JAN DOČEKAL | The question of esthetic surrealist ideal reminds me of
the basic rule of the first surrealists: surrealism does not take care of aesthetics
at all, or very little. Its aim is the idea and the content. Research of aesthetic
rules in the proportions of the work of art is completely irrelevant. Of course,
the principle, that no form of expression can be rejected, if it does not comply
with aesthetic standards, is paramount.
LUBOMÍR KERNDL | The aesthetic ideal of surrealism
is only an artificially created concept that can never really be found. However,
it is obvious that surrealism opens up an endless space for all creators without
trying to evaluate their work in advance. Everything is evolving, and creators whose
creativity is initially of low quality can still have unprecedented outcomes beyond
the convention.
MERL FLUIN & PAUL COWDELL | It is axiomatic that Surrealism is not driven by aesthetic considerations.
This has been underscored by the lengthy process of delineation and refinement mentioned
here, a process which has further sought to distinguish us from being simply ‘just
another’ art movement or -ism.
Nevertheless, we are inevitably driven by our own subjective tastes and preferences,
as well as by an appreciation of the technical qualities and skills that have been
used in the creation of works. We must fight against any tendency to take certain
– possibly more skilfully executed – works as aesthetic ideals to which we then
aspire in our own explorations, particularly when those skilfully executed works
are likely to be taken as aesthetic ideals by non-Surrealists. Within Surrealist
groups, for example, you may see the emergence of shared approaches and ideas which
could be construed by outsiders as a shared aesthetic. But those approaches/ideas
do not constitute an aesthetic, and we must ensure that they never become so.
PAUL MCRANDLE | Convulsive beauty-erotic and veiled, exploding and fixed,
magic and circumstancial-is an event as much as it is an ideal.
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?
JAN DOČEKAL | There were many expulsions from the community of surrealists
in the first decades of its existence. These events indicated its revolutionary
mood and the desire to change the world. The desire to change the world sometimes
justified work of poor quality. However, how can you tell good quality from poor
quality? The main thing is that surrealism is still alive, and its ideas are vital,
not only in the works of “the old good surrealists”, but also in the works of many
young ones. Talking about mutual sympathy and alliances of artists, I think, that
surrealism does not manifest much of it. And surrealist cultural revolution is hard
to imagine. The capital which rules the today’s world has different priorities.
LUBOMÍR KERNDL | There is no doubt that Surrealism
was and is the greatest cultural revolution of the 20th century, as well as the
fact that some creators with poor quality have passed through it. As I have already
said, there is always the possibility (a small chance) that the bad can develop
a good things. And the instinct of the pack also works here - we all belong to the
same movement and therefore we do not evaluate colleagues.
MERL FLUIN & PAUL COWDELL | This question seems to us to conflate two separate issues: (a) the judgement
of ‘poor-quality work’, and (b) expulsions, alliances and cliques.
For reasons outlined in our response to Question 1, we regard ‘poor-quality
work’ as a non-issue, or at any rate an issue that has no bearing on whether individuals
should face exclusion or censure. Surrealism entails a set of principles to be followed,
not standards to be met. The historical expulsions to which Question 2 alludes were
made when individuals abandoned or betrayed those principles. The aesthetic quality
of their work was irrelevant.
Question 2 states that expulsions no longer take place. Our experience of
the internal life of Surrealist groups is that this is an oversimplification. While
it’s true that formal expulsions no longer
take place, individuals can be deliberately ejected from Surrealist groups by informal means. The group can make its displeasure
with a particular individual abundantly clear, whether through active disputation
or passive-aggressive attrition, until eventually the individual in question takes
the hint and withdraws, amid greater or lesser ill feeling. This depends primarily
on the theoretical and practical strengths within the group itself.
The question of expulsion is posed at the level of groups. Sympathies and
alliances can be forged at the level of either groups (such as the axis of sympathy
that existed between SLAG, Stockholm and Athens, or the long-standing alliance between
SLAG and Río de la Plata) or individuals (such as those that congregated on the
Isle of Wight during the Archaeology of Hope game in 2017). These are not just collective
theoretical and practical endeavours, but intense emotional and personal relationships.
To apply the pejorative term ‘clique’ to these formations is neither necessary nor
illuminating.
