The Surrealist Manifesto and André Breton
André Breton was born in 1896 to a family of shopkeepers in Tinchebray, a small town in Normandy, France. He studied medicine and psychiatry, displaying a special interest in mental illness. Though he never qualified as a psychoanalyst, he worked in neurological wards in Nantes during World War I, and a meeting and subsequent correspondence with Sigmund Freud in 1921 furthered his exposure to psychoanalytic theories and the concept of the unconsciousness.
In 1916, Breton joined a Dadaist group in Paris. By 1919, when he co-founded the review Littérature with Louis Aragon and Phillippe Soupault, his ideas had started to diverge with the Dadaists’. The journal, which ran through 1924, contained the first example of surrealist automatic writing, or surrealist automatism, Les Champs magnétiques (The Magnetic Fields). This form of writing—free form and without self-censorship—was among Breton’s first Surrealist innovations. In 1924, his growing commitment to Surrealism and disdain for Tristan Tzara led Breton to officially break with Dadaism. “Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express…the actual functioning of thought…in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.” The Surrealist Manifesto was written in 1924 by the original member and leader, Breton. It was the culmination of the writings of the surrealist group and sought to dispel the 'rationalism' which brought about the first world war. It really identifies the whole surrealist idea as a movement, with an agenda, rather than just a style of art. Some of Breton's ideas flirted with Socialism, indeed he was part of the French Communist party, although this political link for the surrealist movement as a whole is hotly debated as it is a popular notion that their work was apolitical. There follows some extracts from the manifesto of 1924. Initially, it was regarded primarily as a written technique. Many surrealists had initial misgivings about the very possibility of surrealist painting which, because of the nature of the medium, cannot hope to equal the spontaneous, uninterrupted and undirected flow of words that is the hallmark of automatic writing. However, André Masson, with his development of graphic automatism, a gestural equivalent of automatic writing, suggested one way forward whilst Max Ernst, with techniques based on frottage, showed another. Ernst’s methods depended heavily upon seizing chance effects and also allowed him to retard the flow of ideas and images rather than seeking to record them in real time as they came. |
Because of these innovations, by the time Colquhoun came to surrealism, the search for a pictorial equivalent of automatic writing had ceased to be a central concern. Indeed, by the time of the Second Manifesto (1930) automatism was hardly mentioned at all: the debate had moved on to focus upon what Breton described as ‘the occultation of surrealism’ in the search for that certain point in the mind at which opposites cease to be perceived as contradictory.
Whilst some artists emphasised automatism’s role in discovering hidden aspects of the artist’s psyche, others, such as Roberto Matta, valued it as a means for uncovering hidden aspects of objects and for the exploration of what lies beyond the confines of the visible world. Its optical image is just one aspect of the existence of an object. Galaxies, crystals and living matter go through processes of creation, existence and destruction. They exist in time, change with the passage of time and can be observed from multiple perspectives. Conventionally, however, they are only depicted at a fixed point in their history, from a single point in space and, inevitably, with a palette limited to colours which reflect light of a visible wavelength.
'The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.'
Whilst some artists emphasised automatism’s role in discovering hidden aspects of the artist’s psyche, others, such as Roberto Matta, valued it as a means for uncovering hidden aspects of objects and for the exploration of what lies beyond the confines of the visible world. Its optical image is just one aspect of the existence of an object. Galaxies, crystals and living matter go through processes of creation, existence and destruction. They exist in time, change with the passage of time and can be observed from multiple perspectives. Conventionally, however, they are only depicted at a fixed point in their history, from a single point in space and, inevitably, with a palette limited to colours which reflect light of a visible wavelength.
'The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.'
'The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.'
Andre Breton, Second Manifesto of Surrealism
"Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful. Anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful."
Andre Breton, 1924
'And ever since I have had a great desire to show forbearance to scientific musing, however unbecoming, in the final analysis, from every point of view. Radio? Fine. Syphilis? If you like. Photography? I don't see any reason why not. The cinema? Three cheers for darkened years. War? Gave us a good laugh. The telephone? Hello. Youth? Charming white hair. Try to make me say thank you: "Thank you." Thank you.'
Andre Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism