Journal of Surrealism and the Americas (JSA)

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. 5 No. 1 (2011) - Table of Contents

“Women in the Surrealist Conversation: Introduction” by Katharine Conley, p. i-xiv.

“Temple of the Word: (Post-) Surrealist Women Artists’ Literary Production in America and Mexico” by Georgiana M.M. Colvile, p. 1-18. 

“Leonora Carrngton, Mexico, and the Culture of  Death” by Jonathan P. Eburne, p. 19-32.

“The Lost Secret: Frida Kahlo and the Surrealist Imaginary” by Alyce Mahon, p. 33-54.

“Art, Science and Exploration: Rereading the Work of  Remedios Varo” by Natalya Frances Lusty, p. 55-76.

“Mary Low’s Feminist Reportage and the Politics of Surrealism” by Emily Robins Sharpe, p. 77-97. 

“Waste Management: Hitler’s Bathtub” by Laurie Monahan, p. 98-119.

“Kay Sage’s ‘Your Move’ and/as Autobiography” by Elisabeth F. Sherman, p. 120-133.

“Dorothea Tanning and her Gothic Imagination” by Victoria Carruthers, p. 134-158.

“The Colour of  My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art” by Steven Harris, p. 159-161.

‘Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention’: The Jewish Museum, November 15, 2009 - March 14, 2010” by Lewis Kachur, p. 162-167.

“Review of Gail Levin, ‘Lee Krasner: A Biography’” by Sandra R. Zalman, p. 168-171.

The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 8 No. 1 (2014) - Table of Contents

“Manuel Álvarez Bravo: Surrealism and Documentary Photography” by Ian Walker, p. 1-27. 

“(Sur)real or Unreal?: Antonin Artaud in the Sierra Tarahumara of Mexico” by Lars Krutak, p. 28-50. 

“Surrealist Views, American Landscapes: Notes on Wolfgang Paalen’s Ruin Gazing” by Kent L. Dickson, p. 51-73.

“‘Don’t Forget I Come From the Tropics’: Reconsidering the Surrealist Sculpture of Maria Martins” by Michael R. Taylor, p. 74-89.

“‘Le centre du milieu’: Matta and the Exploding Dome” by Denise Birkhofer, p. 90-104. 

“Edward James and Plutarco Gastélum in Xilita: Critical Paranoia in the Mexican Jungle” by Irene Herner, p. 105-123.

“Review of Ellen Landau, ‘Mexico and American Modernism’” by Luis M. Castañeda, p. 124-126. 

“‘Surrealist Ghosts and Spectrality in Surrealist Ghostliness’ by Katharine Conley” by Martine Antle, p. 127-129. 

“Review of Roger Rothman, ‘Tiny Surrealism: Salvador Dalí and the Aesthetics of the Small’” by Jonathan S. Wallis, p. 130-135.

“Review of ‘Late Surrealism’: The Menil Collection, May 24- August 25, 2013” by Rachel Hooper, p. 136-139.