All of that being said, Question 2 does point towards what we see as an underlying
weakness in the international Surrealist movement today: a fear of internal conflict.
One of us has written about this at more length elsewhere. Ejections from groups
are carried out by covert or underhand means because no one wants to be the bad
guy who openly calls for another’s expulsion. Groups and individuals stick to collaborating
with the friends they find sympa, but
there is a danger if that becomes a way of avoiding confrontation with others with
whom one disagrees. Committed as we are to a dialectical view of history, we see
conflict as the engine of development. A Surrealist movement that avoids internal
conflict risks becoming a movement that lacks internal development – becoming stagnant.
To what point does this distort the understanding that one might have of
the most important cultural revolution of the 20th century? We do not regard Surrealism
as a (merely) cultural revolution, nor as confined to the 20th century, and we do
not know whose ‘understanding’ is at issue here. So we are not able to respond to
this part of the question.
PAUL MCRANDLE | Surrealist constellations are self-defined along lines
of elective affinity in which critiques play different roles.
JAN DOČEKAL | I am a member of the surrealist group Stir up. Our group
publishes an irregular magazine called Styxus. It is sponsored by a printing company.
The magazine is quite popular with fans of surrealism. The Stir up group has also
its own gallery (also sponsored) in a former water mill on the Jihlava river. The
gallery shows remarkable exhibitions of works of art by Stir up members and their
guests, mainly from abroad. The visitors do not come in thousands, but what is important
is that many followers of surrealism come. Nowadays, it is quite difficult to argue
(definitely in the Czech Republic), that surrealism represents the permanent revolution.
However, it is very important, that surrealism is fundamentally a space of the absolute
creative freedom, a space for researching our own imagination and our own dreams.
I think that hardly any author deals with the problem of separating the wheat from
the chaff. Maybe none at all.
LUBOMÍR KERNDL | The fact that we are constantly
trying to reject surrealism just because of its orthodox origins can’t surprise
us. But it must be remembered that just after World War I people were actually looking
for a new sense of life. Breton's Parisian formation, too, has succumbed to controversial
attempts to determine the right truths, and so there was a classic expulsion. Surrealist
magazines (in whatever form) have recorded developments that our movement has gone
through, until it has reached a certain degree of freedom. For me as a creator,
surrealism is symbolized by the maximum freedom of creation, and as the theorist
of our group, Arnošt Budík, writes - his basic supporting columns are FREEDOM, LOVE
AND POISIE.
MERL FLUIN & PAUL COWDELL | Within this question we are unclear about the intended meaning of ‘counter-orthodoxy’,
and we do not recognise the description of Surrealism as having ‘orthodox beginnings’.
Given these and certain other ambiguities, it is necessary to clarify our understanding
before answering.
The question seems to be suggesting that the most fruitful contributions
came within magazines that were not exclusively Surrealist, and that their value
lay in their opening of shared spheres of response to, and rebellion against, the
world and its prevailing orthodoxies.
At an early point in any local development of Surrealism, there must be some
separation from existing movements and avant-gardes. This separate delineation of
and adherence to our principles will form the basis for the directions Surrealism
will be able to take thereafter.
At a later stage, when a Surrealist group has established its separate identity
more securely, there may also be attempts to collaborate in publication. These are
somewhat different, as they may aim to exploit an apparently shared space and simultaneously
to establish the authority of Surrealism within that space. The abandonment of our
principles, or their relaxation for the purposes of collaborative publication with
non-Surrealists, would be absolutely fatal to our activity as Surrealists.
To give an example from the UK context: when the journal Patricide appeared a few years ago, we were
extremely cautious of the venture, and there was discussion of it over a protracted
period within SLAG. One SLAG member cautioned against our hostility, pointing out
that such collaborative journals can produce more interesting results from Surrealists
than explicitly exclusive Surrealist publications, precisely because they make Surrealists
stretch themselves further: there is something useful about such journals, because
they do not allow us to settle into any complacency about avenues we are already
pursuing. In the longer run, the initial interest and success of Patricide for Surrealists became exhausted
precisely because the relationship between our movement and the journal remained
stubbornly restricted to publication only. If there is no further development towards
the Surrealist movement from within a publication or its readership, and if the
journal’s publication policy is no longer pushing Surrealists to explore their own
practice and investigation in any meaningful or innovative way, then the relationship
is of no further benefit to Surrealism.
