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: McAra, Catriona
- Creators: Sharpe, Emily Robins
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. 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.
In the mid-1940s, Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst left the urbane, avant-garde circles of Manhattan to build a house and studio in the then remote Southwestern outpost of Sedona, Arizona. Many have written of Ernst’s fascination with indigenous artefacts but there was another pop cultural format that emerged concurrently with their time in Sedona: the genre of the Hollywood Western. Indeed, films like John Wayne’s Angel and the Badman (1947) and Johnny Guitar (1954) starring Joan Crawford were filmed in the immediate vicinity, amidst the iconic red rock landscape.
Tanning’s topographical mapping of the desert, as found in paintings such as Self-Portrait (1944), Evening in Sedona (1976), and novella Chasm: A Weekend (2004), feature some of those same scenic locations used as the backdrops in the Sedona Western. Comparisons between the self-presentation of Tanning and the actor Gail Russell are striking especially when one considers Tanning’s own performance in Hans Richter’s film 8 x 8 (1957). Moreover, the feminine, “phosphorus” glow, which Tanning recurrently uses in her painting and writing to describe the appearance of her female characters, matches the typical costuming of the lead women in Westerns, for example Russell’s Penny and Crawford’s Vienna.
This article explores the complex role the Sedona Western played in the surrealist art and literature made during Ernst and Tanning’s Sedona period and beyond, particularly in terms of gender politics. In order to rethink this moment of “Western surrealism,” I offer a Tanning-centric perspective through methodological use of Mieke Bal’s feminist “autotopography.”
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.