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Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
Module 3- Surrealism: The Reprieve
**** Module 3 is moderately difficult for language and concepts.
I. Primary Literary Source (French – English translation follows)
Excerpts from Manifestes du surréalisme (Surrealist Manifestoes), by André Breton
(1896-1966), French writer. The original texts were published in France in 1924 and
1930. The following text is from a publication printed in France in 1985. [See
Bibliography for complete reference.]
(14-15, 24-25, 31, 60)
[14-15]
…Chère imagination, ce que j’aime surtout en toi, c’est que tu ne pardonnes pas.
Le seul mot de liberté est tout ce qui m’exalte encore. Je le crois propre à entretenir,
indéfiniment, le vieux fanatisme humain. Il répond sans doute à ma vieux fanatisme
humain. Il répond sans doute à ma seule aspiration légitime. Parmi tant de disgraces dont
nous héritons, il faut bien reconnaître que la plus grande liberté d’esprit nous est laissée.
A nous de ne pas en mésuser gravement. Réduire l’imagination à l’esclavage, quand bien
même il y irait de ce qu’on appelle grossièrement le bonheur, c’est se dérober à tout ce
qu’on trouve, au fond de soi, de justice suprême. La seule imagination me rend compte de
ce qui peut être, est c’est assez pour lever un peu le terrible interdit; assez aussi pour que
je m’abandonne à elle sans crainte de me tromper (comme si l’on pouvait se tromper
dadvantage). Où commence-t-elle à devenir mauvaise et où s’arrête la sécurtié de
l’esprit? Pour l’esprit, la possiblité d’errer n’est-elle pas plutôt la contingence du bien?
Reste la folie, “la folie qu’on enferme” a-t-on si bien dit. Celle-là ou l’autre… Chacun
sait, en effet, que les fous ne doivent leur internement qu’à un petit nombre d’actes
légalement répréhensibles, et que, faute de ces actes, leur liberté (ce qu’on voit de leur
liberté) ne saurait être en jeu. Qu’ils soient, dans une mesure quelconque, victimes de leur
imagination, je suis prêt à l’accorder, en ce sens qu’elle les pousse à l’inobservance de
certaines règles, hors desquelles le genre se sent vise, ce que tout homme est payé pour
savoir. Mais le profound détachement dont ils témoignent à l’égard de la critique que
nous portons sur eux, voire des corrections diverses qui leur sont infligées, permet de
supposer qu’ils puisent un grand réconfort dans leur imagination, qu’ils goûtent assez
leur délire pour supporter qu’il ne soit valuable que pour eux….
[24-25]
…Je crois à la resolution future de ces deux états, en apparence si contradictories, que
sont le rêve et la réalité, en une sorte de réalité absolue, de surréalité, si l’on peut ainsi
dire. C’est à sa conquête que je vais, certain de n’y pas parvenir mais trop insoucieux de
ma mort pour ne pas supporter un peu les joies d’une telle possession.
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
On raconte que chaque jour, au moment de s’endormir, Saint-Pol-Roux faisait naguère
placer, sur la porte de son manoir de Camaret, un écriteau sur lequel on pouvait lire: LE
POÈTE TRAVAILLE.
Il y aurait encore beaucoup à dire mais, chemin faisant, je n’ai voulu qu’effleurer un sujet
qui nécessiterait à lui seul un exposé très long et une tout autre rigueur; j’y reviendrai.
Pour cette fois, mon intention était de faire justice de la haine du merveilleux qui sévit
chez certains homes, de ce ridicule sous lequel ils veulent le faire tomber. Tranchons-en:
le merveilleux est toujours beau, n’importe quel merveilleux est beau, il n’y a même que
le merveilleux qui soit beau.
