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
Filtering by
- Creators: Grossman, Wendy A.
- Creators: Palmer, Carolyn Butler
- Creators: Schieder, Martin
An emperor, a writer and an artist. Even though their stories played out in completely different epochs and under completely disparate conditions, they are united by historical analogy. The trans-epochal cross-fading of their biographies visualizes how Napoleon, Victor Hugo and Max Ernst were forced into exile by the caesuras of history and by the new rulers in their native countries. They experienced this as a kind of wilderness, as être d’ailleurs. In the pictorial understanding of the three protagonists, the crossing of the water as well as the wild rock by the sea, mark their dislodgment from, but also their longing for the lost homeland. They are symbols of dislocation respectively identification. At the center of this narrative we find the painting Napoleon in the Wilderness (1941, MoMA, New York) by Max Ernst, in which the painter comes to terms with a long wait, a dramatic passage, his arrival on foreign soil and his love affairs. His statement that he had already begun with the picture before his departure in France and, after his arrival, came to a new solution of the picture by turning it 180°, metaphorically describes not only the artistic new beginning on the other side of the Ocean, but also marks the turning point in his life.
Man Ray’s virtually unknown photographs of a much celebrated Aztec birthing figure commonly identified as Tlazolteotl—the goddess of earth, sex, and childbirth in Aztec mythology—provide the springboard for exploring a body of little known photographs of non-Western objects the artist created in Paris in the 1920s and ‘30s. Integrating his images of objects from indigenous peoples of the “New World” into his photographic repertoire of other non-Western objects, this article reveals the context and manner in which art of the Americas became a vehicle for his creative expression alongside objects from Africa and Oceania. Turning his camera lens to such objects, Man Ray produced images that—through a symbiotic relationship of content and form— imbued the objects with the same modernist aesthetic he pioneered in his photographs. In so doing, he created a new type of photography that defies categorization and functions ambiguously in the gap between the ethnographic and the surreal. This body of images provides both a window into the way in which such cultural artifacts became enmeshed in transatlantic artistic practices of the interwar period and insight into the role of his photographic endeavors in that process. The recovery of Man Ray’s photographs of the “Tlazolteotl” figure from obscurity and the examination of his engagement with the indigenous arts of the Americas allow new assessment of the work of this artist and contribute to a comprehensive understanding of his innovative approach to photographing objects of non-Western art.
In keeping with the first two issues of the Journal of Surrealism and the Americas, this third issue aims to broaden the horizon of critical concerns to which the publication is dedicated, turning our attention here to photographic contributions to the discourse of Surrealism and the Americas. Photography, of course, played a central role in surrealist practices since the movement’s inception, as the plethora of scholarship on the topic has underscored. It is thus not surprising that as the movement gained adherents across the Atlantic, the medium would find its calling in this new context as well.
"Max Ernst and the Aesthetic of Commercial Tourism: Max Among His Favorite Dolls" examines Surrealist artist Max Ernst's practice of collecting Hopi and Zuni kachina figurines. Ernst, like some other European Surrealists, was an avid collector of Native Amercian material culture and ceremonial hardware. Surrealists interest in Indigenous material was part of a larger program to destabilize European privileging of the mind and art as rational constructs.
This paper focuses on James Thrall Soby's 1941 photograph of Ernst surrounded by his collection of kachina figurine, which was first published in the April edition of View Magazine. As Soby's portrait of Ernst has been reproduced many times over course of the past six decades, it has become an emblem of the Surrealists general interest in Native Americana.
In contrast to vanguardism with which Ernst and other Surrealist's collecting practices is usually credited, this paper examines Soby portrait of Ernst's within practices of commercial tourism and the souvenir industry in the Southwest. By the mid 1940s, Hopi and Zuni kachina figurine makers had a well-developed commercial kachina figurine industry that targeted the patronage of visitors to the regions. Evidence levied in the development of Ernst's tourist aesthetic includes his mode of collection, display, and stories that surround Max's assemblage of kachina figurines. This paper further differentiates it from the collecting practices of Surrealist counterparts such as André Breton.
