A Quotation

Surrealism in the words of Duchamp

I have chosen to include the words of Duchamp here because I believe that they reveal a truth about both surrealism and the works that are classified as such. There isn't a book we read in this class that didn't have something to do with the mind, and Duchamp makes surrealism a dream in itself, though it deals with that dream-like state. As a whole, all of these books deal with identity and how it is defined. It is important to have something that connects all of the pieces together as Duchamp's words do here.

Marcel Duchamp

Fantastic Visions

English

Surrealist Composition with Invisible Figures

Like most other items in this collection, Dali's painting deals with the idea of identity and body. Dali leaves out bodies completely from this composition, which forces us to look at what makes identity that surrounds us. This can be directly related to the idea presented in Woolf's Orlando, since the argument can be made that Orlando's gender is simply a product of the environment surrounding her at the time. While she is male, the environment made her so, and while she is female, the environment also made her so.

Salvador Dali

Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation

Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation

1936

Oil on cardboard

painting

Poem

Gisele Prassinos

Paris Review

1977

Ellen Nations, translator

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate. One Second before Awakening
By Salvador Dali

Example of typical portrayals of idealized women by male surrealists.

Salvador Dali

1944

Photograph of "Le Festin" or "Cannibal Feast" by Meret Oppenheim

"Le Festin" or "Cannibal Feast" by Meret Oppenheim

Oppenheim used a female model's nude body as a table to serve a meal at the 1959 International Surrealist Exposition.

Meret Oppenheim

[Expositions] 1959-1960, [E.R.O.S.] Exposition inteRnatiOnale du Surréalisme

Galerie Daniel Cordier

1959-1960

William Klein, photographer

© William Klein, SAIF, 2005.

30,5 x 40 cm (12 x 15 3/4 in.) - Tirage argentique sur papier

Freedom of Love

This poem by André Breton disects the female body and compares the parts to very non-bodylike things. This made me think of Breton's speaker as someone who objectifies the woman he is with, much like Rochester does to Annette in Wide Sargasso Sea. Rochester objectifies Annette to pieces, but does so so much that he even finds it impossible to refer to her by her own name. He begins calling his objectified wife by the name Bertha, likely because he doesn't know what else to call her. Though Breton's poem is more sexualized than Rhys's novel, the ideas expressed appear to be quite similar. Both deal with the idea of identity and how that identity is related to the body.

André Breton

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/freedom-of-love/

Edouard Rodti, translator

French, translated to English

poem

Night Work is about to Commence by Emmy Bridgwater

Painting by British, female surrealist Emmy Bridgwater

Emmy Bridgwater

1940–1943

© the artist's estate

Oil on board, 46 x 61 cm

Cover Illustration for Harper's Bazaar by Leonor Fini

Example of the collaboration between the surrealists and fashion More examples can be found in this article by Vogue.

Leonor Fini

Haper's Bazaar

1947

Photograph by Dora Maar

"The Surrealist artist Dora Maar is better known as Picasso's dark-haired model and companion in the late 1930s than for her astonishing works. Her incarnation of the bestial nature of man is titled after the infamous and absurd dictatorial antihero of Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roi (1896). Maar's imaginative evocation of the pear-shaped, breast-plated Ubu in the monstrous reality of a baby armadillo is one of the most compelling and repellent of Surrealist photographs." - From image website

Dora Maar

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

1936

© 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Surréalisme et Sexualité by Xavière Gauthier

A feminist critique of the mystification of women by the surrealist movement.

Influenced by SImone de Beauvoir, Gauthier analyses how the female body is used as a muse and as an erotic image in surrealist art.

Xavière Gauthier

Can be found in the UNC library!

Gallimard

1971

French