André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto Turns 100 This 12 months


Peo­ple don’t appear to write down numerous man­i­festos nowadays. Or in the event that they do write man­i­festos, they don’t make the affect that they might have a cen­tu­ry in the past. The truth is, this yr marks the hun­dredth anniver­sary of the Man­i­feste du sur­réal­isme, or Sur­re­al­ist Man­i­festo, one of the well-known such doc­u­ments. Or relatively, it was two of probably the most well-known such doc­u­ments, every of them writ­ten by a dif­fer­ent poet. On Octo­ber 1, 1924, Yvan Goll pub­lished a person­i­festo within the title of the sur­re­al­ist artists who appeared to him as a pacesetter (includ­ing Dada Man­i­festo writer Tris­tan Tzara). Two weeks lat­er, André Bre­ton pub­lished a person­i­festo — the primary of three — rep­re­despatched­ing his personal, dis­tinct, group of sur­re­al­ists with the exact same title.

Although Goll might have beat­en him to the punch, we are able to secure­ly say, at a dis­tance of 1 hun­dred years, that Bre­ton wrote the extra endur­ing man­i­festo. You may learn it on-line within the orig­i­nal French in addition to in Eng­lish trans­la­tion, however earlier than you do, con­sid­er watch­ing this quick France 24 Eng­lish doc­u­males­tary on its impor­tance, in addition to that of the sur­re­al­ist artwork transfer­ment that it set off.

“There’s day-to-day actual­i­ty, after which there’s supe­ri­or actual­i­ty,” says its nar­ra­tor. “That’s what André Bre­ton’s Sur­re­al­ist Man­i­festo was purpose­ing for: an artis­tic and spir­i­tu­al rev­o­lu­tion” dri­ven by the rejec­tion of “rea­son, log­ic, and even lan­guage, all of which its acolytes believed obscured deep­er, extra mys­ti­cal truths.”

“The actual­is­tic atti­tude, impressed by pos­i­tivism, from Saint Thomas Aquinas to Ana­tole France, clear­ly appears to me to be hos­tile to any intel­lec­tu­al or ethical advance­ment,” the educated doc­tor Bre­ton declares within the man­i­festo. “I detest it, for it’s made up of medi­oc­rity, hate, and uninteresting con­ceit. It’s this atti­tude which at present provides start to those ridicu­lous books, these insult­ing performs.” He would possibly nicely have additionally seen it as giv­ing rise to occasions just like the First World Conflict, whose grind­ing sense­much less­ness he wit­nessed work­ing in a neu­ro­log­i­cal ward and automotive­ry­ing stretch­ers off the bat­tle­area. It was these expe­ri­ences that direct­ly or indi­rect­ly impressed a wave of avant-garde twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry artwork, various items of which star­tle us even at present — which is say­ing some­factor, giv­en our dai­ly weight-reduction plan of absur­di­ties in twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry life.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Sur­re­al­ism: The Large Aes­thet­ic Concepts Pre­despatched­ed in Three Movies

Europe After the Rain: Watch the Vin­tage Doc­u­males­tary on the Two Nice Artwork Transfer­ments, Dada & Sur­re­al­ism (1978)

A Transient, Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Sur­re­al­ism: A Primer by Doc­tor Who Star Peter Capal­di

The For­bought­ten Ladies of Sur­re­al­ism: A Magazine­i­cal, Quick Ani­mat­ed Movie

Learn and Hear Tris­tan Tzara’s “Dada Man­i­festo,” the Avant-Garde Doc­u­ment Pub­lished 100 Years In the past (March 23, 1918)

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the guide The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video collection The Metropolis in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­guide.



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