Is art a language? Answering in the affirmative requires that we take it as a communicative tool with meaning posited in each work. Answering in the negative leaves us with the question of what to do with it.
By positing art as a language, whose visual images express meaning just as verbal language does, André Breton establishes a manner in which he thinks of visual works. That art should express meaning, whatever that meaning might be, is to interject an ethics into art that not all are willing to accept. With its previously stated intention to alter the cultural norms of reason, Surrealism has an agenda, and the works that come of it are attempting a shift in consciousness. This assumes that to engage with art is to be in a certain kind of quest. That may be the case for the artist, but not all would agree that art should offer a journey for the spirit.
Art may refuse what language offers. Communication, understood as being meaningful, may be a limit to the way we experience art. If communication is not understood as having to express a specific idea that can be comprehended in words that follow an ordered logic, then sure paintings communicate. Perhaps that is what people mean when they say that art must express something. Too often, however, that phrase "express something," is used not for what it states but as a way of saying provides meaning. I don't think art needs to be narrative, but nor do I think narrative art is irrelevant or dead. Art may be a way to be in the world beyond the confines of language.
Will much bad art be accepted on the basis of such an argument? Sure. But much academic painting is accepted because it says something, albeit boring and pallid. I think the greater challenge is on the viewer to attempt to engage with art not simply for its historical moment, the artist's established greatness, for the tale told on the canvas, tapestry, bowl, or wall, nor for the personal psychological reaction to what you see, but for a way of being alive in the world without the trappings of language as the means to thought, dream, aspiration, desire.
I don't know what that looks like, but I've had moments with art that did that. Briefly. I'm still figuring out whether it can be described, or whether even the experience is beyond language.
Showing posts with label Breton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Breton. Show all posts
The Popes
Picasso called Apollinaire The Pope, as a tease for his Tuesday gatherings. During one such Tuesday gathering in 1907, The Pope introduced Picasso and Braque to one another, and sparked art history to be forever changed. Their friendship became deeply tied; they would speak in near code to each other and had the other approve each painting in order to consider it finished. From 1907-1913, the two worked so closely that their paintings reveal similar objects, topics, interests, and of course style–what we now call cubism.
One presumes that Apollinaire did not mind the nomiker, whereas André Breton was not overly fond of the jest of his detractors when they called him the Pope of Surrealism. Some saw Breton as being adamant and limiting of surrealism and imposing strictures that were unnecessarily confining, much the way that Catholicism was viewed (see L'Age D'Or for the degree to which their disdain could go to this religion).
Nicknames are quite personal, and not always well received, so what works for one may most certainly not work for another.
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| Braque, Man with a Guitar, 1911 |
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| Picasso, The Poet, 1911 |
One presumes that Apollinaire did not mind the nomiker, whereas André Breton was not overly fond of the jest of his detractors when they called him the Pope of Surrealism. Some saw Breton as being adamant and limiting of surrealism and imposing strictures that were unnecessarily confining, much the way that Catholicism was viewed (see L'Age D'Or for the degree to which their disdain could go to this religion).
Nicknames are quite personal, and not always well received, so what works for one may most certainly not work for another.
Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art
Trotsky asked Breton to draft a manifesto as a founding document of the organization FIARI (Federation for Independent Revolutionary Artists International), which Trotsky could then review and the two could edit together. Despite Breton’s initial block, and the fight between the two on Breton’s lack of production, by mid-July Breton had written a draft to represent their mutual thoughts on art and politics. This was no easy task given that Trotsky refused to consider that conflicts would still exist in the classless society of the future and Breton was shocked that Trotsky should believe that art would disappear. The first draft is only minimally revised from the final version.
Breton’s first paragraph is however entirely rewritten, removing the Marxist language of superstructures, economic development, and historical basis. His language is ponderous, a trait that ill serves the necessary enthusiasm that a manifesto uses to encourage its audience. The text that is replaced is exciting. The first sentence denies its own exaggeration in saying: “We can acknowledge today, without exageration, that never before has human civilization been menaced by so many dangers as it is today." The paragraph ends insisting that science and art have never been in greater peril. Likewise, the final version of the text eliminates a passage in the ninth paragraph objecting to an artist’s potential hostility to the revolutionary cause, or limiting “all license to art; except against the proletarian revolution”. The final version says only, “all license to art”.