Dans le domaine littéraire, le merveilleux seul est capable de féconder des oeuvres
ressortissant à un genre inférieur tel que le roman et d’une façon générale tout ce qui
participe de l’anecdote. Le Moine, de Lewis, en est une preuve admirable. Le souffle du
merveilleux l’anime tout entier. Bien avant que l’auteur ait délivré ses principaux
personnages de toute contrainte temporelle on les sent prêts à agir avec une fierté sans
précédent. Cette passion de l’éternité qui les soulève sans cesse prête des accents
inoubliables à leur torment et au mien. J’entends que ce livre n’exalte, du commencement
à la fin, et le plus purement du monde, que ce qui de l’esprit aspire à quitter le sol et que,
dépouillé d’une partie insignifiante de son affabulation romanesque, à la mode du temps,
il constitue un modèle de justesse, et d’innocente grandeur….
[31]
…A la même époque, un homme, pour le moins aussi ennuyeux que moi, Pierre Reverdy,
écrivait:
L’image est une creation 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 emotive et de réalité poétique…
etc.
Ces mots quoique sibyllins pour les profanes, étaient de très forts révélateurs et je les
méditai longtemps. Mais l’image me fuyait. L’esthétique de Reverdy, esthétique toute a
posteriori, me faisait prendre les effets pour les causes. C’est sur ces entrefaites que je fus
amené à renoncer définitivement à mon point de vue…
[60]
…Le surréalisme, tel que je l’envisage, declare assez notre non-conformisme absolu pour
qu’il ne puisse être question de le traduire, au process du monde réel, comme témoin à
décharge. Il ne saurait, au contraire, justifier que de l’état complet de distraction auquel
nous espérons bien parvenir ici-bas… Le surréalisme est le “rayon invisible” qui nous
permettra un jour de l’emporter sur nos adversaries. “Tu ne trembles plus, carcasse.” Cet
été les roses sont bleues; le bois c’est du verre. La terre drapée dans sa verdure me fait
aussi peu d’effet qu’un revenant. C’est vivre et cesser de vivre qui sont des solutions
imaginaries. L’existence est ailleurs…
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
II. English Translation of Primary Literary Source
Excerpts from Manifestes du surréalisme (Surrealist Manifestoes), by André Breton
(1896-1966), French writer. The original texts were published in France in 1924 and
1930. The following text is from a publication printed in the US in 1969. [See
Bibliography for complete reference.]
[4-5]
…Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.
The mere word “freedom” is the only one that still excites me. I deem it capable of
indefinitely sustaining the old human fanaticism. It doubtless satisfies my only legitimate
aspiration. Among all the many misfortunes to which we are heir, it is only fair to admit
that we are allowed the greatest degree of freedom of thought. It is up to us not to misuse
it. To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery – even though it would mean the
elimination of what is commonly called happiness – is to betray all sense of absolute
justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be, and
this is enough to remove to some slight degree the terrible injunction; enough, too, to
allow me to devote myself to it without fear of making a mistake (as thought it were
possible to make a bigger mistake). Where does it begin to turn bad, and where does the
mind’s stability cease? For the mind, is the possibility of erring not rather the
contingency of good?
There remains madness, “the madness that one locks up,” as it has aptly been described.
That madness or another… . We all know, in fact, that the insane owe their incarceration
to a tiny number of legally reprehensible acts and that, were it not for these acts their
freedom (or what we see as their freedom) would not be threatened. I am willing to admit
that they are, to some degree, victims of their imagination, in that it induces them not to
pay attention to certain rules – outside of which the species feels itself threatened – which
we are all supposed to know and respect. But their profound indifference to the way in
which we judge them, and even to the various punishments meted out to them, allows us
to suppose that they derive a great deal of comfort and consolation from their
imagination, that they enjoy their madness sufficiently to endure the thought that its
validity does not extend beyond themselves. …
[14-15]
…I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are
seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so
speak. It is in quest of this surreality that I am going, certain not to find it but too
unmindful of my death not to calculate to some slight degree the joys of its possession.
A story is told according to which Saint-Pol-Roux, in times gone by, used to have a
notice posted on the door of his manor house in Camaret, every evening before he went
to sleep, which read: THE POET IS WORKING.
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
A great deal more could be said, but in passing I merely wanted to touch upon a subject
which in itself would require a very long and much more detailed discussion; I shall
come back to it. At this juncture, my intention was merely to mark a point by noting the
hate of the marvelous which rages in certain men, this absurdity beneath which they try to
bury it. Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is
beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.
