What? This is Surrealism!

Appel à la lutte [a call to struggle]

I should say *that* to people socially and politically uneducated 

Surrealist activity at this moment...
- conducive to the mind's concentration upon itself -
The activity of our surrealist reason 
for thinking that the surrealist project -
possessed with the desire to intervene upon the artistic plane,
whose final episode was to be the atrocious crushing,
undergoing a constant process of becoming -
suddenly experienced the necessity of crossing over the gap.
But that should, in the long run, matter little.

In the absence of all control exercised by the reason,
the problem of knowledge inevitably arose again -
a continuous sequence of acts which, 
propelling the doer to more or less distant points, 
forces him  to return to the same starting-line
bearing on the possibilities of plastic expression in surrealism. 

A goodly number of poets might well have passed for surrealists
I am happy to be in their company 
it is only a matter of having the courage to face them.
Looking back upon the past,
they were not always surrealists—on this I insist—
one can disentangle in each of them a number of preconceived notions. 
Surrealism simply leaves these individuals by the wayside
and this is self-evidently true.

Surrealism rests in the belief in the Superior Reality: 
in 'The Automatic Message' it emits.
one must take into account the property of uninterrupted becoming
and restore the arbitrary flux 
whose aim is to cultivate the remarkable sensorial dispositions of children, enabling them to change any object whatever, 
into no matter what, simply by looking at it fixedly.

Here we find ourselves confronted by a new affirmation
Punctuation of course necessarily hinders the stream 
of absolute continuity which preoccupies us forewarning of silence to come.
Today it applies itself to "bring about the state where the distinction between the subjective and the objective loses its necessity and its value".
With that it has tended to destroy all the myths about art 
Surrealism could not ask for anything better. 

You may rest assured, 
the danger is far from having been removed. 

Adventures in 'Pataphysics: Collected Works I by Alfred Jarry, Paul Edwards (Translator), Antony Melville (Translator)

Hebdomeros : With Monsieur Dudron's Adventure and Other Metaphysical Writings by Giorgio De Chirico - HEBDOMEROS is quite unearthly and would be a disappointment to anyone looking for a conventional novel. But you are likely here for something else. It moves with the logic of a dream, passing from one scene to the next with the same warp of tension a plotted novel might have, yet HEBDOMEROS has no plot, it is errant, distracted. "It's strange," Hebdomeros was thinking, "as for me, the idea that something had escaped my understanding would keep me awake at nights, whereas people in general are not in the least perturbed when they see or read or things that they find completely obscure." This from the opening page, a comment on its own strangeness, instructing the reader a little in what is to come. And what follows is completely beautiful.

Paris Peasant
by Louis Aragon, Simon W. Taylor (Translator)

Paris Peasant (1926) is one of the central works of Surrealism, a work that helps define the movement itself; yet this is the first U.S. publication of Simon Watson Taylor's authoritative translation, completed after consultations with the author. Unconventionalin form - Aragon self-consciously avoided any recognizable narration or character development - but fiercely lyrical, Paris Peasant is, in the author's words, "a mythology
of the modern." The book uses the city of Paris as a framework,...
Maldoror & the Complete Works of the Comte De Lautreamont by Lautreamont, Alexis Lykiard (Translator), Comte De Lautreamont, al Lykiard, Conte de Lautreamont

André Breton wrote that Maldoror is "the expression of a revelation so complete it seems to exceed human potential." Little is known about its pseudonymous author aside from his real name (Isidore Ducasse), birth in Uruguay (1846), and early death in Paris (1870). Lautréamont's writings bewildered his contemporaries but the Surrealists modeled their efforts after his lawless black humor and poetic leaps of logic, exemplified by the oft-quoted slogan, "As beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella!" Maldoror's shocked first publisher refused to bind the sheets of the original edition... and perhaps no better invitation exists to this book which warns the reader, "Only the few may relish this bitter fruit without danger." This is the only complete annotated collection of Lautréamont's writings available in English, in a superior translation. 
 

Aurelia and Other Writings
by Gerard De Nerval, Geoffrey Wagner (Translator), Robert Duncan (Translator), Gerard De Nerval
Aurélia is a document of dreams, obsession, and insanity. An account of Nerval's unrequited passion for an actress and subsequent descent into madness, this book was a favorite of artist Joseph Cornell's, and its author was championed by both Marcel Proust and André Breton. One of the original self-styled "bohemians," Nerval was best known in his own day for parading a lobster on a pale blue ribbon through the gardens of the Palais-Royal