Changing the language from the obvious Marxist tone permits the manifesto to be the platform for all those seeking a revolution, whether communists or anarchists. The manifesto wishes divergent ideologies to mix as long as everyone rejects the “spirit of a policing revolution” of Stalin or Garcia Olivier, an anarchist. Though the group is to represent all artists, the manifesto states little about the anarchist groups other than to welcome them, and is most focused on rejecting Stalin’s socialist realism, “The official art of the stalinist period reflects a cruelty without compare in history of their derisive efforts to produce change, and their masking of their actual mercenary role.” Socialist realism is an extension of the cruelty established throughout the Soviet Union and “terribly degrading.”
True to their Marxism, Breton and Trotsky believe that the artist can only produce art that serves the revolution “if the artist is subjectively overwhelmed by its social and personal content”. The artist must understand and embody the ideals of the revolution in order to produce work that can declare them.
This independence of the artist, however, is not to suggest that the artist has no political role. Indeed, both Breton and Trotsky object severely to the concept of “art for art” and insist that the artist not only has a political role but must engage in that role “conscientiously and actively”. The artist must be free to express revolutionary ideas in the manner true to their own work and style.
In an article by Mark Polizzotti, he quotes Heijenoort, Trotsky’s personal secretary, who described the composition of the manifesto, finally dated July 25, 1938.
Breton’s first paragraph is however entirely rewritten, removing the Marxist language of superstructures, economic development, and historical basis. His language is ponderous, a trait that ill serves the necessary enthusiasm that a manifesto uses to encourage its audience. The text that is replaced is exciting. The first sentence denies its own exaggeration in saying: “We can acknowledge today, without exageration, that never before has human civilization been menaced by so many dangers as it is today." The paragraph ends insisting that science and art have never been in greater peril. Likewise, the final version of the text eliminates a passage in the ninth paragraph objecting to an artist’s potential hostility to the revolutionary cause, or limiting “all license to art; except against the proletarian revolution”. The final version says only, “all license to art”.
Changing the language from the obvious Marxist tone permits the manifesto to be the platform for all those seeking a revolution, whether communists or anarchists. The manifesto wishes divergent ideologies to mix as long as everyone rejects the “spirit of a policing revolution” of Stalin or Garcia Olivier, an anarchist. Though the group is to represent all artists, the manifesto states little about the anarchist groups other than to welcome them, and is most focused on rejecting Stalin’s socialist realism, “The official art of the stalinist period reflects a cruelty without compare in history of their derisive efforts to produce change, and their masking of their actual mercenary role.” Socialist realism is an extension of the cruelty established throughout the Soviet Union and “terribly degrading.”
True to their Marxism, Breton and Trotsky believe that the artist can only produce art that serves the revolution “if the artist is subjectively overwhelmed by its social and personal content”. The artist must understand and embody the ideals of the revolution in order to produce work that can declare them.
This independence of the artist, however, is not to suggest that the artist has no political role. Indeed, both Breton and Trotsky object severely to the concept of “art for art” and insist that the artist not only has a political role but must engage in that role “conscientiously and actively”. The artist must be free to express revolutionary ideas in the manner true to their own work and style.
For intellectual creativity, the revolution must from the very beginning establish and maintain an anarchist regime for intellectual liberty. No authority, no constraints, not a trace of commandment!In two paragraphs added by Trotsky, the manifesto presents the parallel roads of social revolution and individual creation. Using the political language of the day, the society must be communist but the artist must be allowed an anarchic space to create. Constraints are antithetical to the freedom that Marxism wishes to provide all members of the society. To subjugate artistic creation to political ideology is to alter the very nature of the revolutionary movement. The attempt by Stalin to dictate art is a betrayal not only of the revolutionary cause, but also the one of freeing man from his current condition.
In an article by Mark Polizzotti, he quotes Heijenoort, Trotsky’s personal secretary, who described the composition of the manifesto, finally dated July 25, 1938.
