé. While Breton roams the Parisian cityscape with the same aspect of creative gazing as Charles Baudelaire's nineteenth-century dandy, the objects and experiences that he privileges are different from the dandy's fashionable marvels. In texts such as Nadja passé artifacts captivate Breton. Between Baudelaire's revelling in the elegant modern possibilities of dandysme and Breton's imaginative seizing of démodé objects, something significant has occurred: Twentieth-century urbanites like Breton no longer celebrate the experience of the new; rather, they privilege the obsolete, injecting it with inspirational possibilities. Against the cultural frame of Baudelaire's dandy and the social phenomenon of the fetishized commodity, Breton's twentieth-century descriptions of ruined Parisian landmarks, decrepit neighbourhoods, and exhausted everyday objects indeed become political.
WOMEN SURREALISTS: SEXUALITY, FETISH, FEMININITY AND FEMALE
SURREALISM
BY
SABINA DANIELA STENT
A Thesis Submitted to
THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Modern Languages
School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music
The University of Birmingham
September 2011
SURREALISM
BY
SABINA DANIELA STENT
A Thesis Submitted to
THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Modern Languages
School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music
The University of Birmingham
September 2011
ABSTRACT
The objective of this thesis is to challenge the patriarchal traditions of Surrealism by
examining the topic from the perspective of its women practitioners. Unlike past
research, which often focuses on the biographical details of women artists, this thesis
provides a case study of a select group of women Surrealists – chosen for the variety
of their artistic practice and creativity – based on the close textual analysis of selected
works. Specifically, this study will deal with names that are familiar (Lee Miller,
Meret Oppenheim, Frida Kahlo), marginal (Elsa Schiaparelli) or simply ignored or
dismissed within existing critical analyses (Alice Rahon). The focus of individual
chapters will range from photography and sculpture to fashion, alchemy and folklore.
By exploring subjects neglected in much orthodox male Surrealist practice, it will
become evident that the women artists discussed here created their own form of
Surrealism, one that was respectful and loyal to the movement’s founding principles
even while it playfully and provocatively transformed them.
WOMEN IN SURREALISM
the imagination in the wake of Surrealism
Corneli van den Berg
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements in respect of the Masters’ degree
qualification in the Department of Art History and Image Studies in the Faculty
of Humanities at the University of the Free State
Supervisor: Prof E.S. Human
Co‐supervisor: Prof A. du Preez
Date: October 2015
TABLE OF CONTENTS I
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS III
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCING THE IMAGINATION IN THE WAKE OF SURREALISM 1
1.1 DIEGO RIVERA’S LAS TENTACIONES DE SAN ANTONIO 5
1.1.1 Surrealist ‘poetic images’ 8
1.1.2 Shared imagining 10
1.1.3 Hypericonic dynamics 12
1.2 METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS 17
1.2.1 Image‐picture distinction 17
1.2.2 Archival approach 19
1.2.3 Chapter overview 20
CHAPTER 2: THE DANGEROUS POWER OF IMAGES – TORMENTING AND SEDUCTIVE IMAGERY IN THE
TEMPTATION OF ST ANTHONY 23
2.1 THE LEGEND OF ST ANTHONY: A TOPOS OF THE IMAGINATION 24
2.2 THE CHRISTIAN SAINT IN PATRISTIC LITERATURE 26
2.3 ST ANTHONY IN EARLY MODERN DEPICTIONS 27
2.4 THE SAINT AS MODERN ARTIST 32
2.5 FLAUBERTIAN ST ANTHONY AND HIS SEDUCTIONS 33
2.6 ST ANTHONY AS A SURREALIST TOPOS 36
CHAPTER 3: THE SURREALIST IMAGINATION 45
3.1 PRODUCTIVE IMAGINING 46
3.2 PERTINENT MOMENTS IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY OF THE IMAGINATION 48
3.3 VISIONARY IMAGINING 52
3.4 SURREALIST IMAGING ACTIONS: AUTOMATISM, CHANCE, DREAM & PLAY 54
3.5 ALCHEMY: A SURREALIST METAPHOR 61
3.6 APPROPRIATING SO‐CALLED PRIMITIVISM 64