Nadja by Andre Breton, Richard Howard (Translator) - Nadja has far more to offer than just a simple love story. Superficially it is an account of Breton's wandering through the streets of 1920s Paris with his eponymous mad heroine. Paris becomes a magical, fluid reality, peopled with sphinxes and shaped by extraordinary events and coincidences. But dig deeper and you will find a rewarding, if sometimes complex, commentary on time, space, memory and the city. Bearing in mind Breton's interest in psychoanalysis and Marxist revolution (in Nadja he even tells us of his purchase of Trotsky's latest work from the Humanite bookstore), the novel may be read as a conscious subversion of bourgeois conventions. Everything in Nadja, from the narrative to the intriguing photographs supplied by various surrealist photographers such as J.A. Boiffard, intervenes to challenge and disrupt conventional reality and the status quo. It seems to me that Nadja is all about the creation of alternative realities, a sur-reality. Some would call this Breton's form of escapism from the harsh realities of post-world-war Paris in the era of high capitalism, but Breton's surreal Paris always carries the promise of revolution and change. Nadja is a work that can be enjoyed on so many levels, and is definitely worth re-reading.

Revolution of the Mind :
The Life of Andre Breton by Mark Polizzotti - Polizzotti skillfully covers all of Breton's influential critical, polemical, and creative activities, providing brisk but telling profiles of his friends, colleagues, and loved ones. He also conveys the full extent of the turbulence that dominated Breton's complex personality. A magnetic man given to "violent enthusiasms" and mood swings, Breton possessed a prodigious memory and was fascinated by everything from anarchism to Communism, psychic automatism, Dada, dreams, coincidence, and the "marvelous," or unexplainable.

• automatic texts
• the recital of dreams
• improvised speeches
• spontaneous poems
• drawings and actions

 

 

 

1188  surrealism 
 280  pioneer surrealism 
 153  surrealism art 
 101  definition surrealism 
 71  surrealism painting 
 63  surrealism artist 
 41  dark surrealism 
 38  dali surrealism 
 38  matta surrealism 
 34  define surrealism 
 33  freud surrealism 
 33  picture surrealism
 31  art domestic surrealism violence 
 26  surrealism art movement 
 26  base surrealism 
 26  surrealism surrealists 
 25  surrealism in art 
 

4103  salvador dali 
 1029  salvador dali museum 
 1013  tracy dali 
 950  dali lama 
 821  dali museum 
 619  salvador dali wallpaper 
 549  china dali 
 456  dali 
 373  salvador dali biography 
 332  salvadore dali 
 278  traci dali 
 246  salvatore dali 
 226  salvador dali painting 
 210  dali painting 
 206  dali gala 
 192  salvidor dali 
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 174  salvador dali picture 
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 101  dali print 
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 99  dali picture 
 97  dali quote 
 87  crucifixion dali 
 86  photo of salvador dali 
 85  dali museo 
 79  dali museum petersburg st 
 79  dali photo 
 78  salvadore dali museum 
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 74  salvator dali 
 72  dali florida museum 
 72  dali museum petersburg salvador st 
 70  dali portrait self 
 69  dali racing 
 67  alice dali in wonderland 
 64  dali de obras 
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 63  dali portrait 
 62  salvidor dali museum 
 61  salvador dali art 
 60  argus dali 
 59  atomicus dali 
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 59  dali gallery 
 59  dali rose 
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 56  b dali 
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 56  dali somerville 
 55  104 dali 
 55  dali salvador watch 
 54  dali obras salvador 
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 53  dali museum salvador spain 
 53  salavador dali 
 52  7a dali 
 52  dali litho signed 
 52  persistence of memory salvador dali 
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 51  dali last supper 
 50  dali elephant salvador 
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 49  salvador dali perfume 
 48  biblia dali sacra salvador 
 48  dali figueres 
 48  salvador dali poster 
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 47  cuadros dali de 
 47  dali museum spain 
 47  dali tattoo 
 46  biografia dali de salvador 
 45  dali desktops salvador 
 44  clock dali salvador 
 44  savador dali 
 

Georges Hugnet
Gui Rosey
Pierre Yoyotte
Roger Caillois
Victor Brauner 
Balthus
Yves Tanguy
René Crevel
Tristan Tzara
René Char
Valentine Hugo 
Joan Miro
Salvador Dali
Pablo Picasso
Joseph Cornell

 433  matta 
 194  roberto matta 
 83  da matta roberto 
 38  da matta 
 38  matta surrealism 
 32  biography matta roberto 
 30  biografia matta roberto 

1006  joan miro 
 751  miro 
 404  jean miro paul 
 135  1 miro no portrait 
 109  ferra joan miro 
 95  artworks joan miro 
 61  juan miro 
 58  chagall dali miro 
 45  by joan miro works 
 44  joan miro painting 
 42  miro pctv video 
 42  miro print 
 41  biografia de miro ricardo 
 40  jean miro 
 35  joan miro biography 
 34  miro poster vintage 
 34  miro video 
 32  miro vancouver 
 31  joan miro sculpture 
 31  litho miro 
 31  miro sculpture 
 30  galeria joan miro pintruas 
 27  by joan miro painted works years 
 27  miro painting 
 27  miro wallpaper 
 25  miro art