Breton gave Trotsky a few sheets of paper covered with his tiny handwriting. Trotsky dictated a few pages in Russian, to be combined with Breton’s text. I translated Trotsky’s pages into French and then showed them to Breton. After more talk, Trotsky took all of the texts, cut them, added a few passages, and pasted everything into a long roll. I typed the resulting French, translating Trotsky’s Russian and keeping Breton’s prose. This was the text on which they reached final agreement.Breton embraced Trotsky’s own prescription for the complete freedom for art, excepting any works against the proletariat revolution. Trotsky, however, eliminated the final clause, likely aware of how it had been misused by the authorities of Socialist Realism but also believing that the strength of the revolution was dependent on the freedom to dissent since the community could respond in kind. The successful revolution would not fear opposition since all would inherently be in agreement. The manifesto served to establish the organization FIARI, which would give voice to all those who wished to participate in a true revolution:
The independence of art–for the revolution
The revolution–for the liberation of art.
Free Play
There are days when I am at a loss, confused, disoriented, uncertain. If I have any clarity of mind, I try to go to a museum. Not to see a favorite work as that would require too much effort of appreciation in a time of duress, but rather to wander until standing in front of one piece, the stern edges of my discomfort are stilled.
Breton, in his own text Position Politique de la surréalisme, affirms Hegel’s definition of art saying, “l’objet d’art tient le milieu entre le sensible et le rationnel. C’est quelque chose de spirituel qui apparait comme matériel” [the art object holds the middle between the sensible and the rational. It is something of the spiritual which appears as material]. Art is the bridge between the senses and the mind, by moving from one to the other. It permits a moment of communication between the artist and the other, and from the artist to the many, and the one to the many. Art manages the miracle of bridging the self and other, the trappings of the mind and the freedom of thought, without rejecting either.
The surrealists imagined that the strength of the image appeared from the artist’s willingness to paint two seemingly irreconcilable ideas together. The image was thus a creation of the artist’s willingness to reveal the conflict of being. This seems so reasonable that I am occasionally at a loss as to why it required theoretical consideration, discussion, proof, but try to remember that such mental efforts can be fun too. Pierre Reverdy said that "L’image est une création pure de l’esprit. Elle ne peut naître d’une comparaison mais du rapprochement de deux réalités plus ou moins éloignées. Plus les rapports des deux réalités rapprochées seront lointains et justes, plus l’image sera forte–plus elle aura de puissance émotive et de réalité poétique..." [The image is a pure creation of the spirit. It (the image) can not be born of a comparison but rather of a coming-together of two realities more or less apart. The greater distance and just relation between the two things brought together, the greater the force of the image–the more emotional power and poetic reality there will be]. Rather than comparing one state of being to another, the artist brings these states into dynamic engagement, permitting the peculiar parts of a particular moment to participate in a dialogue with the known and accepted. The more removed the two forces at work in the artist are from each other, the more emotional power the image will offer. Though this was stated in relation to surreal art, I do not see how it does not apply to art in general and even see Kant's idea of free play at work.
Unfortunately I do not often remember how easily I can get out of the stagnancy of my mental muck, believing I guess that sitting in it will somehow show me something other than mud. Occasionally, I guess I could sit in it long enough that something starts to grow, but even with Spring beginning to bloom that seems like a long wait. Art jars me, even as it seems familiar, and so moves me on to the next thing, reminding me to play a little, freeing my efforts from frustration.
Breton, in his own text Position Politique de la surréalisme, affirms Hegel’s definition of art saying, “l’objet d’art tient le milieu entre le sensible et le rationnel. C’est quelque chose de spirituel qui apparait comme matériel” [the art object holds the middle between the sensible and the rational. It is something of the spiritual which appears as material]. Art is the bridge between the senses and the mind, by moving from one to the other. It permits a moment of communication between the artist and the other, and from the artist to the many, and the one to the many. Art manages the miracle of bridging the self and other, the trappings of the mind and the freedom of thought, without rejecting either.
