Journal of Surrealism and the Americas (JSA)
The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas focuses on the subject of modern European and American intellectuals’ obsession with the “New World.” This obsession—the very heart of Surrealism—extended not only to North American sites, but also to Latin America, the Caribbean, and to the numerous indigenous cultures located there. The journal invites essays that examine aspects of the actual and fantasized travel of these European and American intellectuals throughout the Americas, and their creative response to indigenous art and culture, including their anthropological and collecting activities, and their interpretations of the various geographic, political, and cultural landscapes of the Americas. We furthermore intend to investigate the interventions / negotiations / repudiations of European/American or other Surrealisms, by indigenous as well as other artists, writers and filmmakers. Original publication is available at: Journal of Surrealism and the Americas
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- Creators: Greet, Michele M.
- Creators: Montua, Gabriel Götz
The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 3 No. 1 (2009) - Table of Contents
“Surrealism and Post-Colonial Latin America: Introduction” by Susanne Baackmann and David Craven, p. i-xvii.
“‘My Painting is an Act of Decolonization': An Interview with Wifredo Lam by Gerardo Mosquera (1980)” translation by Colleen Kattau and David Craven, p. 1-8.
“Surrealism and National Identity in Mexico: Changing Perceptions, 1940-1968” by Luis M.
Castañeda, p. 9-29.
“Negotiating Surrealism: Carlos Mérida, Mexican Art and the Avant-garde” by Courtney Gilbert, p. 30-50.
“1925 – Montevideo in the Orient: Lautréamont’s Ascent Among the Paris Surrealists” by Gabriel Götz Montua, p. 51-83.
“Paranoia and Hope: The Art of Juan Batlle Planas and its Relationship to the Argentine Technological Imagination of the 1930s and 1940s” by Michael Wellen, p. 84-106.
“Siqueiros and Surrealism?” by Irene Herner, p. 107-127.
“Review of 'Richard Spiteri, Exégèse de Dernier malheur dernière chance de Benjamin Péret'” by John Westbrook, p. 128-131.
“Review of ‘Liliana Porter: Línea de Tiempo’ (Line of Time)” by Arden Decker-Parks, p. 132-134.
“Review of ‘Zurcidos Invisibles: Alan Glass, Construcciones y Pinturas, 1950-2008’” by Susan Aberth, p. 135-138.
“Review of ‘David Hopkins, Dada’s Boys: Masculinity After Duchamp’” by Julian Jason Haladyn, p. 139-140.
“Review of ‘Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire’” by Ryan Johnston, p. 141-147.
The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 7 No. 1 (2013) - Table of Contents
“Introduction to the Issue and Special Section on Native American Surrealisms” by Claudia Mesch, p. i-iv.
“George Morrison’s Surrealism” by W. Jackson Rushing III, p. 1-18.
“César Moro’s Transnational Surrealism” by Michele Greet, p. 19-51.
“A Modernist Moment: Native Art and Surrealism at the University of Oklahoma” by Mark A. White, p. 52-70.
“The Opposite of Snake: Surrealism and the Art of Jimmie Durham” by Mary Modeen, p. 71-95.
“‘My World is Surreal,’ or ‘The Northwest Coast’ is Surreal” by Charlotte Townsend-Gault, p. 96-107.
“Complexity and Contradiction in Native American Surrealism” by Robert Silberman, p. 108-130.
“Review of ‘Double Solitaire: The Surreal Worlds of Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy’ & Kay Sage, ‘The Biographical Chronology and Four Surrealist One Act Plays’” by Larry List, p. 131-134.
Known primarily as a surrealist poet, César Moro also created numerous paintings and collages in a surrealist mode. Born in Peru, Moro made the obligatory sojourn to Paris in 1925 to immerse himself in European avant-garde activities. In 1928 he met André Breton and began to experiment with surrealist technique as a means to push both his painting and his poetry in new directions. Moro was one of the first Latin American artists to take up collage as an autonomous art form, creating images that combine text with photographs from advertisements, scientific journals, and newspapers in bizarrely incongruous ways.
When he returned to Peru, Moro organized the first exhibition of surrealist art in Latin America at the Academía Alcedo in Lima, Peru in 1935. Given the dominance of Indigenism in the visual arts in Peru, this was a bold move on Moro’s part. While the exhibition baffled the public, it introduced new possibilities to young artists working in Peru and challenged the ascendancy of Indigenism. In 1938 Moro left Peru for Mexico where he would remain for the next decade. There he renewed his contact with Breton and the two joined forces, together with the painter Wolfgang Paalen, to organize the Exposición Internacional del Surrealismo at the Galería de Arte Mexicano in 1940.
This essay will trace César Moro’s extensive engagement with surrealism, from his early participation in Breton’s surrealist group in Paris, to the exhibition he organized in Peru, and finally to Mexico. By examining closely Moro’s surrealist collages and paintings, I hope to reveal the depth of his involvement with the movement, as an artist, poet, and organizer on a transnational scale.
Lautréamont became the preeminent forebear of Surrealism through his inclusion in the movement’s first political agenda, the Orient. His overseas origin predisposed the Surrealists to re-read his works from the perspective of their own anti-occidental thinking. This was possible only through the near-complete absence of biographical data that would have contradicted the figure they desired to see. This made the imagined Lautréamont extremely malleable, easily aligned with other desires after the short agenda of the Orient ceased.
The Surrealists appropriated Lautréamont with increasing vehemence, fashioning him into a quasi-demigod, the utopian Surrealist fighting in their ranks. Again, no biographical data could contradict such a claim. Initially, the Surrealists united to fend off any outside claims on their idol, thus tightening the coherence of the tentatively emerging group. Then, when the movement had stabilized after opting for an affiliation with the political arms of dialectic materialism, Lautréamont was also used against members who had become undesirable. Renegades were denied any right to the model Surrealist and separated from the ideal of surreality that Lautréamont represented.
In addition to the obsessive imagination at work in the making of their Lautréamont, it is worth noting three internal contradictions in the Surrealists’ practice in relation to their idol. First, there is the problematic racially-motivated drive to appropriate Lautréamont because of his place of origin, even if its purpose is to attack a whole system of racial imperialism. Second, the classification of acceptable and unacceptable historic authors that led to the cult of a single genius closely resembles the bourgeois cultural practice to which the Surrealists opposed their narrowing anti-canon of predecessors. Third, the irrational and apodictic seriousness compressed in the symbolic act with which group exclusions were delivered in the name of Lautréamont have elements of those merciless displays of power one would find in medieval ecclesiastic practice or in 20th century totalitarian justice, both designated archenemies of Surrealism.
The appropriation of Lautréamont by the Surrealists in the mid-1920s remains an interesting early case study of entangled history. Particularly in the first half of the 20th century, critics in both France and Uruguay tended to claim Lautréamont as a national hero, sometimes forcefully against the other nation. Those claims proved easy to advance since fundamental biographical data was missing up until the 1970s. The Surrealists’ appropriation arose from the same lack of data and desirous projections, but developed in the opposite direction than most of their compatriots. They did not claim Lautréamont for France, but against France, and his South American origin were not read as a sign of his belonging to Uruguay, but paved the way for his entry into Surrealism.