The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 2 No. 1 (2008) - Table of Contents
“Surrealism and Ethnography: Introduction” by Amy H. Winter, p. i-vi.
“Totemic Landscapes and Vanishing Cultures Through the Eyes of Wolfgang Paalen and Kurt Seligmann” by Marie Mauzé, p. 1-24.
“Surrealist Visions of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the Legacy of Colonialism: the Good, the (Revalued) Bad, and the Ugly” by Keith Jordan, p. 25-63.
“Surrealism and Inuit Art: The Fascination of the Far North” by Florence Duchemin-Pelletier, p. 64-94.
“Bound Objects and Blurry Boundaries: Surrealist Display and (Anti)Nationalism” by Susan Power, p. 95-113.
“Man Ray’s Lost and Found Photographs: Arts of the Americas in Context” by Wendy Grossman, p. 114-139.
“T.J. Demos, The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp” by Bradley Bailey, p. 140-144.
“The Dalí Renaissance: New Perspectives on His Life and Art after 1940 and Danser Gala: L’Art Bouffe de Salvador Dalí” by Mary Ann Caws, p. 145-146.
“Review of ‘The Art of Lee Miller’: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2007” by Peter Barberie, p. 147-151.
“Frida Kahlo in Philadelphia: Life and Death” by Samantha Kavky, p. 152-156.
“Thinking the ‘Post-Indian’: Remix: New Modernities in a Post-Indian World” by Claudia Mesch, p. 157-161.
The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 2 No. 2 (2008) - Table of Contents
“Surrealism and Photography: Introduction” by Wendy Grossman, p. i-iv.
“‘Surrealistic and disturbing’: Timothy O’Sullivan as Seen by Ansel Adams in the 1930s” by Britt Salvesen, p. 162-179.
“‘As if one’s eyelids had been cut away’: Frederick Sommer’s Arizona Landscapes” by Ian Walker, p. 180-208.
“Clarence John Laughlin, Regionalist Surrealist” by Lewis Kachur, p. 209-226.
“A Swimmer Between Two Worlds: Francesca Woodman’s Maps of Interior Space” by Katharine Conley, p. 227-252.
“Remembering Anne D’Harnoncourt” by Valery Oisteanu, p. 253.
“The 1930s: The Making of the ‘New Man’” by Julia Pine, p. 254-258.
“Beyond Bridges: The Cinema of Jean Rouch” by Robert McNab, p. 259-262.
“Review of Kirby Olson, ‘Andrei Codrescu and the Myth of America’” by Éva Forgács, p. 263-267.
“Review of Sally Price, 'Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s Museum on the Quai Branly’” by Kate Duncan, p. 268-272.
The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 10 No. 1 (2019) - Table of Contents
“Introduction to the Special Issue on Max Ernst” by Samantha Kavky, p. 1-6.
“Napoleon in the Wilderness: The Transmogrification of a Picture by Max Ernst” by Martin Schieder, p. 7-23.
“Seeing Through an (American) Temperament: Max Ernst’s Microbes, 1946-1953” by Danielle M. Johnson, p. 24-45.
“Max Ernst and the Aesthetic of Commercial Tourism: Max Among Some of His Favorite Dolls” by Carolyn Butler Palmer, p, 46-68.
“Arizona Dream: Maxime Rossi Meets Max Ernst” by Julia Drost, p. 69-83.
“Glowing Like Phosphorus: Dorothea Tanning and the Sedona Western” by Catriona McAra, p. 84-105.
“Conference Review: ‘SURREALISMS: the Inaugural Conference of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism’” by Kristen Strange, p. 106-110.
“Exhibition Review of ‘A Home for Surrealism: Fantastic Painting in Midcentury Chicago’” by Jennifer R. Cohen, p. 111-114.
“Exhibition Review: ‘Native American Art at Documenta 14 and the Issue of Democracy’” by Claudia Mesch, p. 115-120.