The surrealists imagined that the strength of the image appeared from the artist’s willingness to paint two seemingly irreconcilable ideas together. The image was thus a creation of the artist’s willingness to reveal the conflict of being. This seems so reasonable that I am occasionally at a loss as to why it required theoretical consideration, discussion, proof, but try to remember that such mental efforts can be fun too. Pierre Reverdy said that "L’image est une création pure de l’esprit. Elle ne peut naître d’une comparaison mais du rapprochement de deux réalités plus ou moins éloignées. Plus les rapports des deux réalités rapprochées seront lointains et justes, plus l’image sera forte–plus elle aura de puissance émotive et de réalité poétique..." [The image is a pure creation of the spirit. It (the image) can not be born of a comparison but rather of a coming-together of two realities more or less apart. The greater distance and just relation between the two things brought together, the greater the force of the image–the more emotional power and poetic reality there will be]. Rather than comparing one state of being to another, the artist brings these states into dynamic engagement, permitting the peculiar parts of a particular moment to participate in a dialogue with the known and accepted. The more removed the two forces at work in the artist are from each other, the more emotional power the image will offer. Though this was stated in relation to surreal art, I do not see how it does not apply to art in general and even see Kant's idea of free play at work.
Unfortunately I do not often remember how easily I can get out of the stagnancy of my mental muck, believing I guess that sitting in it will somehow show me something other than mud. Occasionally, I guess I could sit in it long enough that something starts to grow, but even with Spring beginning to bloom that seems like a long wait. Art jars me, even as it seems familiar, and so moves me on to the next thing, reminding me to play a little, freeing my efforts from frustration.
Aesthetic Surrealism?
I am struggling to understand how surrealism is an aesthetic movement. In looking at Breton's manifestos, I see him advocating awareness, a heightened awareness that flies above and beyond the immediate reality. He may not be writing theories, but he is suggesting a practice that is not so much aesthetic as, if not philosophical (though his encyclopedia definition in the manifesto of 1924 considers it such), psycho-developmental–I hesitate here to say psycho-analytical or psychological.
Automatic writing is not an aesthetic practice but rather a means of glimpsing a self that is truer than the social constructs permit one to see. By revealing the unconscious attitude, the 'real' person is made present, even if that 'reality' appears as a sur-reality. In addition, despite Breton's writings on art, and the general public memory now preferring surrealist art over the writings, Breton does not address the arts. That he addresses writing seems even, if I may, entirely selfish and only in response to his own interest in writing. He may mention writing but he does not mention painting, photography, film, collage, theatre, dance or any other conceivable art. Had he been interested in gardening, one can imagine he would have founded a method of spontaneous gardening. I am facetious here but only to make the point that I struggle to eliminate in my own mind: the writing manner he presents is not because he has an artistic revolution that he wishes to establish, but rather that it is the way he can discuss the personal revolution he is advocating.
In this, I can not help but see him politically active on behalf of the individual. That there can not be a political party is precisely because the cause is each one's. Later in 1934 when he writes Qu'est-ce que le surréalisme, he even says that surrealism is a response to the effects of war, the exhaustion of defeat coming out of war-whether the war is won or not. Liberty in the 1924 manifesto, a lack on interest in art or anti art, philosophy or anti-philosophy in the 1929 manifesto, both suggest that the quest is not aesthetic but personal, where the personal then becomes political.
Hence his manifesto with Trotsky, Pour un art révolutionnaire indépendant, on how to maintain the independence of artists and thinkers. Breton seems to have classed anyone interested in the self as an artist, with the assumption that the workers have neither the time nor the disposition. That Breton, and the surrealism he promotes, is in conflict with communism is clear, but I don't understand it as conflict between aesthetics and politics, so much as between the individual and the group. (To the degree that as the years go by, in his writing on art, Breton produces aesthetic doctrines, they seem mostly to be responding to abstract expressionism and why surrealism must have identifiable forms placed in chance encounters.)
I am working on this and suspect to say more....
Automatic writing is not an aesthetic practice but rather a means of glimpsing a self that is truer than the social constructs permit one to see. By revealing the unconscious attitude, the 'real' person is made present, even if that 'reality' appears as a sur-reality. In addition, despite Breton's writings on art, and the general public memory now preferring surrealist art over the writings, Breton does not address the arts. That he addresses writing seems even, if I may, entirely selfish and only in response to his own interest in writing. He may mention writing but he does not mention painting, photography, film, collage, theatre, dance or any other conceivable art. Had he been interested in gardening, one can imagine he would have founded a method of spontaneous gardening. I am facetious here but only to make the point that I struggle to eliminate in my own mind: the writing manner he presents is not because he has an artistic revolution that he wishes to establish, but rather that it is the way he can discuss the personal revolution he is advocating.
