Belgian surrealism
Though French poet André Breton’s 1924 'Manifesto of Surrealism' marked the official birth of surrealism in ink, the Belgians followed up right after with 'Correspondence', published that very same year. The brightly coloured periodical critiquing the new writings and ideologies fresh out of Paris would know 22 editions over the course of a little more than half a year. The group responsible for the avant-garde views expressed in the stapled together fliers were Camille Goemans, Marcel Lecomte and Paul Nougé. On the other side, René Magritte and E.L.T. Mesens were still involved in the Dada mind-set and together published the periodical 'Osophage' in March 1925. Mesens's periodical Marie in June and July 1926 published Magritte alongside Lecomte, and drew together the two groupings which, can be described as the Brussels Surrealist Group. Valuable publications emerged out of this union, such as the journal Distance in 1928, and co-operations with French Surrealists like those on the special issues of Variétés in 1929, Documents in 1934 and the collective work of Violette Nozières' in 1933 which brought together Breton, Char, Dali, Éluard, Mesens, Ernst, Arp and Magritte.
It is often said that Magritte became a leading figure in surrealist circles only after leaving Brussels for Paris in 1927, effectively ignoring his Belgian origins. What is often overlooked, however, is the fact that the visionary painted almost half of his oeuvre when back at his Brussels home in the peaceful Jette neighbourhood after returning in 1930. The answer then as to why Magritte became the only internationally recognized Belgian surrealist – his works now deeply seated in pop culture awareness – while talented contemporaries such as E.L.T. Mesens and Marcel Mariën remain in the shadows, might well lie in the principles of these latter artists. Unlike its Spanish counterpart, which includes larger-than-life figures such as Salvador Dali and Joan Miró, the Belgian surrealist movement had displayed a reluctance towards fame and infamy from the very beginning. Its code of conduct rested upon a typical Belgian modesty, from the bar its members conducted their intellectual conversations in to the simple houses and clothes they lived their lives in. While the images and texts springing from these minds were the most avant-garde the age had seen, their middle-class suits hardly screamed ‘surrealist revolutionaries at work.’ Magritte wasn’t a ringleader as much as one part of a group of friends and equals whose opinions mattered no more than the next. For Mariën, the conviction against stardom even went so far that he decided to sever ties with Magritte once the latter one chose the career path to become an internationally renowned painter.
It is often said that Magritte became a leading figure in surrealist circles only after leaving Brussels for Paris in 1927, effectively ignoring his Belgian origins. What is often overlooked, however, is the fact that the visionary painted almost half of his oeuvre when back at his Brussels home in the peaceful Jette neighbourhood after returning in 1930. The answer then as to why Magritte became the only internationally recognized Belgian surrealist – his works now deeply seated in pop culture awareness – while talented contemporaries such as E.L.T. Mesens and Marcel Mariën remain in the shadows, might well lie in the principles of these latter artists. Unlike its Spanish counterpart, which includes larger-than-life figures such as Salvador Dali and Joan Miró, the Belgian surrealist movement had displayed a reluctance towards fame and infamy from the very beginning. Its code of conduct rested upon a typical Belgian modesty, from the bar its members conducted their intellectual conversations in to the simple houses and clothes they lived their lives in. While the images and texts springing from these minds were the most avant-garde the age had seen, their middle-class suits hardly screamed ‘surrealist revolutionaries at work.’ Magritte wasn’t a ringleader as much as one part of a group of friends and equals whose opinions mattered no more than the next. For Mariën, the conviction against stardom even went so far that he decided to sever ties with Magritte once the latter one chose the career path to become an internationally renowned painter.
English surrealism
British Surrealism in its organized, communal form was a short-lived and somewhat local phenomenon of the 1930s and ’40s, limited mostly to groups in the cities of London and Birmingham, but it had a deep impact on British culture.