In this sense the separation of wheat from chaff is one of practice, and
depends entirely on our principles. The decision to publish in non-Surrealist journals
may reflect a deliberate turn outwards, but such a turn is dependent on a specific
understanding of the current state of Surrealism and its relations with the outside
world. The choice of such journals will depend on the appraisal we make of them
as publications and of the individuals involved as individuals. We may equally well
decide that under present circumstances we should be doing the opposite and occulting
our practice. Occulted or public, our activity and the decisions behind it reflect
our application of Surrealist principles. We can be wrong, we can make mistakes,
but that is less important if we scrutinise our every decision, if we seek to probe
and lay bare the conscious and unconscious impulses behind our decisions and make
those decisions on our own, Surrealist, terms.
PAUL MCRANDLE | Like Klein bottles, Surrealist journals can confound
oppositions of the internal and external and operate along exceedingly sinuous lines
within and outside the culture.
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?
JAN DOČEKAL | In my opinion, surrealist movement is everything, what
is above realism in our world. It means everything what is created, shared, spread
by surrealist followers. The movement means direction. Surrealism (which was declared
to be a thing past by many art theoreticians long time ago, nevertheless it still
lives in ideas and activities of many followers) is only one of current movements.
It is a very good fact. The variety of possibilities is a platform for unity in
diversity. I think, that surrealist civilisation is a beautidul futuristic concept,
but it remains unfulfilled. It is an expression of enthusiasm, revolution and desire
too. About a hundred years ago, according to Kandinsky, mankind was supposed to
recognize that the main form of art is abstraction. But it did not happen. And our
civilisation has not become surrealistic since the birth of surrealism in the second
half of twenties of the last century. If surrealism became the universal style of
human existence, it would have lost much of its hidden charm.
LUBOMÍR KERNDL | Surrealist movement is more acceptable
to me than Surrealist civilization, precisely because it represents a certain movement
and development. Surrealist civilization is a concept that too bothers by the monochrome
vision of the world and therefore both concepts are in contradiction.
MERL FLUIN & PAUL COWDELL | The term ‘Surrealist civilisation’ has been extraordinarily important
and meaningful for certain sections of the movement. However, it is not a term that
has ever meant very much to us. We are familiar with Bounoure’s 1976 volume of that
name, but we do not find that book especially exciting – perhaps curiously so, given
our shared ongoing interest in anthropology and ethnography. Surrealist myth, even
primitivism – yes. But civilization? Not so much.
PAUL MCRANDLE | For me, Surrealist civilization remains the horizons
within which the Surrealist movement acts.
JAN DOČEKAL | I am convinced that the most important attitude to this
question is not to solve it. In other words: let the regular surrealist conferences
be held and deal with that matter. It is evident that no conclusion can be found.
Though it seems that today’s surrealists only repeat things past, that they are
not able to do anything else than to dilute achievements of previous surrealist
generations, we know very well, that the world is always in motion. Everything is
changing. Even surrealism is changing. It has left or softened some of its basic
postulates because the shape of present civilization requires it. However, let us
believe in the existence of surrealism as mediated by its creators and their followers.
LUBOMÍR KERNDL | Like the ocean water, the imaginative
power and experimental nature of surrealism will never dry out. It's the invention
the creator has. Each of us is original and therefore there is always the possibility
that something new will emerge that a new path will be found.
MERL FLUIN & PAUL COWDELL | This is a problem that we think about and discuss often. While novelty
is not worth pursuing for its own sake, Surrealism demands a quest for the unknown
and an active conquest of the imagination. The practice of automatism, for example,
can unleash marvels, but can also result in a repetition of the same repertoire
of shapes, images, words or phrases. One needs to cultivate sufficient self-awareness
and self-dissatisfaction to know when this is happening (a self-awareness that Surrealists’
use of social media arguably discourages these days, but that’s another story).
