In October 1924, poets André Breton and Yvan Goll, each published a surrealist manifesto, officially announcing an artistic movement which, in many ways, was already outdoors. French poet Guillaume Apollinaire first invented the term “surrealism” in 1917. Breton and his colleague writer Philippe Soupault had already published Magnetic fields (Magnetic fields), a book according to the surrealist practice of Automatic writing – Writing without hesitation or self -censorship – in 1920. But 1924 formalized it, and the very fact of these double declarations prefigured the intestine conflicts which would afflict the movement in the coming decades.
The new volume Les Portes du Rêve: 1924–2024 Surrealism through its JournéesPublished by the artist Franca crossed and published to coincide with the centenary of the manifests, aims to approach and give meaning to these internal contradictions. He does this with understanding that artistic and literary journals are necessarily “collective products”, highlighted by a team of people. Today, surrealism is mainly associated with visual art, and perhaps the most salient with painting. Ask the proverbial person in the street on surrealism and they will likely tighten names like Dalí, Miró and Magritte. But the surrealist movement was initially literary, not visual.
The project of Surrealism through his reviews is niche, but quickly turns out to be vital. Publishers aim to “reread the parable of the movement through the study of some of the journals” essential to its development – as varied publications as Parisian magazines Proverb (Founded by eminent dadaist figures in 1920, operating only six issues until 1921) and Literature (famous edited by Breton, Soupault and others from 1919 to 1923), Italian humor papers Marc'Aurelio And Bertoldo (active during the rise of fascism) and the American magazine See (Founded by Charles Henri Ford in 1940 and took place until 1947). However, what the nine essays of the book ultimately accomplish is something closer to a re -entertaining of language in the surrealist movement. They suggest: you cannot understand surrealism by simply observing the visual pieces that define the movement from the point of view of the 21st century. To understand surrealism – its foundation and its complexities – you must read on this subject.
Literary characters have launched the challenge of defining surrealist ideas. Writers like Paul Éluard – ex -husband of Dali galaKnown as the “mother of surrealism” – Max Morise, and, of course, the Breton still present was among the first to put the pen on paper to elucidate a surreal sensitivity. The tests of the book take place somewhat chronologically, each focusing on a particular periodical or a subject addressed in journals. The authors suppose a certain knowledge of the initiates on the history of surrealism and the main actors in the field, and often write in intense academic styles. In Franca Bruera and Elena Galtsova, the test on women and Literature The magazine, for example, they write in a simple and didactic way, ending with a declaration worthy of a thesis: “Positioned between Dada and Surrealism, Literature The magazine has left a significant mark on the transitional world of the avant-garde, sometimes welcoming rebel female and irreverent minds. »»
By focusing on the word written, the book returns to the roots of surrealism. And in doing so, it raises a strong relief from the constantly evolving artistic question between what is expressed and what is understood: the founding members of the movement designed of surrealism in a way; 100 years later, history has brought the cultural meaning of the movement in another, often reducing it to a handful of familiar paintings.
Art historians Anna Maria Testverde and Elena Mazzoleni's essay, who turn her attention to the conception of the theater surrealism and focuses on the Parisian Coastal Magazine, captures this tension well. TestAverde and Mazzoleni recognize that magazines and magazines often function as “surveillance articles”. Often, surrealist newspapers were watches or platforms from which the movement sent messages to its desired limits. An example of this delimitation took place in the early 1910s and 20s, when surrealism reacted to the Dada movement – even, like Jacques Dürrenmatt writing in its essay on Proverb Magazine, “prospered on the ruins (Dadaïsm)”.
Perhaps the French philosopher and critic at the end of Sarane Alexandrian said it best, as quoted in the essay of the art historian Andrea Zucchinali. “If Mallarme believed that the (old) world was intended to culminate in a beautiful book,” he wrote, “the surrealists have always believed that the (new) world begins with a magazine.”
Les Portes du Rêve: 1924–2024 Surrealism through its Journées (2024), edited by Franca Franchi, is published by Skira and is available online and via independent booksellers.
