Dennis Claxton
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Great. Really. So, let's open that flow out in its own general directions. I never read Breton. I followed the visual arts instead.
Just to carry on this general theme on Surrealism here's a quote about the magazine called, View:
``View magazine was an American periodical of art and literature, published quarterly from 1940 to 1947 with heavy emphasis on the Surrealist art of the period. The jaw-dropping list of contributors included: Pavel Tchelitchew, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, André Masson, Pablo Picasso, Henry Miller, Paul Klee, Albert Camus, Lawrence Durrell, Georgia O'Keefe, Man Ray, Jorge Luis Borges, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Jean Genet, René Magritte, Joseph Cornell, Jean Dubuffet, and Edouard Roditi.
The editor was Charles Henri Ford, one of those mercurial polymaths who seemed to know everybody of significance in the world of arts and letters which explains how he could summon such an extraordinary roster of contributors. Ford made a splash initially in 1933 when he co-wrote what's generally regarded as the first gay novel, The Young and Evil, with Parker Tyler. This received guarded praise from Gertrude Stein (Ford's writing was influenced by Stein and Joyce) who later said it was "the novel that beat the Beat Generation by a generation", and the book was sufficiently frank about the lives of its Greenwich Village characters to be banned in the US until the 1960s...''
http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2006/04/16/view-the-modern-magazine/
(IMHO the first gay novel was the Iliad, but nevermind.) The list of painters in the above quote gives some idea as to how broad the influence of Surrealism was in mid-century 20thC art in both the US and Europe.
I will absolutely guarantee that Jim Leach (former Republican housemember from Iowa) the new appointed head of the National Endowment for the Humanities would never fund the kind of exhibit I could put together on Surrealism. That would be especial so if it was done in Washington DC. We are living in the middle of a vast reaction to just about every form of attack mounted by the Surrealists on what has become a failed bourgois order, rotted out from within. Leach's job will be to re-establish the authentic American values of bourgeois order, which the nightmare of George Bush revealed to the world is the ugly face behind the mask.
In some sense this theme of rot within has all kinds of pop cult icons, like Oscar Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Grey. Here is the movie ad from the 1945 version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L__lJLqwTSQ
At the end of the movie somebody pulls the cover off the painting, just before it returns to its original state, and dear dead Dorian melts into a biomorphic ooz of depravity as depicted here:
http://www.atelier-rc.com/Atelier.RC/b-dayCalendar/02.20.97-AlbrightIvan/DorianGray.jpg
You can re-title this painting, Portrait of Dick Cheney... or your favorite neocon of choice.
What's interesting to me is that the whole idea of an altered psychological dimension, altered from the social norm, is seen by the bourgeois order as a nightmare. This is a re-encription of the original idea, which is just the opposite, that the apparent social norm is the nightmare---and the liberatory dream of surrealism is the escape from that reality. But it works both ways... well as both dream and reality.
Something that is rarely noticed about Tchelitchew's painting, Hide-and-Seek, is the large scale composition is of an asshole with hemorroids in all budding fustulas or organic growths that surround the cavernous interior. A similar effect of disturbance but much nicer to look at, follows the vulva line in Georgia O'Keefe:
http://www.mandalas.com/images/Lrg_image_Pages/Flowers/Georgia_O%27keefe_8.jpg
These hidden in plain view shapes contribute greatly to the disturbing quality of both paintings.
Tchelitchew had a great effect on me, because some of his work was used as examples in a life drawing class I took. His drawing style in the 30-40s uses a lot of what's called contour drawing to achieve its stunning 3-D effects. This style is used to see through the skin to the anatomy underneath.
Looking around the web on Tchelitchew I found a lot. There are definitely a lot confluences of art, politics, sex, and reactions to the bourgois order to be found in just about all the surrealists. Here is a website, put on by the Kinsey Institute:
http://www.iub.edu/~kinsey/services/gallery/russia/
There are several points of interest. First of course that Kinsey was interested in the covert world of US sex lives, but second was friendship(?) with Andrey Avinoff. Clicking on any of the biographies of the three Russians, Andrey Avinoff, Marc Chagall and Pavel Tehelitchew gives a fascinating series of studies into class, background, sexual orientation and the Russian art scene between 1917-23 ... Another interesting connection is between Tchelitchew and Sergei Diaghilev the ballet choreographer in Russia and later here in the US, as founder of Ballet Russe. T did set (and I assume costume design) for Diaghilev. Chagall also did sets and costumes.
Like T's hide and seek, there is a whole undercurrent of mythological themes in works like The Nutcracker Suite. In this case, it is the promise of escape from a predicable haute bourgeoisie life, into a dream land of fantastic events and realms of mystery---well were awakening sensuality, sexuality, and the human body no longer appear as simple surface phenomenon.
Now The Nutcracker was probably not originally invisioned as a surrealist work, but it sure would be fun to design it that way, and evnoke a lot of the sexual-dream undercurrents. Something for the grown-ups. Just imagine the outrage when the company visits Desmoines or Peoria...
Just now scanning a brief intro to Communicating Vessels, I think I see a lot that is famiiiar. The usual linkage in art history is through the Duchamp brothers in Dada and related movements, and then into Surrealism. They never mention politics or sex, naturally.
I get the feeling that Breton was more theoretical and to some extent dogmatic, but that wasn't so of the larger collection of artists, writers, film makers, theater people, etc... Hey have fun. I should read it too..
CG