In this, I can not help but see him politically active on behalf of the individual. That there can not be a political party is precisely because the cause is each one's. Later in 1934 when he writes Qu'est-ce que le surréalisme, he even says that surrealism is a response to the effects of war, the exhaustion of defeat coming out of war-whether the war is won or not. Liberty in the 1924 manifesto, a lack on interest in art or anti art, philosophy or anti-philosophy in the 1929 manifesto, both suggest that the quest is not aesthetic but personal, where the personal then becomes political.
Hence his manifesto with Trotsky, Pour un art révolutionnaire indépendant, on how to maintain the independence of artists and thinkers. Breton seems to have classed anyone interested in the self as an artist, with the assumption that the workers have neither the time nor the disposition. That Breton, and the surrealism he promotes, is in conflict with communism is clear, but I don't understand it as conflict between aesthetics and politics, so much as between the individual and the group. (To the degree that as the years go by, in his writing on art, Breton produces aesthetic doctrines, they seem mostly to be responding to abstract expressionism and why surrealism must have identifiable forms placed in chance encounters.)
I am working on this and suspect to say more....
The Ariadne Myth
The issues in mythology seem even more prominent, however, when one looks at de Chirico’s early paintings which so influenced the Surrealists, even if de Chirico was not himself a member of the group and his later works vociferously denied. The Ariadne series, though so generally termed only in the beginning of the 20th Century with the show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the forty odd pieces de Chirico produced in 1913-1917, in particular points to a subterranean mythic base in surrealism.
This series of paintings are suggestive of the story in which Ariadne is abandoned by Theseus on Naxos after helping him kill the Minotaur and escape the Labyrinth, figures of the myth which would both return in surrealism as prominent journals. This myth is of particular interest because of the undetermined ending. In one account, she weeps for Theseus until she dies. In another account, she is married to Dionysus and made an eternal figure.
To consider some details of this myth: Ariadne is an epithet for Aphrodite, meaning the holy one, who is in the geneology of Greek mythology the first of the Olympians after Zeus castrates his father Kronos, a clear personification of Eros, the abstraction that is first to appear when Chaos is sundered. This places Love, not in its Romanticized sense, but in its wholistic sense of Union, at the foundation and returns us to Breton who would insist on the importance of Love. Staying with the Greek myth a moment longer to address Dionysus, we can see how passion and immediacy play into surrealism. Dionysus is generally known as the god of wine, but he governed all things liquid and living, such as wine, but also the sap of trees, semen and blood. This then is Breton’s Mad Love. In the de Chirico series, Ariadne is frozen in time, a marble statue in a yellow piazza with a column way on one side, a tower looming, a ship and a train in the distance. She seems to wait between her two fates, neither chosen yet.
Her two fates depict the strange mythic split within surrealism, as presented in the different statements on myth of Breton and Bataille. Breton advocated a new mythology, a new lifepath with a new lover. Bataille, on other hand, claimed an absence of myth, in which its very absence was necessary to the realization of a new and thus entirely different ritualization of life in which a mythology would eventually assert itself. In either of these choices, political speech in Barthes’ meaning is invoked to declare a new language, new myth. As Barthes recognizes, all political speech if it succeeds must become myth speech, something seemingly recognized and even permitted by both Breton and Bataille’s arguments. Either way, surrealism as it is here described seems inherently and actively political, definitely engagé.
Love in Surrealism
In his 1939 writing on Masson, in Le Surrealisme et la peinture, Breton reiterates his strong sense of the significance of love by believing “que l’art, avant tout, doit être amour plutôt que colère ou pitié”. Art must be love, not in the sense of adoration, but rather as a path towards collectivity. In L’Amour fou, Breton explains how when a man loves, he cannot help but engage with “la sensibilité de tous les hommes” and that in order to do them justice, he must delve into the very depths of their way of being. Love brings man into contact with another and creates an interest in partaking of another worldview.