In the realm of literature, only the marvelous is capable of fecundating works which
belong to an inferior category such as the novel, and generally speaking, anything that
involves storytelling. Lewis’ The Monk is an admirable proof of this. It is infused
throughout with the presence of the marvelous. Long before the author has freed his main
characters from all temporal constraints, one feels them ready to act with an
unprecedented pride. This passion for eternity with which they are constantly stirred
lends an unforgettable intensity to their torments, and to mine. I mean that this book,
from beginning to end, and in the purest way imaginable, exercises an exalting effect
only upon that part of the mind which aspires to leave the earth and that, stripped of an
insignificant part of its plot, which belongs to the period in which it was written, it
constitutes a paragon of precision and innocent grandeur. …
[19-21]
In those days, a man at least as boring as I, Pierre Reverdy, was writing:
The image is a pure creation of the mind.
It cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more or less
distant realities.
The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true,
the stronger the image will be – the greater its emotional power and poetic
reality…
These words, however sibylline for the uninitiated, were extremely revealing, and I
pondered them for a long time. But the image eluded me. Reverdy’s aesthetic, a
completely a posteriori aesthetic, led me to mistake the effects for the causes. It was in
the midst of all this that I renounced irrevocably my point of view. …
[47]
Surrealism, such as I conceive of it, asserts our complete nonconformism clearly enough
so that there can be no question of translating it, at the trial of the real world, as evidence
for the defense. It could, on the contrary, only serve to justify the complete state of
distraction which we hope to achieve here below. Kant’s absentmindedness regarding
women, Pasteur’s absentmindedness about “grapes,” Curie’s absentmindedness with
respect to vehicles, are in the regard profoundly symptomatic. This world is only very
relatively profoundly symptomatic. This world is only very relatively in tune with
thought, and incidents of this kind are only the most obvious episodes of a war in which I
am proud to be participating. Surrealism is the “invisible ray” which will one day enable
us to win out over our opponents. “You are no longer trembling, carcass.” This summer
the roses are blue; the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
little impression on me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary
solutions. Existence is elsewhere.
`
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
III. Cultural and Historical Context
The political atmosphere in the 1920s was as tenuous as the resolution of World War I.
Economic disaster, along with the failure of postwar treaties and the League of Nations to
keep the peace, provided a fertile breeding ground for opposing forces to once again
emerge. In the 1920s and 30s, this shaky ground bred an atmosphere ripe for the
totalitarian regimes that surfaced in several European countries. Benito Mussolini
emerged as the head of the fascist regime in Italy which was derived from a staunch
nationalism. Mussolini explained: “Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State, the
synthesis and unity of all values, interprets, develops, and gives strength to the whole life
of the people.” Joseph Stalin gained control of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union
in 1929 and Adolf Hitler consolidated his power in Germany by building the National
Socialist German Workers’ (or Nazi) Party into a mass political movement. (1004 AA)
Surrealism was a revolutionary movement not only in art and literature, but also in
politics. The “dynamic years” of Surrealism (1924-38) are in many ways defined by the
political action of those involved. The periodical founded by Breton in 1925 as the voice
of Surrealism was named La Révolution surréaliste, and it maintained a steady
Communist line during the 1920s. By the end of the War, the Dadaists were anarchists,
and many future Surrealists joined them. Feeling that government systems guided by
tradition and reason had led mankind into the bloodiest event in history, they insisted that
non-government was better, that the irrational was preferable to the rational in art, all of
life, and civilization. The Russian Revolution and the spread of Communism provided a
channel for Surrealist protests during the 1920s. Louis Aragon, and later, Paul Éluard
joined the Communist Party, while Breton, unsure of Soviet Communism and Stalinism,
took a position closer to Trotskyism in the late 1930s. (289 HMA)
The questions left from the aftermath of World War I were in need of an intellectual
answer. Instead of rejecting everything, as Dada espoused, Surrealism sought a way to
improve the society in which it was entrenched. While Dada was a primary revolt of the
individual against art, morality, and society based on chance and with nihilistic intent,
Surrealism was based on hope. Dada was basically anti-everything, whereas Surrealism
tended to create instead of destroy, mainly through poetry. To the Surrealists, every
creative act was a poetic act – whether a sculpture, painting, prose, poetry, or
demonstration. The Surrealists almost naïvely believed that beauty, freedom, and love
were poetry and all were interchangeable.
Like Tzara, André Breton wrote 3 manifestoes of Surrealism attempting to define it.
Although Surrealism is different from Dada in many ways, both viewed all expressions as
art and preferred mixing images with words, music with poems, plays, costumes, etc. All
media were important to the Surrealists and all were used to create art or poetic acts. In
their search for the emancipation of the word and image, Surrealists were interested in the
liberation of unconscious and subconscious thoughts and desires, the child’s view of the
world, and that of the mentally disturbed. Salvador Dalí in particular set out to simulate
mental disturbance with his “paranoiac-critical” method. These interests manifested
themselves in explorations of the relationship of word and image, automatic writing and
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
drawing; the juxtaposition of 2 incongruent ideas or images to create a third, new reality;
and the illlusionistic rendering of the dream world.
The origin of automatic writing and the interest in the dream world were a direct result of
Sigmund Freud’s influence on European intellectuals. Breton had discovered Freud’s
theories during his medical studies, but his interest in psychoanalysis had grown as a
result of his adoption of associational techniques for automatic writing. This became even
more important to Breton around 1921-3 with the first French translations of Freud’s
major works, including The Interpretation of Dreams. (195 DS)
One of the most fertile media exploited by the Surrealists to depict dream imagery was
film. A good example of Surrealist film is Un Chien Andalou by Salvador Dalí and Luis
Buñuel. Surrealist artists embraced film as a medium because it gave visual expression to
their words and ideas and flowed like dream imagery. In this film, the importance of the
reality of the dream, a surreality, where 2 completely unrelated objects or ideas come
together to form a third, new idea never before seen is emphasized. As in a dream, time is
not linear – the film begins in the present, moves to 8 years later, then 3am, then 16 years
before, and finally ends in spring. Time is often suspended or does not go forward in a
linear fashion and events happen that are not possible in our everyday reality, such as ants
coming out of the palm of Pierre Batcheff’s hand. The Surrealist interest in shocking the
viewer into this different reality manifests itself in the running of a razor over a cow’s eye
in the opening scene of the movie. The purpose of such exploits was to make the viewer
question his or her own reality, and in doing so create a new one. Many of the Surrealists
would go in and out of movies to alter their perceptions and create a new expression.
Man Ray mixed poetry and film to create the cinépoème. One example of this form of
expression is Man Ray’s Etoile de mer (Starfish), a poem by a surrealist writer (Robert
Desnos) that Man Ray interpreted through film. This work is particularly surrealist in its
use of photography, film, word, image, actors related to the movement, and the marriage
of unlike aspects to create another reality. Not only was this film surrealistic, but it also
involved innovative shots and camera angles, such as glimpses through church glass,
which created a distorted, unclear view of the scene.
The best example of the Surrealist interest in the collective unconscious is the Cadavre
exquis. The origin of the name is the first one created: “The exquisite corpse / will drink /
the new / wine.” To produce these Cadavre exquis, three or four of the Surrealists would
collectively write, draw, paint, etc. an image or a word on a piece of paper, and then fold
it over so the others could not see their work. The next person would do the same, and in
the end it would be opened up and would create a sentence, poem, or an image created
through their collective unconscious.
Another example of artistic creation invented by the Surrealists, is the found object or
objet trouvé. Often these objects were discovered at the flea market – art of the never
before seen, usually an antique whose function is not evident, and origins unknown.
Meret Oppenheim’s Lunch in Fur, 1936, becomes a dreamt object. By placing fur on the
cup, it loses its function, becomes unnecessarily opulent, and is declared a work of art.
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
Again this work forces us to question our basic understanding of a work of art and its
reception.
