Archive for the ‘surrealism’ Category
More word- and imageplay.
April 21, 2008
I’ll turn the ocean upside down.
April 20, 2008
Robert Desnos and Kiki de Montparnasse, still from Man Ray’s L’étoile de mer, 1928. Watch the whole film here.
‘There Is a Star in the Sea’
(Pliny, Natural History, Book IX)
by Dan Chiasson
‘There is a star in the sea, and it burns up everything
it touches. Though men who walk on land deny it,
one night a star fell from the sky and landed in the sea.
It had the good sense to become a fish, but the wit
to keep its shape. It sleeps on the bottom of the sea,
but one day I’ll play a trick on it - I’ll turn the ocean
upside down! Then it will shine again, coral bluff,
rusted galleon in the night sky, and I will pray to it.’
From Dan Chiasson, Natural History and Other Poems.
Prepare to be puzzled.
March 26, 2008Lea must have heard my recent call for more letters, since this morning, with a big thump, her package arrived, revealing some fantastic curious little things. Lea is an artist from Berkeley, California, who has been sharing her ideas on curiosity, wonder and the everyday with me after stumbling upon this blog. She sent a pencil poem and two sets of her gorgeous PhenomeNonsense Puzzle Cards, which consist of drawings of hybrid creatures and objects on the front and the matching words on the back. They are combinations of two words or phrases that have overlapping sounds, such as, in the first example below,
computer + turtle = computurtle.
Click here for answers to the other ones. And hey. Don’t cheat.
It’s that time of the year.
March 20, 2008
The common cold (rhinovirus).
Ear ache (S. pneumoniae).
The flu (orthomyxovirus).
Cough (bordetella pertussis).
Sore throat (streptococcus).
PLUS:
Brain cell (neuron).
Writing and thinking about play (Huizinga, Caillois) and Surrealist games and trick objects related to nineteenth-century scientific toys while fighting off a cold.
All toys from GIANTmicrobes.com.
Life’s little pleasures.
March 11, 2008
Remember Amélie, waitress in Montmartre and expert of life’s little pleasures? There’s one scene where she’s running her fingers through a sackful of grain, and throughout the film, she keeps picking up flat, smooth stones and pebbles for stone-skimming on Canal Saint-Martin.
Do you also catch yourself having Amélie-esque habits, such as ceaselessly running your fingers through the tassels of your blue scarf, or feeling the urge to touch this whenever you see a reproduction of it? Surrealist objects are disturbing, it’s true, but I’d nevertheless like to stroke the fur-lined tea cup. Breton said of the objects in Apollinaire’s studio, “ils prennent le goût à rebrousse-poil.” I like this expression, for it captures the slight uneasiness provoked by the materiality of some objects, a feeling of both attraction and repulsion resulting in a peculiar kind of pleasure, giving you the heebie-jeebies. Imagine stroking a cat’s fur against the grain; it’ll make her purr and hiss at the same time.
Do you also often feel the impulse to touch and hug people, but are too afraid to break into their comfort zone - not to mention the sensitive issue of cultural differences? Do you also sometimes deplore the disappearance of letters? It’s hard to imagine life without e-mails and the Internet, but I can’t help thinking how wonderful it would be to receive more letters like the one Mimi Parent sent to André and Élisa Breton in the summer of 1959. Attaching two dragonfly wings to the initial of “amis” - what a beautiful, touching image of summer, playfulness, lightness and friendship.
Museumification, mummification.
March 4, 2008
Distorting mirror (’miroir de sorcière’) from André Breton’s collection of art, ethnographic/oceanic objects, objets trouvés, natural objects and objects of curiosity;
in Breton’s studio at 42, rue Fontaine in Paris in the 1930s (the round object right above his head…);
and as part of the ‘Breton Wall’ at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in 2005 (see right lower section of the picture).
More interested in ideas than in young women…
February 19, 2008
Roger Caillois (1913-1978), before pursuing a non-academic career in international bureaucracy with UNESCO and being appointed to the Académie Française near the end of his life, was briefly involved with the Surrealist movement around Breton in the early 1930s (later, in 1937, he co-founded the College of Sociology with “dissident” Surrealists Michel Leiris and Georges Bataille).
