Andre Breton
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André Breton (February 19, 1896 – September 28, 1966) was a French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist, and is best known as the main founder of surrealism. His writings include the Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as pure psychic automatism.
Biography
Born into modest origins in Tinchebray (Orne) in Normandy, he studied medicine and psychiatry. During World War I he worked in a neurological ward in Nantes, where he met the spiritual son of Alfred Jarry, Jacques Vaché, whose anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition influenced Breton considerably. Vaché committed suicide at age 24 and his war-time letters to Breton and others were published in a volume entitled Lettres de guerre (1919), to which Breton wrote four introductory essays.
From Dada to Surrealism
In 1919 Breton founded the review Littérature with Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault. He also connected with Dadaist Tristan Tzara. In 1924 he was instrumental to the founding of the Bureau of Surrealist Research.
In The Magnetic Fields (Les Champs Magnétiques), a collaboration with Soupault, he put the principle of automatic writing into practice. He published the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, and was editor of La Révolution surréaliste from 1924. A group coalesced around him — Philippe Soupault, Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, René Crevel, Michel Leiris, Benjamin Peret, Antonin Artaud, and Robert Desnos.
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Anxious to combine the themes of personal transformation found in the works of Arthur Rimbaud with the politics of Karl Marx, Breton joined the French Communist Party in 1927, from which he was expelled in 1933. During this time, he survived mostly off the sale of paintings from his art gallery.
Under Breton's direction, surrealism became a European movement that influenced all domains of art, and called into question the origin of human understanding and human perceptions of things and events.
In 1938 Breton accepted a cultural commission from the French government to travel to Mexico. This provided the opportunity to meet Leon Trotsky. Breton and other surrealists sought refuge a long boat ride from Patzcuaro in the surreal town of Erongaricuaro. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo were among the visitors to the hidden community of intellectuals and artists. Together, Breton anTrotsky]] wrote a manifesto Pour un art révolutionnaire indépendent (published under the names of Breton and Diego Rivera) which called for "complete freedom of art", which was becoming increasingly difficult in the world situation of the time.
1940s
Breton was again in the medical corp of the French Army at the start of World War II. The Vichy government banned his writings as "the very negation of the national revolution" [1] and Breton sought refuge in the United States and the Caribbean in 1941. Breton made the acquaintance of Martinican writer Aimé Césaire, and later penned the introduction to the 1947 edition of Césaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. During his exile in New York City, he met Elisa, the Chilean woman who would become his third wife.
In 1944, he and Elisa traveled to Gaspésie in Québec, Canada, where he wrote Arcane 17, a book which expresses his fears of World War II, describes the marvels of the Rocher Percé and the northeastern end of North America, and celebrates his newly found love with Elisa.
Later life
Breton returned to Paris in 1946, where he intervened against French colonialialism (for example as a signatory of the Manifesto of the 121 against the Algerian war) and continued, until his death, to foster a second group of surrealists in the form of expositions or reviews (La Brèche, 1961-1965). In 1959, Andre Breton organized an exhibit in Spain to celebrate the Fortieth Anniversary of Surrealism called the Homage to Surrealism which exhibited works by Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Enrique Tábara and Eugenio Granell.
André Breton died in 1966 at 70 and was buried in the Cimetière des Batignolles in Paris.
Works
His works include the case studies Nadja (1928) and L'Amour Fou (1937).
Selected works:
- MONT DE PIÉTE, 1919
- LES CHAMPS MAGNÉTIQUES, 1920 - The Magnetic Fields
- MANIFESTE DU SURRÉALISME, 1924 - The Surrealist Manifesto
- LES PAS PERDUS, 1924 - The Lost Steps
- POISSON SOLUBLE, 1924 - Soluble Fish
- UN CADAVRE, 1924 - A Corpse
- LEGITIME DÉFENSE, 1926 - Legitimate Defense
- LE SURRÉALISME ET LE PEINTURE, 1926 - Surrealism and Painting
- NADJA, 1928
- L'IMMACULÉE CONCEPTION, 1930 - The Immaculate Conception
- SECOND MANIFESTE DU SURRÉALISME, 1930 - The Second Manifesto of Surrealism
- RALENTIR TRAVAUX, 1930 - Slow Down Works
- LA RÉVOLVER Á CHEVEUX BLANCS, 1932 - The Revolver Has White Hair
- LES VASES COMMUNICANTS, 1932 - The Communicating Vessels
- QU'EST-CE LE QUE LE SURRÉALISME,1934 - What Is Surrealism
- L'AIR ET L'EAU, 1934 - The Air and The Water
- POINT DU JOUR, 1934 - Not of the Day
- POSITION POLITIQUE DU SURRÉALISME, 1935 - The Political Position of Surrealism
- NOTES SUR LA POÉSIE, 1936 (with Paul Éluard) - Notes on Poetry
- L'AMOUR FOU, 1937 - Mad Love
- EARTHLIGHT, 1937
- DICTIONNAIRE ABRÉGE DU SURRÉALISME, 1938 (with Paul Éluard) - Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism
- FATA MORGANA, 1940
- ANTHOLOGIE DE L'HUMOUR NOIR, 1940 - Anthology of Black Humor
- ARCANE 17, 1945
- Young Cherry Trees Secured against Hares/Jeunes cerisiers garantis contre les lièvres, 1946
- ODE À CHARLES FOURIER, 1947 - Ode to Charles Fourier
- YVES TANGUY, 1947
- POÈMES 1919-48, 1948
- LA LAMPE DANS L'HORLOGE, 1948 - The Lamp in the Clock
- MARTINIQUE, CHARMEISE DE SERPENTS, 1948
- ENTRETIENS, 1952 - Discussions
- LA CLÉ DES CHAMPS, 1953 - The Key of the Fields
- FAROUCHE À QUATRE FEUILLES, 1954 (with Lise Deharme, Julien Gracq, Jean Tardieu) - Wild to Four Leaves
- LES MANIFESTES DU SURREALISME, 1955 - The Manifestoes of Surrealism
- L'ART MAGIQUE, 1957 - The Magic Art
- CONSTELLATIONS, 1959
- LE LA, 1961
- Selected Poems, 1969
- PERSPECTIVE CAVALIÈRE, 1970
- What Is Surrealism? Selected Poems, 1978
- Poems of André Breton, 1982
Life outside art
He married three times
- His first wife was the former Simone Kahn.