One of the main goals of Surrealism was to force the viewer/reader out of his or her
everyday reality to see a new, surreality filled with the potential of changing the world
into a place of beauty, love, and freedom, away from the harsh truths of European politics
and the control of the bourgeoisie.
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
IV. Analysis of Art Work and Situation in Historical Context
Perhaps René Magritte is often overlooked for the subtleties of his work, but he is
unequivocally the visual artist who captures the spirit of Surrealism in its most complete
form. In the script for a BBC film on Magritte, George Melly describes him as: “a secret
agent; his object is to bring into disrepute the whole apparatus of bourgeois reality. Like
all saboteurs he avoids detection by dressing and behaving like everybody else.” (294
HMA)
Although the Belgian Surrealist group was in a sense almost anti-Breton, they explored
many of the same ideas as the Parisian group and produced René Magritte, the artist who
most embodies the visual and literary significance of the movement. Magritte, more than
any other visual artist was able to “carry into the world an image of paradox which
undermines expectations and, eventually, poses philosophical questions about the nature
of existence and of reality.” (262 DS)
Magritte’s illustrated text “Words and Images” appeared in La Révolution surréaliste in
December 1929, and explored the gap between images, inscription, and titles. According
to Magritte: “An object is not so wedded to its name that one cannot find another which
suits it better.” This concern determined the simplicity of his style, which could thus
achieve such memorable clashes of images and “blackboard” script, as in The Treachery
of Images. (262-3 DS) This work is an illusionistically rendered image of a pipe under
which is written, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”). Of course it is not a
pipe, it is the image of a pipe, represents the idea of a pipe, and calls into question the
meaning of words, of images, how the two fit together, and of communication in general.
The work that visually represents Surrealist ideas most fully is Magritte’s Interpretation
of Dreams from 1930. This work takes the idea of The Treachery of Images one step
further. Again we see the illusionistic (trompe l’oeil) rendering of images, and the
incongruous marriage of word and image, where the viewer must work to find a
relationship, or non-relationship between word and image. But instead of questioning the
image, the images are undermined by the words associated with them. Under an image of
a shoe is written “moon,” and under an image of a glass – “storm.” Magritte is showing
us that a shoe painted on a canvas is not a shoe, it is the illusion of a shoe, as in The
Treachery of Images. While the first painting is declaring the pipe to not be what it
represents, the second painting goes further and the shoe becomes the moon by naming it
that. This act also calls into question our entire existence and how we perceive visual
images. The relationship of words and images and words as symbols of communication is
also questioned, as Aragon did in 1920 with his poem “Suicide.” The words in the
painting are given as much space and therefore as much emphasis as the images. The
words then become their own entities in space and in turn become images themselves.
The handwriting and the black ground of the painting are reminiscent of a school
blackboard. Perhaps the windowpane is indicative of a school child looking out a window
dreaming of a world where a shoe is called a moon and an image of a candle depicts the
ceiling. This notion then brings the spaces of children, the dream world, word, and image
– all important concepts central to Surrealist thought – together in one work.
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
While Dada artists questioned the idea of illusion in painting inherited from the
Renaissance by not depicting it, Magritte and the Surrealists used the oppressor’s tools to
subvert the idea. By using perspective and true illusionistic painting methods in making
the statement that this is not what it appears to be, the statement becomes even stronger.
In the History of Modern Art, the problem is taken into a fourth dimension. “The problem
of real space versus spatial illusion is as old as painting itself, but here it is imaginatively
treated…. Carrying the problem of nature-illusion-painting into a forth dimension.” (295
HMA) By questioning illusion, the two-dimensional nature of the canvas to produce a
three-dimensional work is also called into question, and this tension again subverts all
previous notions of what constitutes a work of art. This painting not only refers to its
predecessors through its style, but also the title’s reference to Freud’s Interpretation of
Dreams. Thus, Magritte is the true subversive using the tools of those he wishes to
undermine to create a new order in art and in life – a surreality.