His eventual break with the group revolved around the supposed incompatibility of science and poetry (with Caillois opting for the former and Breton defending the latter), summarised by the legendary episode of the Mexican jumping bean. One night, during one of their reunions at a café in Paris, Breton refused to slice a jumping bean open that one of the Surrealists had brought to the meeting, because he was afraid that finding a larva inside would irretrievably destroy its mystery. Caillois, on the other hand, promoting a form of the marvellous that does not fear knowledge but thrives on it, had already asked the waiter for a knife.
Much later, in 1973, when recalling his friendship with Surrealist poet Paul Éluard, Caillois reveals his discomfort with the Surrealists’ “indulgent” lifestyle, providing some intriguing insights into their libertine mindset: he recounts, for instance, that Éluard often reproached him “in a friendly way” for being more interested in ideas than in young women. Describing the legendary café meetings on Place Blanche in Paris, he writes:
They had their mandatory rituals. Whenever a woman arrived, Breton would get up and kiss her hand. Even the color of the drinks was ritualized: in winter it was tangerine-curaçao and in summer, pernod. To change color was almost a sign of opposition, as Monnerot pointed out to me.
Quote from Claudine Frank (ed.), The Edge of Surrealism. A Roger Caillois Reader.
A laboratory of sorts.
January 26, 2008
André Breton in his studio, c. 1939.
The past couple of weeks had me split my time between writing at home and working in an office. The latter is part of a very open, friendly and creative institution, a place that does not confirm clichés often associated with an office - such as routine, boredom, bullying, regulations or gossip.
Still, it makes me appreciate days spent in the house writing much more than before. To describe it, I would borrow photographer and filmmaker Perry Ogden’s words, who characterises his idea of an artist’s studio in the following terms:
What is the studio? Where is the studio? Ideas can come at any time, any place - and at the slightest suggestion. For me the studio is where these ideas take shape. A laboratory of sorts. A space in which to research and experiment. To read, to sleep, to love, to listen. To dream. Music. Chaos. Uncertainty. Silence. A place to be alone - and not alone. I’m still looking.
Shouldn’t the world be more like this studio? Shouldn’t offices be more like this studio? Places to research and experiment? To read, to sleep, to love, to listen? To dream?
Music. Chaos. Uncertainty. Silence.
Places to be alone - but for the most part not alone.
Quote from Jens Hoffmann and Christina Kennedy (eds), The Studio (catalogue to an exhibition at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane).
A Bit of Everything
January 22, 2008
Obscura Antiquites & Oddities storefront, New York City.
We started by placing in the centre of the window a piece of basalt, fairly big but not too unwieldy, well brushed and laid delicately on a bed of cotton like some every fragile object. On the right and on the left, imitation crystal goblets held white and yellow sea sand and common calcareous sand… A variety of leaves - beech, locust, oak - were pasted on a sheet of black cardboard at the back of the display. Each leaf was identified by its origin, from the soft green of May to the golden yellow of October… One page, dog-eared, numbered 165, from one of the least engaging novels by M. Pierre Benoît, a member of the French Academy, was displayed in a frame under glass…
Hungarian novelist Alexandre Maraï’s idea for a store called A Bit of Everything, published in the French magazine Lu, August 1935.
Surrealist end-of-year questions.
December 30, 2007It’s the season for end-of-year reviews. Government summits were held, agreements reached. Germany fell in love with a polar bear cub, the inflation increased, William and Kate broke up and got back together. Nobel Prizes were awarded and the flooded basements have dried up.
I’m never quite certain what all of this has to do with us. But I sincerely hope you can look back to a year full of pleasant surprises, mind-boggling coincidences and fascinating encounters.
- How do you evaluate inspiration, behaviour and progression?
- What is a fire that smoulders?
- What is the number 27?
- Is there a way of building in trails of the unexpected?
- What has been the most important encounter of your life?
- How will your session take into account the widest range of participants?
- What is a path through the imagination?
- Are you a fox or a hedgehog?
- What hope do you put in love?
“Papillons” with questions, some of which were originally asked by the Surrealists who gave out a bunch of business cards with philosophical quotes and thought-provoking, slightly disturbing questions at the opening of their Bureau of Surrealist Research in 1924.
Mark Dion echoes this practice with his Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy at the Manchester Museum since 2005.