CHAPTER 4: ON THE EDGE OF SURREALISM: A LATIN AMERICAN CLUSTER OF WOMEN ARTISTS 72
4.1 WOMEN AND SURREALISM 74
4.2 FRIDA KAHLO: AN UNWILLING SURREALIST 77
4.3 REMEDIOS VARO: COSMIC WONDER 82
4.4 LEONORA CARRINGTON: ALCHEMICAL SURREALISM 85
CHAPTER 5: IN THE WAKE OF SURREALISM: SURREALISM IN SOUTH AFRICA 92
5.1 ALEXIS PRELLER: DISCOVERING ARCHAIC AFRICA 95
5.2 CYRIL COETZEE: ALCHEMICAL HISTORY PAINTING 99
5.3 BREYTEN BREYTENBACH: A SURREALIST PAINTER‐POET 103
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 112
BIBLIOGRAPHY 118
APPENDIX A 132
SUMMARY
Summary
This thesis reports an exploration of various interrelated facets of human imaging and
imagining using the literary and artistic movement, French Surrealism, as catalyst. The ‘wake of Surrealism’ – a vigil held at the movement’s passing, as well as its aftereffects – indicates my primary focus on ideas concerning the imagination held by members of the Surrealist movement, which I trace further in selected artworks of a cluster of women surrealists active in Latin‐America as well as select artists in the South African context.
The Surrealists desired a return to the sources of the poetic imagination, believing that the
so‐called ‘unfettered imagination’ of Surrealism has the capacity to create unknown worlds,
or the potential to envision often startling and strange realities. Not only did members of
Surrealism have a high regard for the imagination, they also emphasised particular
involuntary actions and unconscious functions of the imagination, as evidenced in their use
of the method of automatic writing, dreams, play, objective chance, alchemy and so‐called
primitivism.
In this investigation I follow digital‐archival procedures rather than being in the physical
presence of the artworks selected for interpretation. Responding to this limitation and to
the current interest in image theory, I elaborate a method of art historical interrogation,
based on the eventful and affective power of images. This exploration of the imagination
into Surrealism’s wake therefore also functions as a ‘pilot study’, to determine the viability
of this approach to image hermeneutics. I appropriate and expand W.J.T. Mitchell’s notion
of ‘hypericons’ to develop the proposed concept of ‘hypericonic dynamics’. The hypericonic
dynamic transpires in ‘hypericonic events’, through the cooperative imaging and imagining
eventfulness of the interaction between artist and spectator, mediated by artworks. The
dynamic is especially prominent in artworks with a metapictorial tenor.
With hypericonic dynamics and metapictorial thematics as my heuristic method, I
investigate artworks by three women surrealists – Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo, and Leonora Carrington – living and working in Latin‐America after the Second World War, and after the French Surrealist movement had already experienced its decline. Against the backdrop of indigenous visual culture their distinct individual styles are also related to Magical realism in the Latin‐American literary context, a style which overlaps and intersects with Surrealism. I expand upon insights gained in investigating the women in Mexico, to determine whether select South African artists, Alexis Preller, Cyril Coetzee, and Breyten Breytenbach belong in the wake of Surrealism.
The central aim of my exploration of the imagination is to gain a deeper understanding of
the everyday human imagination and its myriad operations in daily life, for the greater part
conducted below the threshold of consciousness. The imagination is a universal human
function, shared by all, yet also operational at an individual level. It also performs a unique
function of image creation in the specialised domain of the fine arts. I understand the
imagination to be irreducible, while often working in a subconscious, involuntary, and
supportive, but nevertheless primary manner in everyday human life.
Keywords:
Surrealism, imagination, image studies, Bildwissenschaft, metapictures, hypericons, ‘power
of images’, ‘hypericonic dynamics’, St Anthony, women surrealists.