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
V. Relationship of Art Work to Literary Source
In Breton’s First Surrealist Manifesto (1924), he cites Pierre Reverdy’s statement that the
more distant two realities are when brought together, the stronger and more poetic the
image will be:
The image is a pure creation of the mind.
It cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more or less
distant realities.
The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true,
the stronger the image will be – the greater its emotional power and poetic
reality…
René Magritte’s Interpretation of Dreams is the visual conclusion of this verbal
sentiment. “The image is a pure creation of the mind;” therefore, an image of a shoe can
have the title of “moon” and a glass of water “storm.” The contradiction of naming the
representation of an object something other than what we see it as is the epitome of the
idea of “a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities.” This place between word,
image, imagination, and the inherent contradictions in their comparison creates the strong
image Reverdy is speaking of and in turn creates a much greater poetic reality. This
image can be nothing but a creation of the mind if one attempts to understand it, and yet
its inherent contradictions are the source of its strength.
The placing of contradictory words below illusionistically rendered images liberates the
image from the word and vice versa. As Breton states in his Surrealist Manifestoes, “The
mere word ‘freedom’ is the only one that still excites me.” Magritte is able visually to
liberate imagination, which Breton sees as being in a “state of slavery” at the time.
Breton believes in the power of imagination to change the world: “Imagination alone
offers me some intimation of what can be, and this is enough to remove to some slight
degree the terrible injunction.” Magritte is able to give this idea plastic form in his works
portraying the “treachery of images” and the words we associate with them.
The place where two juxtaposed realities are to come together according to Breton is
what he called the point suprême. This is for him the resolution of dream and reality into
an absolute or surreality.
I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are
seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may
so speak. It is in quest of this surreality that I am going, certain not to find it but
too unmindful of my death not to calculate to some slight degree the joys of its
possession.
Magritte again is the one visual artist who is able to capture the contradictory state of this
surreality. Dalí was the master of the dreamscape, but Magritte was the master of false
illusion which lures the viewer into a sense of contentment with a vision of an object
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
often recurring in his or her reality which is set up as contradictory to that reality through
the use of words.
Finally, Breton too names objects with words different than those we have defined to be
associated with them. “This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass.” In his
search for a solution to the intellectual and political atmosphere of Europe between the
wars, he feels there is a solution: “Existence is elsewhere.” Existence for the Surrealist
artists is in the world of dreams, of the unconscious, and of the collective consciousness.
“The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression on me as a ghost. It is
living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions.” The everyday reality most people
exist in is only an imaginary solution. The Surrealists were searching for a resolution.
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
VI. European Events (1920-1930)
1920: Great Britain: Ezra Pound publishes Instigations.
France: Colette publishes Chéri. First Dada matinée at the Palais des Fêtes in
Paris.
Russia: First concert of factory sirens in Petrograd.
Adolf Hitler helps organize the Nazi party in Germany.
1921: The Chinese Communist Party is formed.
Italy: Publication of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author.
Sweden: Anatole France is awarded the Nobel prize.
France: Picabia creates L’Oeil Cacodylate – a painting of his eye treated with
sodium cacodylate (for herpes ophthalmicus). As the value of a painting depends
on the signature, the more signatures, the more the painting is worth.
1922: The Washington Conference presents a treaty on naval disarmament.
Mussolini is named Prime Minister of Italy.
France: James Joyce publishes Ulysses in Paris, in English.
Great Britain: T.S. Eliot publishes his poem The Waste Land.
Germany: F.W. Murnau produces his first masterwork, Nosferatu. Fritz Lang
produces Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler. László Moholy-Nagy introduces light in his
sculptures: the beginning of Kinetic Art.
Germany: Exhibition of art of the mentally ill (cf. Surrealist works). Book by
Hans Prinzhorn Die Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (the creative imagery of the
mentally ill) considers the drawings, paintings, and sculptures of the mentally ill.
1923: Sweden: Irish writer W.B. Yeats awarded the Nobel Prize. Greta Garbo’s debut in
Mauritz Stiller’s Gösta Berling.