In the Surrealist Dictionary, the definition for “amour” includes the quote from L’Immaculée Conception that reciprocal love is that which “met en jeu l’inhabitude dans la pratique, l’imagination dans le poncif, la foi dans la doute, la perception de l’objet intérieure dans l’objet extérieure”. Love then creates this charged space where contraries can co-exist. Neither the imagination nor thinking is dominant.
In the Surrealist Dictionary, the definition for “amour” includes the quote from L’Immaculée Conception that reciprocal love is that which “met en jeu l’inhabitude dans la pratique, l’imagination dans le poncif, la foi dans la doute, la perception de l’objet intérieure dans l’objet extérieure”. Love then creates this charged space where contraries can co-exist. Neither the imagination nor thinking is dominant.
Revolutionary Independent Artist-some thoughts on the Manifesto
Breton alienated the communists and revoked the surreality of many artists because of their ties to communism, but believed in the revolution sufficiently to produce the Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art in 1938. This document signed by Breton and Diego Rivera, was in fact a collaboration between Breton and Trotsky. In the document they are trying to address how artists can participate in the communist revolution without losing the independence necessary to being artists. Though Breton had alluded to the need for artists to express their own personal, inner vision, this document affirms that freedom while also stating the role artists play in society.
True art–art that does not merely produce variations on ready-made models but strives to express the inner needs of man and of mankind as they are today–cannot be anything other than revolutionary: it must aspire to a complete and radical reconstruction of society, if only to free intellectual creation from the chains that bind it and to allow all mankind to climb those heights that only isolated geniuses have reached in the past.
The freedom of intellectual creation that they advocate aligns itself with Breton’s stated aims for Surrealism. The artist must produce images that are not bound by the previous language of art but rather uncover, in those image or others, new visions. In order to alter the established landscape, each artist must be free to present an inner truth. The individual artist by expressing a truly personal vision touches on a more general human experience. In 1947, Breton would explain the rapport between the individual and general history in his remarks on Matta by suggesting that there is a connecting light “entre la causalité universelle et la finalité humaine”. The Hegelian influence of the world on the individual is clear but the individual artist remains central to the success of this endeavor to change the global.
Permitting art to be influenced by a political viewpoint or any aesthetic demands limits the possibilities of creation. Breton and Trotsky state that “art cannot, therefore, without demeaning itself, willingly submit to any outside directive and ensconce itself obediently within the limits that some people, with extremely shortsighted pragmatic ends in view, think they can set on its activities”. Despite their own revolutionary hopes, they recognize that art must be permitted to discuss issues beyond the desires of political or cultural ideologues. Art is a means of discovering knowledge and it can not be subsumed to the needs of those in power without being reduced to pre-conceived, formulaic aphorisms.
The revolution, they claimed, must "from the very beginning, when it comes to intellectual creativity, establish an anarchist system based on individual freedom". Of course Breton with Diego Rivera and Trotsky acknowledge that their ideas about the role of art at the moment, to help prepare and advocate for the revolution, must center on ensuring the revolution. The joy in the manifesto is its attempt to maintain an open door on behalf of art, in the belief that “fairly divergent aesthetic, philosophical, and political orientation [can] meet on this ground”. In order for the artist to present a unique vision, the artist must be permitted and recognized as truly independent. Or so they hoped...
Trotsky was murdered. The revolution wound up becoming an ideological dictatorship. Artists, whose freedom was curtailed under the communist regime of Eastern Europse, provided the dissension that helped destroy the communist tyranny. It is the artists today in Eastern Europe who seem to be producing a link between those who did not suffer the economic destruction of communism and those who did.
The artist should be able to respond to the political or social situation from any point of view, not only that which supports it, or that which acknowledges it. Is that independence? The best we can offer because the only one available.
True art–art that does not merely produce variations on ready-made models but strives to express the inner needs of man and of mankind as they are today–cannot be anything other than revolutionary: it must aspire to a complete and radical reconstruction of society, if only to free intellectual creation from the chains that bind it and to allow all mankind to climb those heights that only isolated geniuses have reached in the past.
