ALLAN GRAUBARD | Surrealism has no aesthetic ideal. It is a state
of mind, a way of being and becoming, from which poetic artistic, and physical expressions emerge and
evolve.
DAVID NADEAU | Lors de l’expérience surréaliste,
l’esthétique est réinventée et devient un instrument de connaissance et d’exploration
intérieure. La surprise révèle des aspects méconnus et fascinants de la vie inconsciente
et du mythe nouveau en formation.
GREGG SIMPSON | I think for a painter, whether surrealist or not, there
has to be a coming to terms with formal values of their practice. A good painting
is a good painting (or drawing, collage or sculpture) and having aspirations to
create something which invokes the ‘marvelous’ also requires skill, hard work and
a vision of what painting is, or can be, today. I single out painting because it
hasn’t actually been replaced, as was prophesized, by all the other media which
have emerged such as performance art, installation, video or conceptualist theory.
Most of these activities were done to get grants, further careers and please a segment
of the curatorial elite in today’s museum system.
STUART INMAN | I’m not quite sure I understand, or agree with the question!
It seems rather provocative of a standard response, that Surrealism has nothing
to do with aesthetics, or else that it has no aesthetic ideal. But I suppose a more thoughtful answer might stress
that aesthetics is not an end, but a means. As Surrealism is not an art movement,
nor a literary one, nor does it embody a style, but employs all these within a context
that is both more than, and other than aesthetic. I’d say a more correct term would
be ‘poetics’, understood, of course, not as a philosophy of versifying, but of ‘poiesis’.
If we can agree that a surrealist poetics can’t be limited by automatism, but can
still use it, and other means, to go beyond the intentionality of the artwork, to
employ art as a means of research, rather than as an end in itself, if that can
still be understood as any kind of aesthetics, there might be the site of an answer
to your question.
2 | The classic expulsions that
Surrealists carried out from the original Paris formation were of a behavioral nature.
Poor-quality work was never judged. Even now, although expulsions no longer take
place, when Surrealists comment on their peers they do so in the light of sympathies
and alliances, which emphasizes the existence of a clique. To what point does this
distort the understanding that one might have of the most important cultural revolution
of the 20th century?
ALLAN GRAUBARD | The work any creator reveals informs and is informed
by that creator’s ethical, social, and political behavior. Creative activity exists
in and because of the world, and the liberties and constraints lived in the world.
How can anyone enforce distinctions here, or mask one for the other? At the very
least, surrealism tried to steer a viable human course through one political blood-bath
after another. How it succeeded or failed as a movement, a collective of men and
women, is a judgment that anyone of any temper can make.
DAVID NADEAU | Le surréalisme n’est pas
une révolution culturelle limitée au vingtième siècle mais une aventure individuelle
et collective qui continue de nos jours. Les individus se regroupent par affinités,
pour débattre au sujet de recherches communes et partager leurs découvertes.
GREGG SIMPSON | There was, under Breton, the ironic picture of
great visual artists such as Ernst, Miro or Matta being expelled by a literary clique. I am less interested in the politics and ideology
of Surrealism, although I am generally in favour of leftist/progressive policies
in society. (To me communism is often socialism at bayonet point.) I am more interested
in the idea of Breton’s ‘poetic imagination’ than adhering to any fixed political
program.
STUART INMAN | I am not at all sure I have an answer to this question.
It might be that distortions ensue from an overly rigorous assertion of surrealist
identity and the non-surrealist identity of others, but it seems inescapable when
many people will insist on their favorite writer or painter being a surrealist when
they are nothing of the kind. They don’t even reconsider when informed that their
favorite refused to identify themselves as surrealist. Their opinion overrules everything!
Then there’s people who have a surrealist ‘period’ and who then leave Surrealism
behind, Hantai, for example, whose post-surrealist work has little or nothing to
do with surrealism and would not be confused with it. On the other hand, Dali’s
later work is very often confused with Surrealism, and not surprisingly, as it employs
the same imagery and rhetoric, but many, to say the least, of us would claim that
those works operate from a different spirit.