Although David Gascoyne, the foremost poet of the movement, emphasized the native sources of British Surrealism—adducing Jonathan Swift, Edward Young, Matthew Gregory Lewis, William Blake, and Lewis Caroll—he penned the “First English Surrealist Manifesto” (1935) in French in Paris, and it was published in the French review 'Cahiers d’art'. Gascoyne had been drawn to Paris after having read 'Decadent Symbolist', and Surrealist French poetry. In the early 1930s he aimed to liaise between London-centred artists and the recently emergent French Surrealists, meeting many of them in what became known as Atelier 17, English printmaker and painter Stanley William Hayter’s Parisian studio. Gascoyne decided to create in England a branch of the movement when by chance he met one of British Surrealism’s most prominent future flag bearers, Roland Penrose, in the streets of Paris in the company of French poet Paul Éluard.
In June 1936 the New Burlington Galleries in London opened the first International Surrealist Exhibition, also offering conferences by Éluard, Andre Breton, English poet and critic Herbert Read, and the then Paris-based Spanish artist Salvador Dali. It was at this conference too that the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas engaged in his own Surrealist happening: walking around the galleries, he served as host, offering viewers a cup of boiled string and asking with theatrical politeness if they would prefer their cup strong or weak. While Thomas was never formally affiliated with the British Surrealists, it was his work and that of other similarly unaffiliated poets that widened their influence. Thomas’s surprising and eccentric metaphoric cascades as well as his Freudian exploration of sexuality, strangeness, dreams, and childhood find a precedent in the movement’s general tenets and preoccupations.
While the British movement retained a steadfast adherence to Bretonian Surrealist principles from first to last, it did experience internal tensions caused by the rejection in France of Surrealist members such as Louis Aragon and especially Éluard on ideological and aesthetic grounds. These various allegiances to individual French artists eventually led to a split in the London group. Its final signed declaration, published in 1947 by the Galerie Maeght in Paris, was the subject of some internal dissent. Four years later, when the London Gallery—which served as the London group’s headquarters—closed, the group was formally dissolved as a large cohesive unit. The Surrealists based in Birmingham, who had been initially sceptical of what they saw as the London group’s looser ties to French Surrealism, continued as an informal grouping until the 1950s.
The chief artists in the Birmingham Surrealist coterie were Conroy Maddox, John Melville, Emmy Bridgwater, Oscar Mellor, and Desmond Morris (also an anthropologist). Having sprung up in the 1930s, the Birmingham group flowered independently of the London group, its members going so far as to refuse to show their work at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition; they claimed that a number of the London artists contributing had anti-Surrealist lifestyles. Some members of the Birmingham Surrealists did attend the exhibition, however, in order to make contact with French participants such as Breton.
One of Breton’s most important poems, “L’Union libre” (1931), can be said to have had a considerable influence on British Surrealist poetry in its use of kaleidoscopic analogy but also in the sexual and conjugal implications of its title. In July 1937 a number of Surrealists, including Éluard, Penrose, Eileen Agar, Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, and Man Ray, met in Cornwall, changing names and partners on the occasion for a day and a night. The same experience was reiterated in France later that year with Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar, thus assuring various forms of cross-pollination between the two countries. 'Free Unions–Unions Libres' (1946) was also the title given to a review edited by Simon Watson Taylor. Its first and only issue published poems, texts, and drawings by French and British Surrealists as an attempt to promote interest in Surrealism in the aftermath of World War II.
Although the British Surrealist movement was by no means slavishly derivative of its Paris-based models, references to France and French art are frequent within its art and poetry, especially in the works of members initially established in Birmingham. There were also numerous allusions to, and subversions of, English and American culture and the ancient mythologies of Europe and Africa in the writings of the London group. While writers and visual artists in England adopted all the games and techniques invented in Paris under the auspices of continental Surrealism, Indian-born British artist Ithell Colquhoun went on to invent a number of other techniques, including entoptic graphomania (dots made on or around blemishes on a blank sheet of paper; lines are then made to join the dots together) and parsemage (an automatic technique in which dust from charcoal or chalk is powdered onto water and then skimmed off by passing paper or cardboard beneath the surface of the water).