INTRODUCTION
In this thesis I aim to explore various interrelated facets of human imaging and imagining using the literary and artistic movement, French Surrealism, as a catalyst for this investigation. I propose Surrealism, with its emphasis on highly imaginative and challenging artistic creations, can be a valuable springboard for studying human imaging and imagining capabilities and activities, both artistic and non‐artistic. For a period of approximately two decades, Surrealism was one of the dominant movements of the modernist avant‐garde in Europe.1 Although situated, diachronically, within the modernist avant‐garde, the Surrealist movement followed its own historical trajectory. In contrast to what one could term Greenbergian ‘mainstream modernism’, and its predominantly formalist rush toward aesthetic autonomy in the various forms of non‐ figurative expressionism, constructivism, and minimalism, and the search for aesthetic purity, Surrealism was interested in researching the roots of the imagination, in the subconscious and dreaming.2 The surrealist period style or time‐current took form and solidified into the French Surrealist movement with the publication of André Breton’s First Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924.3 Various authors, including Theodor Adorno in his 1956 essay Looking back on Surrealism, remark on the fact that French Surrealism did not survive the Second World War. Reasons given for this termination include the fact that most of the group’s members no longer resided in Paris, having become exiles in America during the war, and since the changes in bourgeois society that they had called for, after the destruction of the Great War, no longer applied (Adorno 1992: 87).4 Therefore, the French movement can be described as having a reasonably well‐defined beginning and ending.
1 Cf. Poggioli (1968), Calinescu (1977), Bürger (1984).
2 Abstraction, grounded in the early twentieth century work of Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky, was, according to Cheetham (1991: xi) the most daring and challenging development to occur in Western painting since the Renaissance. Abstraction, or the search for the aesthetic ideology of purity, had crucial consequences for all aspects relating to art – for art ‘itself’, its creation and embodiment, as a model for society, and – closely related – for art as a political force (Cheetham 1991: 104).
3 When I am referring to the core French group the terms ‘Surrealism’ or ‘Surrealist’ will be spelled with a capital ‘S’. I indicate the broader ‘surrealist’ dynamic or time‐current, and the wake of ‘surrealism’, by using a lowercase ‘s’.
4 Adorno and other members of the Frankfurt School were also exiled in America, until eventually becoming disenchanted with the so‐called progressive free West, and returning to Germany. 2 still be alive and endure (Breton 2010: 35, 129).
5 Maurice Nadeau, Surrealism’s premier historian, allows that the movement might have failed in achieving the societal revolution it had called for, but denies that it is dead, believing the surrealist attitude or mind‐set to be “eternal” (Nadeau 1965: 35).
the imagination in the wake of Surrealism
Corneli van den Berg
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements in respect of the Masters’ degree
qualification in the Department of Art History and Image Studies in the Faculty
of Humanities at the University of the Free State
Supervisor: Prof E.S. Human
Co‐supervisor: Prof A. du Preez
Date: October 2015
TABLE OF CONTENTS I
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS III
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCING THE IMAGINATION IN THE WAKE OF SURREALISM 1
1.1 DIEGO RIVERA’S LAS TENTACIONES DE SAN ANTONIO 5
1.1.1 Surrealist ‘poetic images’ 8
1.1.2 Shared imagining 10
1.1.3 Hypericonic dynamics 12
1.2 METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS 17
1.2.1 Image‐picture distinction 17
1.2.2 Archival approach 19
1.2.3 Chapter overview 20
CHAPTER 2: THE DANGEROUS POWER OF IMAGES – TORMENTING AND SEDUCTIVE IMAGERY IN THE
TEMPTATION OF ST ANTHONY 23
2.1 THE LEGEND OF ST ANTHONY: A TOPOS OF THE IMAGINATION 24
2.2 THE CHRISTIAN SAINT IN PATRISTIC LITERATURE 26
2.3 ST ANTHONY IN EARLY MODERN DEPICTIONS 27
2.4 THE SAINT AS MODERN ARTIST 32
2.5 FLAUBERTIAN ST ANTHONY AND HIS SEDUCTIONS 33
