So Ya Wannabe a Surrealist? Part 2. The S Word and Other Contentious Issues

 SO YA WANNABE A SURREALIST? PART 2. THE S WORD AND OTHER CONTENTIOUS ISSUES

The word is 'surreal'. Like "It's so surreal!" meaning what exactly? I hate the word because it is a flabby meaningless word that slinks around the dark corners of dictionaries and signifies whatever people want it to signify, or not. Most surrealists don't use the word because of this vague and fluffy concept of...something weird, a bit unreal. "We took loads of sleeping pills and booze and everything looked so surreal", that sort of thing.

The trouble is, this is pretty much the opposite of what is meant by Surrealism, or by surreality.  Think of the idea as being a sort of 'open totality' of reality bound together with the imaginary, the waking with the dream.

But don't take my word for it, let's juxtapose the "kinda weird" definition of 'surreal' with Andre Breton's definition in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism. This is the absolute classic passage where Breton goes beyond the original definition in the 1924 Manifesto, of "pure psychic automatism" and embraces a dialectical approach to the problems of existence:

"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future. the communicable and the incommunicable. high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions. Now, search as one may one will never find any other motivating force in the activities of the Surrealists than the hope of finding and fixing this point. From this it becomes obvious how absurd it would be to define Surrealism solely as constructive or destructive: the point to which we are referring is a fortiori that point where construction and destruction can no longer be brandished one against the other. It is also clear that Surrealism is not interested in giving very serious consideration to anything that happens outside of itself, under the guise of art, or even anti-art, of philosophy or anti-philosophy-in short, of anything not aimed at the annihilation of the being into a diamond, all blind and interior, which is no more the soul of ice than that of fire." (Andre Breton. (1929) Second Manifesto of Surrealism.)

I want to impress on you both the intensity and the grandeur of this vision...and I have quite forgotten to tell any jokes...

Another frequent mistake is the equation of Salvador Dali with Surrealism. Dali was indeed involved with Surrealism for a few years, made a significant contribution, but increasingly promoted himself as the surrealist, to the expense of other surrealists and the movement itself while slipping to the far right to the extent that he praised Franco. André Breton famously made an anagram of his name, Avida Dollars. Perhaps I should devote an article to Dali, explaining fully why I dislike him and his work, but really I think it is enough to just say that he was a fascist and a racist who prostituted his undoubted talent and made a great many shitty paintings with immaculate technique. What do they say? Fuck that guy!

Another thing I might as well deal with now is the "last/lost surrealist syndrome". I have seen this for as long as I can remember, well, as far back as the 70s anyway. In that instance it was  André Masson who was described in a newspaper article as the last surrealist, despite the fact that there were a great many older surrealists still going. I have seen it trotted out frequently since then.

I noticed that there will be an event at Tate Modern devoted to Leonora Carrington "England's Lost Surrealist." Who lost her exactly? I remember a splendid retrospective exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery back in 1990, I think it was. Virago published most, if not all, of her writings, and they were pretty popular. She'd had a considerable following for several years before that, in part due to Whitney Chadwick's "Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement", a rather wretched book in many ways, but at least important for bringing a number of women artists to the public's attention. Leonora had, it has to be said, been very well known to surrealists for many years, but as establishment views were that surrealists were obsolete, various important surrealists had to be made profitable before they could be given publicity. So, over the years, a number of really quite wonderful women surrealists have been 'discovered'. A few works, like Amy Hale's book on Ithell Colquhoun, are real treasures, many less so.

If we are to have a sort of award for works presenting women surrealists, it must go the Penelope Rosemont's epic Women Surrealists, which accounts for, I think, over 100, and attempts to give some context to writers, painters, thinkers and activists. I'm not sure it is wholly successful, but it is a hugely ambitious book and could never be wholly successful. It is, however, wholly necessary for anybody who wants a compendious account of women in the surrealist movement. It counteracts the misleading impressions of Chadwick's volume, and that is a good start.

Here it is, now, if you don't already have a copy, you need to hunt it down  and acquire it before making any comments about women and Surrealism...I mean, read it, don't just buy it, right?