France: Premiere of Knock by Jules Romains, with Louis Jouvet. Tzara’s Coeur à
gaz at the Club du Faubourg.
Ireland: Premiere of The Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey.
Germany: László Moholy-Nagy arrives at the Bauhaus in Weimar; and Walter
Gropius organizes exhibitions and lectures on the school’s activities and on the
prospects of a collaboration between art and industry.
Switzerland: Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) publishes Vers une
architecture.
1924: Germany: Thomas Mann publishes The Magic Mountain.
Great Britain: Publication of A Passage to India by E.M. Forster.
France: Breton publishes Surrealist Manifesto. Premier of Léger’s Mechanical
Ballet. Juan Gris – art is a science, according to The Possibilities of Painting.
1925: Locarno Treaties.
Art Deco style in Paris brings in a “joie de vivre” and a new confidence in the
future, while in Germany, the artists express the dark side of urban life. Its despair
and corruption is expressed in aggressive, barely presentable canvases. (244 AC)
Austria: Posthumous publication of Kafka’s The Trial.
France: Louis Aragon publishes Le paysan de Paris. Creation of L’enfant et les
sortilèges by Maurice Ravel with a libretto by Colette. International Exhibition of
Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts rejects the past to be “modern” rather than
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
“contemporary.” Sonia Delaunay creates clothing for the exhibition. Duchamp
awarded title of “master” by the French Chess Federation.
Switzerland: International exhibition of abstract art in Zurich.
Germany: Hitler publishes Mein Kampf.
1926: France: Publication of Capitale de la douleur by Éluard. Premiere of Nana by
Jean Renoir. Surrealists open the Galerie Surréaliste on March 26 at 16 rue
Jacques-Callot in offices formerly occupied by the magazine Clarté, known to
have Communist sympathies.
GB: D. H. Lawrence publishes The Plumed Serpent.
Germany: Fritz Lang’s Expressionist film Metropolis is launched with an unusual
publicity campaign. Premiere of F.W. Murnau’s Faust.
The Netherlands: The Charleston is forbidden there and an Amsterdam newspaper
De Telegraph interviews Piet Mondrian who says he will not return to his native
country as long it continues to be forbidden.
Germany: Kandinsky publishes Point, Line, and Plane, an outcome of his
teaching at the Bauhaus concerned with the grammar of forms.
1927: France: Monet’s Waterlilies installed at the Orangerie. Belgian Surrealist René
Magritte moves to Paris. Georges Roualt completes the engraving of his Miserere,
fifty-eight large plates.
Germany: Bauhaus opened in Dessau in building built by Walter Gropius. Martin
Heidegger publishes Being and Time. Herman Hesse publishes Steppenwolf.
Sweden: French philosopher Henri Bergson awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.
1928: The Kellogg-Briand Pact.
Spain: Federico García Lorca gains fame with his Gypsy Ballads.
France: André Malraux publishes Les conquérants and André Breton publishes
Nadja. Maurice Ravel’s Bolero meets with immediate success. Performance of
The Three-Penny Opera by Bertolt Brecht with music by Kurt Weill. Breton
publishes Surréalisme et la peinture with the advent of artists such as Max Ernst,
André Masson, Yves Tanguy, and Joan Miró joining the mainly literary
movement. Naville, Péret, Aragon, Éluard, Unik, and Breton join the French
Communist Party amidst the debate of whether or not to actively pursue surrealist
aims at the cost of losing one’s freedom to narrowly political constraints.
Giacometti creates Man and Woman – “the purified manifestation of extreme
feelings… Giacometti has freed himself of concerns about volume to focus better
on the question of empty space.”
Germany: In Mannheim, retrospective of works by Max Beckmann at the
Kunsthalle. Kandinsky directs Pictures of an Exhibition by Mussorgsky for the
Bauhaus theater in Dessau. He becomes a German citizen.
1929: The Great Depression begins.
France: debut of Salvador Dalí with an exhibition and Un Chien andalou. Max
Ernst creates the first collage novel 100-Headed Woman. Preface by André
Breton.
Germany: Unparalleled success of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the
Western Front.