2.6 ST ANTHONY AS A SURREALIST TOPOS 36
CHAPTER 3: THE SURREALIST IMAGINATION 45
3.1 PRODUCTIVE IMAGINING 46
3.2 PERTINENT MOMENTS IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY OF THE IMAGINATION 48
3.3 VISIONARY IMAGINING 52
3.4 SURREALIST IMAGING ACTIONS: AUTOMATISM, CHANCE, DREAM & PLAY 54
3.5 ALCHEMY: A SURREALIST METAPHOR 61
3.6 APPROPRIATING SO‐CALLED PRIMITIVISM 64
CHAPTER 4: ON THE EDGE OF SURREALISM: A LATIN AMERICAN CLUSTER OF WOMEN ARTISTS 72
4.1 WOMEN AND SURREALISM 74
4.2 FRIDA KAHLO: AN UNWILLING SURREALIST 77
4.3 REMEDIOS VARO: COSMIC WONDER 82
4.4 LEONORA CARRINGTON: ALCHEMICAL SURREALISM 85
CHAPTER 5: IN THE WAKE OF SURREALISM: SURREALISM IN SOUTH AFRICA 92
5.1 ALEXIS PRELLER: DISCOVERING ARCHAIC AFRICA 95
5.2 CYRIL COETZEE: ALCHEMICAL HISTORY PAINTING 99
5.3 BREYTEN BREYTENBACH: A SURREALIST PAINTER‐POET 103
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 112
BIBLIOGRAPHY 118
APPENDIX A 132
SUMMARY
Summary
This thesis reports an exploration of various interrelated facets of human imaging and
imagining using the literary and artistic movement, French Surrealism, as catalyst. The ‘wake of Surrealism’ – a vigil held at the movement’s passing, as well as its aftereffects – indicates my primary focus on ideas concerning the imagination held by members of the Surrealist movement, which I trace further in selected artworks of a cluster of women surrealists active in Latin‐America as well as select artists in the South African context.
The Surrealists desired a return to the sources of the poetic imagination, believing that the
so‐called ‘unfettered imagination’ of Surrealism has the capacity to create unknown worlds,
or the potential to envision often startling and strange realities. Not only did members of
Surrealism have a high regard for the imagination, they also emphasised particular
involuntary actions and unconscious functions of the imagination, as evidenced in their use
of the method of automatic writing, dreams, play, objective chance, alchemy and so‐called
primitivism.
In this investigation I follow digital‐archival procedures rather than being in the physical
presence of the artworks selected for interpretation. Responding to this limitation and to
the current interest in image theory, I elaborate a method of art historical interrogation,
based on the eventful and affective power of images. This exploration of the imagination
into Surrealism’s wake therefore also functions as a ‘pilot study’, to determine the viability
of this approach to image hermeneutics. I appropriate and expand W.J.T. Mitchell’s notion
of ‘hypericons’ to develop the proposed concept of ‘hypericonic dynamics’. The hypericonic
dynamic transpires in ‘hypericonic events’, through the cooperative imaging and imagining
eventfulness of the interaction between artist and spectator, mediated by artworks. The
dynamic is especially prominent in artworks with a metapictorial tenor.
With hypericonic dynamics and metapictorial thematics as my heuristic method, I
investigate artworks by three women surrealists – Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo, and Leonora Carrington – living and working in Latin‐America after the Second World War, and after the French Surrealist movement had already experienced its decline. Against the backdrop of indigenous visual culture their distinct individual styles are also related to Magical realism in the Latin‐American literary context, a style which overlaps and intersects with Surrealism. I expand upon insights gained in investigating the women in Mexico, to determine whether select South African artists, Alexis Preller, Cyril Coetzee, and Breyten Breytenbach belong in the wake of Surrealism.
The central aim of my exploration of the imagination is to gain a deeper understanding of
the everyday human imagination and its myriad operations in daily life, for the greater part
conducted below the threshold of consciousness. The imagination is a universal human
function, shared by all, yet also operational at an individual level. It also performs a unique
function of image creation in the specialised domain of the fine arts. I understand the
imagination to be irreducible, while often working in a subconscious, involuntary, and
supportive, but nevertheless primary manner in everyday human life.