ALLAN GRAUBARD | The wind of time and events separate the wheat
from the chaff.
DAVID NADEAU | Les publications surréalistes
ont toujours accueilli des artistes et des chercheurs outsider, étrangers au mouvement
mais dont la démarche a présenté un intérêt d’un point de vue surréaliste.
GREGG SIMPSON | There is currently a feud between the defenders
of fantastic or even fantasy art, who claim to be surrealist, and those who trace
their connection directly to Breton and the Paris Group, represented in later years
by José Pierre, Edouard Jaguer and Sarane Alexandrian. Members of the former group
are often far to right of where Surrealism began. I believe the magazine or journal
format, whether in print or on screen, or both, is where the distinction can be
emphasized. But these purveyors of pseudo-surrealist kitsch don’t have this level
of intellectual activity. Where are their poets, where does their sensibility emanate
from?
STUART INMAN | I don’t really understand the question, I think it would
have to be rephrased for me to give a sensible answer.
4 | Two terms within the Surrealist
environment have always caught my eye, not because they appear inappropriate to
me, but rather due to the compliment-rejection partition that they carry within:
‘Surrealist movement’ and ‘Surrealist civilization’. How different are the two,
and what to they represent to the point of appearing antipodal?
ALLAN GRAUBARD | Surrealism is a movement to transform our civilization
from within toward greater individual and collective liberties. Is a surrealist
civilization possible? Perhaps. Is it desirable? That’s for you to answer.
GREGG SIMPSON | If anything, I endorse the term Surrealist Movement
rather than ‘Group’. It is too diffuse now to claim there is one group, but there
is instead, a series of links and connections one must make to the Surrealist lineage
begun in 1924, but not to anyone claiming to be the official group. Instead there
are many ‘groups’ from France to Peru, Canada to Portugal. If this helps to liberate
humanity to any degree then Surrealism must strive to help create a global civilization
which will embrace it.
STUART INMAN | If indeed they are antipodal, it is within a more limited
system in which they are the poles of one thing, rather than being wholly opposite
or opposed. Put simply, a “surrealist civilization” suggests a broader and more organic base than a surrealist movement,
which implies a stronger organizational base and impetus. However, I rather think
of surrealist civilization as within our
larger civilization, a smaller egregore, within a larger one, slowly (perhaps too
slowly!) emerging and growing as the other becomes more dispersed. It might be that
I merely read too much W.B. Yeats in my youth and a portion of his strange system
remains with me after all these years.
ALLAN GRAUBARD | By not mimicking or reproducing, within one’s
creative arc, previous achievements and discoveries, whether artistic or ideological.
DAVID NADEAU | L’approfondissement d’une
mythologie personnelle par les moyens expérimentaux qui s’imposent renouvelle le
plaisir de la surprise. La répétition obsessionnelle de thèmes et de formes peut
elle aussi être un moyen d'exploration de la vie intérieure.
GREGG SIMPSON | Whether in images, or in words, merely repeating
time worn clichés from the 1930’s doesn’t make sense in 2018. For surrealist art to continue
to flourish, it must encourage not only an originality of vision and a skillful
use of form and color, but be able to hold its own with other forms of plastic art.
Coming from one of the newest part of the New World on Canada’s west coast, I have
been able to work without too much direct influence from art history. I work within
the legacy of Surrealism, to continue and extend it, but not repeat what has already
happened.
STUART INMAN | WHY is perennial renovation… of artistic
creation impossible? I’m not denying that much of what I see of ‘surrealist art’
is indeed a repetition, or at least very strongly influenced by this or that artist
or poet, but I don’t see the problem as one of being hemmed in by the limits of
the possible, but possibly the limits of individual artists, no doubt including
myself. Also, isn’t surrealism concerned with overcoming the impossible, at the
very least by going to the limits of what is possible?
6 | Aldo Pellegrini is one of
the few scholars of Surrealism that specifically addressed its poetic sphere. Any
list of Surrealist references will emphasize show the relevance of visual arts.