1930: Spain: José Ortega y Gasset publishes his essay Revolt of the Masses.
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
France: Robert Desnos collects his poems in Corps et biens. Henri Michaux
publishes Un Certain Plume, a collection of strange narrative poems. René Clair’s
Sous les toits de Paris is received with great enthusiasm. Jean Vigo presents his
first film, À propos de Nice. L’Age d’or shown in Paris – riot breaks out as it
shows a disregard for religion.
GB: W.H. Auden emerges as a major figure with his Poems.
Japan: Japanese translation of Breton’s Surrealism and Painting.
Germany: Josef von Sternberg’s Blue Angel introduces a new actress: Marlene
Dietrich.
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
VII. US Timeline (1920-1930)
1920: League of Nations is established in Geneva by Woodrow Wilson and other world
leaders.
The Ku Klux Klan launches a recruitment campaign using mass marketing
techniques to gain 85,000 new recruits.
Women secure the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
The first commercial radio broadcast is made.
The Women’s Bureau is formed within the Department of Labor.
Great success of two films – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by John Robertson, with
John Berrymore, and The Sign of Zorro by Fred Niblo with Douglas Fairbanks.
Premiere of Pat Sullivan’s cartoon Fritz the Cat. Société Anonyme is founded on
47th street in NY. A collection of modern art put together by Katherine Dreier and
Marcel Duchamp, who believe that artists and not critics should control discourse
on art.
1921: A joint resolution to officially end World War I in the U.S. finally passes.
Premiere of The Kid with Charlie Chaplin and Dream Street by D.W. Griffith.
Publication of the review New York Dada. Jacques Villon and Archipenko show
their work at the Société Anonyme. Marcel Duchamp begins his abstract film
Anemic Cinema.
1922: T.S. Eliot publishes The Wasteland.
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis arouses attention.
Buster Keaton films Cops. Louis Armstrong records with the King Oliver
orchestra in Chicago. Man Ray publishes Champs délicieux with a preface by
Tristan Tzara using his newfound technique he called “rayographs.” Prohibition
sends people to Europe.
1923: Warren G. Harding dies 2 and a half years into his presidential term and is
succeeded by Calvin Coolidge.
Jazz singer Bessie Smith records her first jazz album.
E.E. Cummings publishes Tulips and Chimneys. James P. Johnson creates a new
syncopated sound, the Charleston. Bix Beiderbecke forms a jazz band in Chicago.
The review The Arts publishes the first important interview with Pablo Picasso.
1924: Insecticides are used for the first time on crops.
US immigration bill excludes the Japanese.
France hosts first Winter Olympics.
George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Premiers of The Ten Commandments by
Cecil B. De Mille and The Thief of Bagdad with Douglas Fairbanks. Société
Anonyme organizes first Paul Klee exhibition in NY.
1925: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is well received by critics but not the
public. Publication of Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos. First recordings
of Louis Armstron with Bessie Smith. Premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold
Rush. Hal Roach creates the Laurel and Hardy team.
1926: Premiere of Don Juan with John Barrymore. Brooklyn Museum in NY presents
an exhibition of abstract art and an exhibition of works by Piet Mondrian.
1927: Charles Lindbergh becomes the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
Module 3 | Surrealism: the Reprieve
Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim across the English Channel.
Publication of Ernest Hemingway’s Men without Women. Duke Ellington is
The star attraction at the Cotton Club in Harlem and records Black and Tan
Fantasy. Premiere of The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson, by Alan Crosland.
1928: Premiere of George Gershwin’s An American in Paris. Walt Disney creates the
first Mickey Mouse films.
1929: After reaching an all time high in September, the stock market crashes creating a
worldwide economic crisis.
NY Museum of Modern Art opens its doors – Curator is Alfred Barr, Jr., 27 years
old. William Faulkner becomes known through his novel The Sound and the Fury.
A Farewell to Arms establishes Hemingway’s reputation.
1930: The U.S. signs a naval disarmament treaty with other European nations.
The Marx Brothers have a spectacular debut in Animal Crackers.