Although David Gascoyne, the foremost poet of the movement, emphasized the native sources of British Surrealism—adducing Jonathan Swift, Edward Young, Matthew Gregory Lewis, William Blake, and Lewis Caroll—he penned the “First English Surrealist Manifesto” (1935) in French in Paris, and it was published in the French review 'Cahiers d’art'. Gascoyne had been drawn to Paris after having read 'Decadent Symbolist', and Surrealist French poetry. In the early 1930s he aimed to liaise between London-centred artists and the recently emergent French Surrealists, meeting many of them in what became known as Atelier 17, English printmaker and painter Stanley William Hayter’s Parisian studio. Gascoyne decided to create in England a branch of the movement when by chance he met one of British Surrealism’s most prominent future flag bearers, Roland Penrose, in the streets of Paris in the company of French poet Paul Éluard.
In June 1936 the New Burlington Galleries in London opened the first International Surrealist Exhibition, also offering conferences by Éluard, Andre Breton, English poet and critic Herbert Read, and the then Paris-based Spanish artist Salvador Dali. It was at this conference too that the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas engaged in his own Surrealist happening: walking around the galleries, he served as host, offering viewers a cup of boiled string and asking with theatrical politeness if they would prefer their cup strong or weak. While Thomas was never formally affiliated with the British Surrealists, it was his work and that of other similarly unaffiliated poets that widened their influence. Thomas’s surprising and eccentric metaphoric cascades as well as his Freudian exploration of sexuality, strangeness, dreams, and childhood find a precedent in the movement’s general tenets and preoccupations.
While the British movement retained a steadfast adherence to Bretonian Surrealist principles from first to last, it did experience internal tensions caused by the rejection in France of Surrealist members such as Louis Aragon and especially Éluard on ideological and aesthetic grounds. These various allegiances to individual French artists eventually led to a split in the London group. Its final signed declaration, published in 1947 by the Galerie Maeght in Paris, was the subject of some internal dissent. Four years later, when the London Gallery—which served as the London group’s headquarters—closed, the group was formally dissolved as a large cohesive unit. The Surrealists based in Birmingham, who had been initially sceptical of what they saw as the London group’s looser ties to French Surrealism, continued as an informal grouping until the 1950s.
The chief artists in the Birmingham Surrealist coterie were Conroy Maddox, John Melville, Emmy Bridgwater, Oscar Mellor, and Desmond Morris (also an anthropologist). Having sprung up in the 1930s, the Birmingham group flowered independently of the London group, its members going so far as to refuse to show their work at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition; they claimed that a number of the London artists contributing had anti-Surrealist lifestyles. Some members of the Birmingham Surrealists did attend the exhibition, however, in order to make contact with French participants such as Breton.
One of Breton’s most important poems, “L’Union libre” (1931), can be said to have had a considerable influence on British Surrealist poetry in its use of kaleidoscopic analogy but also in the sexual and conjugal implications of its title. In July 1937 a number of Surrealists, including Éluard, Penrose, Eileen Agar, Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, and Man Ray, met in Cornwall, changing names and partners on the occasion for a day and a night. The same experience was reiterated in France later that year with Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar, thus assuring various forms of cross-pollination between the two countries. 'Free Unions–Unions Libres' (1946) was also the title given to a review edited by Simon Watson Taylor. Its first and only issue published poems, texts, and drawings by French and British Surrealists as an attempt to promote interest in Surrealism in the aftermath of World War II.
Although the British Surrealist movement was by no means slavishly derivative of its Paris-based models, references to France and French art are frequent within its art and poetry, especially in the works of members initially established in Birmingham. There were also numerous allusions to, and subversions of, English and American culture and the ancient mythologies of Europe and Africa in the writings of the London group. While writers and visual artists in England adopted all the games and techniques invented in Paris under the auspices of continental Surrealism, Indian-born British artist Ithell Colquhoun went on to invent a number of other techniques, including entoptic graphomania (dots made on or around blemishes on a blank sheet of paper; lines are then made to join the dots together) and parsemage (an automatic technique in which dust from charcoal or chalk is powdered onto water and then skimmed off by passing paper or cardboard beneath the surface of the water).