The following exceprts are from Andre Breton's 1935 presentation, "Surrealist situation of the object. "
I shall remind you that when I spoke a little less than a year ago in Brussels, I mentioned, very summarily that a fundamental crisis of the object was taking place in the wake of Surrealism. "It is essentially on the object that the more and more clear-sighted eyes of Surrealism have remained open in recent years," I wrote. "It is the attentive examination of the numerous recent speculations that this object has publicly given rise to (the oneiric object, the symbolic object, the real and virtual object, the found object, etc.), and this examination alone, that will allow one to understand all of the implications of the present temptation of Surrealism. It is essential that interest be focused on this point." This conclusion has lost none of its pertinence six months later. A recent proposal by Man Ray is excellent proof of this. I shall explain it with a brief commentary so as to make it perfectly understandable to you. Perhaps the greatest danger threatening Surrealism today is the fact that because of its spread throughout the world, which was very sudden and rapid, the word found favor much faster than the idea and all sorts of more or less questionable creations tend to pin the Surrealist label on themselves. To avoid such misunderstandings or render such vulgar abuses impossible in the future, it would be desirable for us to establish a very precise line of demarcation between what is Surrealist in its essence and what seeks to pass itself off as such for publicity or for other reasons. The ideal, obviously, would be for every authentic Surrealist object to have some distinctive outer sign so that it would be immediately recognizable; Man Ray thought it should be a sort of hallmark or seal. In the same way that, for example, the spectator can read on the screen the inscription "A Paramount Film" (leaving, in this case, the insufficient guarantee of quality that results from it out of the discussion), the amateur, who up to now has not been sufficiently forewarned, would discover on the poem, the book, the drawing, the canvas, the sculpture, the new construction before him a mark that would be inimitable and indelible, something like: "A Surrealist Object." The slyly humorous turn Man Ray has recently given this idea does not make it less appropriate. Supposing that it could be worked out, we must be confident that there would not be the least arbitrariness in the considerations that would decide whether the mark was to be affixed or not affixed in any case. The best way of securing agreement on the question seems to me to be to seek to determine the exact situation of the Surrealist object today. This situation is, of course, the correlative of another, the Surrealist situation of the object. It is only when we have reached perfect agreement on the way in which Surrealism represents the object in general - this table, the photograph that that man over there has in his pocket, a tree at the very instant that it is struck by lightning, an aurora borealis or, to enter the domain of the impossible, a flying lion - that there can arise the question of defining the place that the Surrealist object must take to justify the adjective Surrealist. I want to make it clear in its broadest philosophical sense, considering it for the moment apart from the very special meaning that has had currency among us recently: you know that people have fallen into the habit of meaning by "Surrealist object" a type of little non-sculptural construction, whose great importance I hope to show you later, but rather has had to be called that for lack of a more appropriate designation.
…..
"I say that we must be seers, make ourselves seers": for us it has only been a question of discovering the means to apply this watchword of Rimbaud's. In the first rank of those of these means whose effectiveness has been fully proved in the last few years is psychic automatism in all its forms (the painter is offered a world of possibilities that goes from pure and simple abandon to graphic impulse and the fixing of dream images through trompe-l'oeil), as well as the paranoiac-critical activity defined by Salvador Dali as "a spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectification of delirious associations and interpretations."
…..
The predetermination of the goal [people are] to attain, if this goal is on the order of knowledge, and the rational adaptation of the means for reaching this goal would be enough to defend it against accusations of mysticism. We say that the art of imitation (of places, of scenes, of external objects) has had its day and that the artistic problem today consists of making mental representation more and more objectively precise through the voluntary exercise of imagination and memory (it being understood that only the perception of the outside world has permitted the involuntary acquisition of the materials which mental representation is called up to use). The greatest benefit that Surrealism as gotten out of this sort of operation is the fact that we have succeeded in dialectically reconciling these two terms - perception and representation - that are so violently contradictory for the adult person, and the fact that we have thrown a bridge over the abyss that separated them. Surrealist painting and construction have now permitted the organization of perceptions with an objective tendency around subjective elements. These perceptions, through their very tendency to assert themselves as objective perceptions are of such a nature as to be bewildering and revolutionary, in the sense that they urgently call for something to answer them in outer reality. It may be predicted that in large measure this something will be.
;){kind=small}
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;){kind=small}
;)
;)
;)
;){kind=small}