The solution is obvious, although effortful: when you find that you are repeating
yourself, take deliberate steps to change the rules of the game and force yourself
into a new direction. Try a new method, a new medium, a new collaborator. Quest
after the unknown. And be prepared to risk looking like an idiot for a while if
it turns out not to work.
PAUL MCRANDLE | Through disappointment and longing.
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?
JAN DOČEKAL | Like each fruit of human spirit, surrealism is the expression
of individual. An unrepeatable imprint of the gift of creation. It is not absolutely
necessary for each work of art to be massively understooood. Even a mysterious piece
of art, with a hidden sense, can attract because of its uniquiness. No real art
is made according to expert manuals. The creator´s own identity stemming in his/her
gift and the joy of free realisation of ideas, delivers unique poetics. Its presentation
is not measurable by any technical standards. It is the fruit of spontaneous power,
eruption of creativity. Work as a result of private project, as a perfectly conceived
and rationally made representation may be surrealistic in some way, but this is
veristic surrealism. In that case, we perceive mainly the effect and artfulness.
Spiritual construction providing freedom for both creator and critic is the goal.
Open discussion should be permanent.
LUBOMÍR KERNDL | The poetic sphere belongs to
surrealism as the nose between the eyes and surrealistic creators does not care
if they work with word, paint, color or any material to act on the observer's subconscious
and it is not possible without poetry.
MERL FLUIN & PAUL COWDELL | We don’t understand this question sufficiently clearly to be able to answer
it.
PAUL MCRANDLE | Our perceptions and mental representations are thought;
they derive from the same unique source, always acting in concert and mutual transformation.
JAN DOČEKAL | Sigmund Freud showed the possible direction for surrealism
in its intuitive period. Surrealists believed in omnipotence of the idea. Idea is
above reality. They relied on philosophical idealism. They were not social activists.
Later, surrealists admited the need to judge political order. They raised their
voice against the colonialism, they were intoxicated with leftist policy, they were
astonished with possibilities provided by the Soviet socialism. It was a historical
mistake of surrealism. However the mistake was overcome. The highest achievable
point of surrealism is the free creation of free creators. Surrealist theoretician
Arnost Budik wrote in his essay “The star with three crystals”: “The starting points
of surrealism are poetry, love and freedom”. And the revolution of the spirit still
continues.
LUBOMÍR KERNDL | This is a very difficult question,
but Octavio Paz has become a prophet just because he called the 20º century the
century of Freud and Surrealism. He had observed that Marx's thoughts are not as
ideal as they seems to be, and that they are hidden in the suppression of the freedom
of the individual. Surrealism itself is still there, and it is not lost in the boiler
of the world, and it is guaranteed that the soup that is boiled in it will not be
monochromatic.
MERL FLUIN & PAUL COWDELL | The radical transformation demanded by Surrealism was built on the twin
foundations of Marx and Rimbaud, in Breton’s famous summation. While psychoanalysis,
Freudianism in particular, was a key tool in the armoury of self-transformation,
it was not subject to the same level of investigation as either Marxism or the general
character of poetry. The equation of Marx and Freud owes more to Marcuse, whose
embrace by sections of the Surrealist movement in the early 1970s requires a serious
critical reassessment. Marcuse’s declaration that nothing could be expected from
the Western European working class, barely six months before May 1968, should at
the very least have set some alarm bells ringing.
The revolutionary transformation of society (Marx) and the individual (Rimbaud)
is central to our activity and thought, because without revolutionary transformation
there can be no Surrealism. This transformation is not just an analytical exercise.
If we treat the ‘market’s virulent absolutism’ as all-powerful then we have ruled
out in advance the possibility of transformation: the analytical assessment requires
a practical application. The unleashing of our forces remains the work in progress,
the task at hand.
PAUL MCRANDLE | The market-or what Mark Fisher called capitalist realism-lowers
expectations, banalizes criticism, and dulls the shimmering edge of desire for leverage
over cultural production as whole. In the process it has jettisoned most of the
past as irrelevant and severed history. As Georges Sebbag has noted, our sense of
time has been pulverized into micro-durations-clips, GIFs, memes-in which no spark
of the mind could illuminate images of a new reality. But we still
dream.
 |
| Jan Docekal | Lumonir Kerndl | Merl Fluin | Paul Cowdell | Paul McRandle |
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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