So Ya Wannabe A Surrealist? Part One. Introduction

 

SO, YA WANNABE A SURREALIST?

Part One: Introduction

A new exhibition has just opened in London, at the Tate Modern, 'Surrealism Beyond Borders'.  It's essential message is that Surrealism never was just an art movement, based in Paris during the inter-war years, but a multi-formed intellectual movement that was international, interdisciplinary, and that existed well beyond the arbitrary expiry dates of 1939, 1947, or whatever suited the art historians of whatever period, and might even reveal that Surrealism continues to exist 100 years after the founding of the movement.

Now, the exact centenary of Surrealism can be disputed, the group was formed out of the wreckage of Paris Dada in 1922, but the real founding document, the Manifesto of Surrealism, was only written and published in 1924. But the point here is that there's about a hundred years of surrealist activity to account for and that continues in 2022, despite everything that has opposed it.

It struck me that it is possible that a huge exhibition like Surrealism Beyond Borders might stimulate enough interest in Surrealism that a few bright sparks may decide that they are indeed surrealists and then possibly, just possibly, attempt to start up something they consider to be surrealist activity. To those brave few, I offer some advice, warnings, and maybe the odd joke.

I have already been there, became fascinated by Surrealism, decided that its values and mine coincided sufficiently for me to think of myself as a surrealist, and went out to find like-minded souls. During over 30 years of being active within the surrealist milieu I have also completed a major research project on the subject. I therefore do possess a level of experience and expert knowledge, although to call be an expert might be overdoing it, and I only do so as a joke to myself. The point is that I'm both an activist and a scholar of Surrealism who has some happy and some less happy experiences I can share, whether or not you care to learn from my experience is up to you.

You should not think that I am trying to impose a set of hard and fast rules, at least not beyond the suggestion that Surrealism should be surrealist and that if one speaks of Surrealism it really helps if one has enough knowledge of Surrealism to not look like a complete idiot. I really think that the best advice is to read primary sources, the surrealists themselves, in preference to academic commentators, but don't despise the academics either, they do have something to offer, despite some extraordinarily piss-poor examples of what passes for scholarship. From this mix you can form a better idea of what surrealists think and do and thus find your way around this passional idea.

You might decide that, with the increasing hope that Covid-19 might fade into the background of our lives, there's more possibilities of something like collective action.  You might have found some places on the internet that, apparently, offer surrealist activity, treat them with caution until you have a clearer idea of where they are coming from. You might decide to advertise more locally for contacts to start up a new activity, in which case you'd do well to learn from the experience of a friend of mine. 

This friend advertised in Fortean Times for people to play surrealist games. He was inundated with replies, in excess of 60 I think, and from a very broad and sometimes quite strange, range of people. His respondents did include a few surrealists, but included post-situationist nutjobs, conspiracy theorists and self-promoting minor artists, to name but a few. There was no common idea of what might be done, what Surrealism was, is, or should be or anything much, and I remember some spin-off meetings where these things were debated and one person thought that calling something Surrealism was a bad idea. Another thought that groups were an entirely wrong way to go about things, he was entirely opposed to groups in favour of networks. We were confronted with the strange idea of a non-surrealist non-group. 

The thing is, many people approach this sort of proposal with very fixed ideas and stuff like facts scarcely impinge upon them and the thought of how Surrealism might really relate to Situationist ideas and practice, the structure and purpose of conspiracies or how it might change the way one understands art. You might be somebody with an open and enquiring mind who comes across similar people who share a passion for Surrealism and perhaps then you are well on your way. 

There are various things to be considered however, for instance, the fundamental ideas of Surrealism, how it developed historically, where the fault-lines in surrealist theory might be (probably not where you'd expect) and the limitations of contemporary practice. So here's what I thought I'd do. I'll carry on writing a series of blog posts under this general title, exploring these basic ideas, inviting comments, and then I might add to, or edit the posts according to any comments I get. If you bother to read this at all, you might wish to comment or ask questions and I might do a Q&A post. If nobody says anything, I may or may not continue, according to my whim.