Keywords:
Surrealism, imagination, image studies, Bildwissenschaft, metapictures, hypericons, ‘power
of images’, ‘hypericonic dynamics’, St Anthony, women surrealists.
INTRODUCTION
In this thesis I aim to explore various interrelated facets of human imaging and imagining using the literary and artistic movement, French Surrealism, as a catalyst for this investigation. I propose Surrealism, with its emphasis on highly imaginative and challenging artistic creations, can be a valuable springboard for studying human imaging and imagining capabilities and activities, both artistic and non‐artistic. For a period of approximately two decades, Surrealism was one of the dominant movements of the modernist avant‐garde in Europe.1 Although situated, diachronically, within the modernist avant‐garde, the Surrealist movement followed its own historical trajectory. In contrast to what one could term Greenbergian ‘mainstream modernism’, and its predominantly formalist rush toward aesthetic autonomy in the various forms of non‐ figurative expressionism, constructivism, and minimalism, and the search for aesthetic purity, Surrealism was interested in researching the roots of the imagination, in the subconscious and dreaming.2 The surrealist period style or time‐current took form and solidified into the French Surrealist movement with the publication of André Breton’s First Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924.3 Various authors, including Theodor Adorno in his 1956 essay Looking back on Surrealism, remark on the fact that French Surrealism did not survive the Second World War. Reasons given for this termination include the fact that most of the group’s members no longer resided in Paris, having become exiles in America during the war, and since the changes in bourgeois society that they had called for, after the destruction of the Great War, no longer applied (Adorno 1992: 87).4 Therefore, the French movement can be described as having a reasonably well‐defined beginning and ending.
1 Cf. Poggioli (1968), Calinescu (1977), Bürger (1984).
2 Abstraction, grounded in the early twentieth century work of Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky, was, according to Cheetham (1991: xi) the most daring and challenging development to occur in Western painting since the Renaissance. Abstraction, or the search for the aesthetic ideology of purity, had crucial consequences for all aspects relating to art – for art ‘itself’, its creation and embodiment, as a model for society, and – closely related – for art as a political force (Cheetham 1991: 104).
3 When I am referring to the core French group the terms ‘Surrealism’ or ‘Surrealist’ will be spelled with a capital ‘S’. I indicate the broader ‘surrealist’ dynamic or time‐current, and the wake of ‘surrealism’, by using a lowercase ‘s’.
4 Adorno and other members of the Frankfurt School were also exiled in America, until eventually becoming disenchanted with the so‐called progressive free West, and returning to Germany. 2 still be alive and endure (Breton 2010: 35, 129).
5 Maurice Nadeau, Surrealism’s premier historian, allows that the movement might have failed in achieving the societal revolution it had called for, but denies that it is dead, believing the surrealist attitude or mind‐set to be “eternal” (Nadeau 1965: 35).
by M Kunda - 2010 - Cited by 3 - Related articles
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A Long View
How we read Surrealism today…is neither a purely textual question nor a purely historical one. It is both; and by the questions we – or I – ask about Surrealist texts are determined both by Surrealism’s history (itself ‘to be read’) and by our (my) own. – Susan R. Suleiman1 From before the official beginnings of the Surrealist movement, its future members denounced European imperialism. Some of the last manifestoes published by the Parisian Surrealist group supported Vietnamese and Algerian struggles for independence. From 1919 then, anti-colonialism was a line of critique that ran through Surrealism during the movement’s first two decades, and continued through the era of decolonisation after the Second World War until the official closure of the Surrealism in the1960s. 2 Yet this narrative has yet to take shape. It is not commonly remarked that over a span of more than forty years the Surrealists published anti-colonial tracts and staunch criticism of the West, but it is routinely observed that in their collections, exhibitions and artwork they included objects and referred to the cosmologies of non-Western cultures. This latter tendency is often dubbed ‘primitivism’ and regarded negatively, and seen in the same light as the ‘primitivism’ of modernist movements that came before Surrealism.
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