This always seemed to be like a failure of the critics because the rejuvenating
essence, even in the early 20th century, concerns the image itself and its many
angles. Is this one of any number of adulterations to the Surrealist principles,
or even they barely recognized the presence of a difference – except in purely technical
terms – between imagery and poetics?
DAVID NADEAU | Il n'y a pas de différence
pour moi entre la poésie, le collage, le dessin et l'art sonore; ce sont différents
aspects de la même recherche.
GREGG SIMPSON | The same revolution hit literature as it did visual
art in the early twentieth century. The doors were opened for surrealist art by
Picasso and Cubism, as we can see in the early work of André Masson and Joan Miro. In literature the developments
were similar beginning with the Futurist’s use of typographic experiments, sound
poetry and noise music which directly led to Dada. But one hundred years ago there
was no internet and now we are saturated in images, so perhaps the poetic imagination
will be the only means by which we can navigate through this.
STUART INMAN | I do not know Pellegrini’s work and can make no comment
on it. However, I have seen a great deal of academic work on surrealist writing,
and usually of very variable quality and usually missing the point of surrealism.
For me, to really address the poetic sphere in scholarly work, there would be the
burning need to consider the whole question of poetic analogy seriously, and really
analogy as a “figure of mind” rather than merely metaphor, a “figure of speech”.
ALLAN GRAUBARD | The “the forces unleashed by Freud, Marx and Surrealism” have, in large
part, been absorbed into the market or suffer co-option in other ways, making them
socially acceptable as “art”, “poetry”, or “psycho-analysis”. Yet such absorption
or co-option is not total. When used with clarity and passion, “the forces unleashed”... yet can help us to oppose
current forms of domination and their supporting ideologies, even if on a micro
scale. Surrealism charted a revolution murdered as much by reactionary forces as
by the hubris of revolutionaries. What can evolve from these ashes is not mine to
say for anyone else. And that, I think, is key. If it’s not up close and personal,
if risk is absent, if that compelling sense of a new social logic vanishes into
abstraction rather than rising through praxis, then I won’t be around to pick up
the pieces. Because life then, my life, simply won’t be worth living.
DAVID NADEAU | On vit dans une époque ou
les idées et le mouvement révolutionnaires n’ont certainement pas le vent dans les
voiles La résistance au misérabilisme et la création de nouveaux langages libérés
de l’utilitarisme marchand entretiennent le désir utopique de transformation sociale,
désir exprimé sous la forme d’un mythe collectif constamment réinventé.
GREGG SIMPSON | I wonder if Freud was a Marxist. That would be
interesting to find out. I somehow doubt it with his bourgeoise background. Breton
managed to enlist both in his quest to liberate the human imagination. But then
in those days, and for the rest of the twentieth century, the battle lines were
between Communism and Fascism, with capitalist market forces replacing the latter
following the War.
In a sense the new social movements like Occupy,
Me Too and others are the only opposition. The Left discredited itself in many ways
from Stalin to Pol Pot and after the fall of the Soviet Union, many have come to
see Communism as Socialism at bayonet point. In a reworking of the “all systems
go” expression, I say “all systems, no”.
STUART INMAN | Honestly, I don’t know the answer to this question.
I have never been, shall we say, religiously marxist, what I have understood I have
tended to understand as a critical system and as a tool. In that sense it seems
more relevant than ever. Maybe it is the only antidote to “the market’s virulent
absolutism”.
 |
| Allan Graubard | David Nadeau | Gregg Simpson | Stuart Inman |
*****
EDIÇÃO COMEMORATIVA | CENTENÁRIO
DO SURREALISMO 1919-2019
Artista
convidada: Marcelle Ferron (Canadá, 1924- 2001)
Agulha Revista de Cultura
20 ANOS O MUNDO CONOSCO
Número 139 | Agosto de 2019
editor geral | FLORIANO MARTINS | floriano.agulha@gmail.com
editor assistente | MÁRCIO SIMÕES | mxsimoes@hotmail.com
logo & design | FLORIANO MARTINS
revisão de textos & difusão | FLORIANO
MARTINS | MÁRCIO SIMÕES
ARC Edições © 2019
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