- His second wife was the former Jacqueline Lamba, with whom he had his only child, a daughter named Aube.
- His third wife was the former Elisa Claro.
Breton was an avid collector of art, ethnographic material, and unusual trinkets. He was particularly interested in materials from the northwest coast of North America. When faced with a financial crisis in 1931, most his collection (along with his friend Paul Eluard's was auctioned off. He subsequently rebuilt the collection, which was preserved by family members from the time of his death until 2003, at which time his books, art, and ethnographic materials were auctioned by CamelsCohen.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- André Breton: Surrealism and Painting - edited and with an introduction by Mark Polizzotti.
- Manifestoes of Surrealism by André Breton, translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane. ISBN 0472061828
- ↑ "Andre Breton and the First Principles of Surrealism" by Franklin Rosemont, 1978 (ISBN 0-904383-39-X)
External links
Surrealist Manifestos (French: Le Manifeste du Surréalisme) were issued by the Surrealism movement in 1924 and 1929.
First manifesto
The first Surrealist manifesto was written by Breton in 1924 and released to the public 1925. The document defines Surrealism as:
- Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express — verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner — the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.
The text includes numerous examples of the applications of Surrealism to poetry and literature, but makes it clear that the tenets of Surrealism can be applied in any circumstance of life, and is not merely restricted to the artistic realm. The importance of the dream as a reservoir of Surrealist inspiration is also highlighted.
Breton also discusses his initial encounter with the surreal in a famous description of a hypnagogic state that he experienced in which a strange phrase inexplicably appeared in his mind: There is a man cut in two by the window. This phrase echoes Breton's apprehension of Surrealism as the juxtaposition of two distant realities brought together to create a new, uncanny union.
The manifesto also refers to the numerous precursors of Surrealism that embodied the Surrealist spirit prior to his composing the manifesto, including such luminaries as the Marquis de Sade, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Raymond Roussel, and even back as far as Dante.
The works of several of his contemporaries in developing the Surrealist style in poetry are also quoted, including texts by Philippe Soupault, Paul Éluard, Robert Desnos and Louis Aragon, among others.
The manifesto was written with a great deal of absurdist humor, demonstrating the influence of the Dada movement which immediately preceded it in France, and in which Breton was also a key player.
The text concludes by asserting that Surrealist activity follows no set plan or conventional pattern, and that Surrealists are ultimately nonconformists.
Signers of the manifesto included Louis Aragon, Antonin Artaud, Jacques Baron, Joe Bousquet, Jacques-André Boiffard, Jean Carrive, Rene Crevel, Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, and Breton.
Quotations
- "I could spend my whole life prying loose the secrets of the insane. These people are honest to a fault, and their naiveté has no peer but my own."
- "We are still living under the reign of logic: this, of course, is what I have been driving at. But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest."
- "Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful."
- "Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word Memory begins."
- "Surrealism does not allow those who devote themselves to it to forsake it whenever they like. There is every reason to believe that it acts on the mind very much as drugs do; like drugs, it creates a certain state of need and can push man to frightful revolts."
- "In this realm as in any other, I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned that all others before him have failed, refuses to admit defeat, sets off from whatever point he chooses, along any other path save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can."
- "It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere."
Second manifesto
In 1929 Breton asked Surrealists to assess their "degree of moral competence", and along with other theoretical refinements issued the Second manifeste du surréalisme. The proclaimation excluded Surrealists reluctant to commit to collective action: Leiris, Limbour, Morise, Baron, Queneau, Prévert, Desnos, Masson and Boiffard. They moved to the periodical Documents, edited by Georges Bataille, whose anti-idealist materialism produced a hybrid Surrealism exposed the base instincts of humans.[1][2]
Third manifesto
Breton drafted a third manifesto which was never issued.
See also
- Art manifesto
References
- ↑ Dawn Ades, with Matthew Gale: "Surrealism", The Oxford Companion to Western Art. Ed. Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford University Press, 2001. Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, 2007. Accessed March 15, 2007, http://www.groveart.com/
- ↑ Surrealist Art from Centre Pompidou. Accessed March 20, 2007
External links
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