The freedom of intellectual creation that they advocate aligns itself with Breton’s stated aims for Surrealism. The artist must produce images that are not bound by the previous language of art but rather uncover, in those image or others, new visions. In order to alter the established landscape, each artist must be free to present an inner truth. The individual artist by expressing a truly personal vision touches on a more general human experience. In 1947, Breton would explain the rapport between the individual and general history in his remarks on Matta by suggesting that there is a connecting light “entre la causalité universelle et la finalité humaine”. The Hegelian influence of the world on the individual is clear but the individual artist remains central to the success of this endeavor to change the global.
Permitting art to be influenced by a political viewpoint or any aesthetic demands limits the possibilities of creation. Breton and Trotsky state that “art cannot, therefore, without demeaning itself, willingly submit to any outside directive and ensconce itself obediently within the limits that some people, with extremely shortsighted pragmatic ends in view, think they can set on its activities”. Despite their own revolutionary hopes, they recognize that art must be permitted to discuss issues beyond the desires of political or cultural ideologues. Art is a means of discovering knowledge and it can not be subsumed to the needs of those in power without being reduced to pre-conceived, formulaic aphorisms.
The revolution, they claimed, must "from the very beginning, when it comes to intellectual creativity, establish an anarchist system based on individual freedom". Of course Breton with Diego Rivera and Trotsky acknowledge that their ideas about the role of art at the moment, to help prepare and advocate for the revolution, must center on ensuring the revolution. The joy in the manifesto is its attempt to maintain an open door on behalf of art, in the belief that “fairly divergent aesthetic, philosophical, and political orientation [can] meet on this ground”. In order for the artist to present a unique vision, the artist must be permitted and recognized as truly independent. Or so they hoped...
Trotsky was murdered. The revolution wound up becoming an ideological dictatorship. Artists, whose freedom was curtailed under the communist regime of Eastern Europse, provided the dissension that helped destroy the communist tyranny. It is the artists today in Eastern Europe who seem to be producing a link between those who did not suffer the economic destruction of communism and those who did.
The artist should be able to respond to the political or social situation from any point of view, not only that which supports it, or that which acknowledges it. Is that independence? The best we can offer because the only one available.
Art in Surrealism
The role of the visual arts in surrealism came under discussion with the publication of La Revolution Surréaliste. Max Morise in the first issue of La Revolution Surréaliste attempted an explanation of the surrealist method in the field of visual art. He recognizes how Breton, in Les Champs Magnetiques, has established automatic writing that through its practice as well as its final product presents a surreal method. Dismissing a stream of thought, or dreams, as insufficiently particular to Surrealism, he compares the surrealist painter’s brush to a cheetah leaping after its prey and lands on the idea of “certain meetings, apparently fortuitous” which is so clearly tied to the ideas of surrealist writing.
His essay, however, inspired a response by Pierre Naville in the third issue of La Revolution Surrealiste which would declare that there is no such thing as surrealist painting. Breton responds with a series of articles over the next five issues (no. 4, July 15, 1925; no. 6, March 1, 1926; no. 7, June 15, 1926; no. 9-10, October 1, 1927) in which he considered how to discuss Surrealism and painting. These essays become the single long essay “Surréalisme et la peinture” which is now published under that title along with many of his other writings on art and artists.
Early in his essay “Surréalisme et la peinture” Breton discusses why he becomes interested in the language of art. Visual images constitute a language that is no less artificial and whose origins are no less problematic than verbal language. Nonetheless, he intends to consider the state of this language as it is currently, just as he has done with poetry.
“Le besoin de fixer les images visuelles, ces images préexistant ou non à leur fixation, s’est extériorisé de tout temps et a abouti à la formation d’un veritable langage qui ne me paraît pas plus artificiel que l’autre et sur l’origine duquel il serait vain que je m’attarde. Tout au plus me dois-je de considérer l’état actuel de ce langage, de même que l’état actuel du langage poétique, et de rappeler s’il est nécessaire à sa raison d’être”.
The goal in this particular case, however, is to address the stagnant language of art and question the established symbols that have been used in painting. The essay presents modern painters who are seeking new images from their own imagination by which to break with convention, thereby permitting the disrupting effect of the marvelous.
His essay, however, inspired a response by Pierre Naville in the third issue of La Revolution Surrealiste which would declare that there is no such thing as surrealist painting. Breton responds with a series of articles over the next five issues (no. 4, July 15, 1925; no. 6, March 1, 1926; no. 7, June 15, 1926; no. 9-10, October 1, 1927) in which he considered how to discuss Surrealism and painting. These essays become the single long essay “Surréalisme et la peinture” which is now published under that title along with many of his other writings on art and artists.
Early in his essay “Surréalisme et la peinture” Breton discusses why he becomes interested in the language of art. Visual images constitute a language that is no less artificial and whose origins are no less problematic than verbal language. Nonetheless, he intends to consider the state of this language as it is currently, just as he has done with poetry.
“Le besoin de fixer les images visuelles, ces images préexistant ou non à leur fixation, s’est extériorisé de tout temps et a abouti à la formation d’un veritable langage qui ne me paraît pas plus artificiel que l’autre et sur l’origine duquel il serait vain que je m’attarde. Tout au plus me dois-je de considérer l’état actuel de ce langage, de même que l’état actuel du langage poétique, et de rappeler s’il est nécessaire à sa raison d’être”.
The goal in this particular case, however, is to address the stagnant language of art and question the established symbols that have been used in painting. The essay presents modern painters who are seeking new images from their own imagination by which to break with convention, thereby permitting the disrupting effect of the marvelous.
Theory and Reality in Art
In theory, you could look at art and like it or not. Actually in theory you do nothing of the sort. Theory posits all sorts of conceptual pathways and constraints to how we engage with art. Sometimes, I go to an exhibit and the theory postulated behind the work seems utterly ridiculous. Sometimes, theory seems to be all the work has going for it. And sometimes, some very rare and gifted artists manage to produce work that is totally wonderful and has a theoretical conceit–I am thinking here of Cy Twombly, whose work I am currently particularly engaged.
One of the recurring issues is the degree to which art relates to reality. Is it an analysis, presentation, insight into the current state of things? Should it be? I could start with Plato, discuss Hegel, mention Ruskin, all of which I may do as I continue to circle around this issue but for now, as I am reading Breton this fall, I will talk about his take on Tanguy.
Despite Breton’s approach to art as being engaged in a meaning full dialogue, in a 1942 essay on Tanguy, Breton distances theory from the creative production process. Tanguy's works are excellent and are entirely intuitive. Their relationship to theory can only be identified a posteriori, he claims. Theory and creative works may be swimming the same channel but they are coming from two different sources. Theory, in particular psychoanalysis and Gestalt theory for Breton, posits the same quest to recognize the Mother, that is the darkness of the origin, the womb, the cosmos and the conscious that Surrealist art attempts to present through their own efforts (think here of Goethe on the Mother).
Dali famously wore a diving suit, at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibit in London, to represent the way that he plumbs the depths of the unconscious. Though the images that the artists offer may not be those of ‘reality’ they are at the very heart of the real. What is particularly real-ly funny was his inability to take off the mask, so that without the aid of the delightful Edward James (a surrealist patron and poet) he would have suffocated.
Reality sometimes intrudes on art, without a theoretical basis for doing so.
One of the recurring issues is the degree to which art relates to reality. Is it an analysis, presentation, insight into the current state of things? Should it be? I could start with Plato, discuss Hegel, mention Ruskin, all of which I may do as I continue to circle around this issue but for now, as I am reading Breton this fall, I will talk about his take on Tanguy.
Despite Breton’s approach to art as being engaged in a meaning full dialogue, in a 1942 essay on Tanguy, Breton distances theory from the creative production process. Tanguy's works are excellent and are entirely intuitive. Their relationship to theory can only be identified a posteriori, he claims. Theory and creative works may be swimming the same channel but they are coming from two different sources. Theory, in particular psychoanalysis and Gestalt theory for Breton, posits the same quest to recognize the Mother, that is the darkness of the origin, the womb, the cosmos and the conscious that Surrealist art attempts to present through their own efforts (think here of Goethe on the Mother).
Dali famously wore a diving suit, at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibit in London, to represent the way that he plumbs the depths of the unconscious. Though the images that the artists offer may not be those of ‘reality’ they are at the very heart of the real. What is particularly real-ly funny was his inability to take off the mask, so that without the aid of the delightful Edward James (a surrealist patron and poet) he would have suffocated.
Reality sometimes intrudes on art, without a theoretical basis for doing so.
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