In 1937, the Catalogue of the Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition in the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), edited by Alfred H. Barr Jr, with an essay by Georges Hugnet, appears the image of a painting by David Alfaro Siqueiros: Collective Suicide,1936, under subject 13 of the exhibition Guide, as part of a group of works selected under the title "Creation of Evocative Chaos," together with other works by Klee, Dominguez, Tanguy, Cheval and Schwitters. The photo of the painting is inscribed in a chapter called "Artists independent of the Dada-Surrealist movements." Arranged alphabetically it includes works by Blume, Calder, Castellón, Disney, Dove, Evans, Merrild, Feitelson, Gonzales, Lewis, O'Keeffe, Roy, Putnam, Smith, Goldberg, Thurber, Tonny and Beall.* *A group of paintings and sculptures by American artists as varied and different as can be. Today at the Tate Modern Museum in London, the permanent exhibition of Surrealism includes another work by Siqueiros under the title "Cosmos and Disaster." Both paintings by Siqueiros are apocalyptic visions of the approaching Civil War in Spain and of the Second World War. Although Siqueiros is better known as one of the three greatest realist Mexican muralists of the 20th Century, it is strange, although indicative, that two works of his are recognized in both different moments of the history of modern art, as surrealist expressions, in the 1930s and in the first decade of the new Century. Indicative, as one can not forget the fundamental involvement of historical Surrealism with Communism during that period, as well as with the concept of art as a revolutionary endeavor in itself. To be a militant of the Communist Party during the thirties was quite a different thing than before or after. Siqueiros´ militancy at the time, had to do with the idea that the world can be changed, but also, that art is a testimony of horrors and a therapy of self esteem in the midst of it. Siqueiros founded the "Siqueiros Experimental Workshop" at # 5 of Fourteenth Street, New York, at the beginning of 1936, after the International Conference of Artists, organized by artists members of the USA Communist Party, as part of the International policy of the Communist Party’s "Open Popular Front" against fascism and war. And before Siqueiros became himself a soldier in Spain. In this workshop Siqueiros directed a group of young American and Latin American artists that came together in order to participate with the party in its antifascist, antiwar propaganda. The International Communist Front allowed non communists to participate with them united by their antifascist positions. The center of their creative work became Siqueiros´ concept of art seen not only as a revolutionary weapon against Franco, Hitler, Mussolini and others like Hearst and other European, Mexican and American tycoons, but as a revolutionary activity in itself. It is well known that among the young members of this workshop was young Jackson Pollock. The style of the two paintings I am referring to can be defined with the same type of language then used by Surrealism, and specifically by the curators of this exhibit. Both works are almost abstract, they were made with experimental materials, generated strange forms, and developed new techniques. Collective Suicide is integrated with pieces of wood, like in a collage and the many tiny, not more than one inch sized figures that are depicted in it were added with stencils. Both works are Siqueiros own version of automatism, which he named “Controlled Accidents.” He started painting them on the floor, throwing into the canvas new industrial color –explosive pyroxiline- directly from the cans, on to which he also added different kinds of foreign materials like nails, fragments of wood and sand, creating a thick texture and a mysterious space. They both give the impression of an explosive Cosmos, a sensation of chaos. Collective Suicide is almost abstract, yet an absolutely representative testimony of the Spanish Civil War, in which many citizens were ready to die fighting for their democratic rights. Like in many other occasions’ of World history one or all four Horses of Apocalypse mark the Time of individuals. It is the same nightmare, which inspired one year later Picasso's Guernica. In Siqueiros picture many men and women, as well as their children and grandchildren, take the horrible decision to commit massive suicide because their life becomes an impossible existence. To take their own lives for the cause of Liberty, Fraternity and equal Rights. The decision to fight against authoritarianism, misery, sickness, and lack of freedom. Always a fight for life in a world lead by diverse utopical visions and ideals of humankind. The sacred engagement with life, understood as dedication, path and sense. Siqueiros is at that moment a militant and partisan, but also –while he prepares for warfare- he is dedicated to express this spirit artistically, with an open mind, appropriating all what Western art traditions offer, and assuming as well, all what the universe of science and technology was discovering, especially in America. In 1936 Siqueiros continued the explorations of his first stay in the United States in Los Angeles 1932, through an experimental research of new significants and devises to express this ideals, not only convincing the audience by arguments, but by moving their sensitive and emotional side, competing with very powerful new mass media, as cinema. The painting at the Tate Collection is practically abstract, only a little flame in the middle of the dark canvas remains after the great explosion. A few lines of force center the flame in the composition. The darkness of the painted full space, reminds the blackness surrounding the ones in Van Dyke portraits. But it is constructed over the floor, juxtaposing layers of paint that combine over the canvas, making strange, unexpected forms. Maybe with the same spirit of Ernst’s frottage (Maybe that is why the painting hangs at the side of Max Ernst’s Dadaville, 1924). Cosmos and Disaster is the subject of the picture, painted at the same year of another of his impressive apocalyptic paintings: The End of the World, in which there is only one human survival left among the buildings on fire. Siqueiros paintings of 1936 are a reminder of the mystery of human horror. In my text I plan to work more on Siqueiros' concept of the accidental, or the unconscious, in his art and on his Siqueiros Experimental Workshop, with the information taken from diverse recorded and written materials researched at the Smithsonian archive in New York, at the Pollock/Krasner house and Study Center, other documents recommended by Ellen Landau and the Siqueiros Archives in Mexico, and at the Getty Research Institute in LA, which I published as part of my book Siqueiros. Del Paraíso a la Utopía , 2004.

Mary Low and Juan Breá’s Red Spanish Notebook: The First Six Months of the Revolution and the Civil War (1937) narrates their experiences volunteering alongside Spanish and foreign volunteers in Spain in an effort to suppress the Francoist uprising and to transform the country’s social structures. Although their text has received little critical attention in examinations of Surrealism and international Spanish Civil War involvement, Red Spanish Notebook provides a unique and useful example of surrealist documentary photography. The book contains no actual photographs. However, Low periodically uses ekphrasis to undermine dominant notions of journalistic distance, especially in her discussions of Spain’s nascent women’s movement. By describing photographs of foreign and Spanish women on the front lines and the home front, and offering alternative interpretations of the images, Low illustrates the impossibility of objective reporting. In so doing, she brings political attention away from the war itself, and towards Spanish women’s concurrent struggle for equality. This essay examines Low’s use of ekphrasis to argue that she elevates and legitimizes Spanish feminism by reporting social revolution in the style of war journalism, while simultaneously constructing an ethics ofinternational collaboration and sympathy. Through their commentary on the perpetual slippages inherent in supposedly objective journalism and documentary photography, Low’s writings provide unique insight into surrealist feminism.