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
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.
“My world is surreal” says Yuxweluptun (b. 1957). The Coast Salish artist lives in Vancouver and therefore on un-ceded native land, where the ‘rights’ of Native people are, contradictorily, defined by the 1876 Indian Act. Yuxweluptun accounts for the surreal in his paintings as retaliation for a mode that drew on Indigenous sources to define itself. They are part of a capacious, populist discursive history that has long informed production and reception of Northwest Coast Native art. ‘The Colour of My Dreams: the Surrealist Revolution in Art’, at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2011) helped to establish its historical framework.
“Native American Surrealism” may be a contradiction in terms. If “surrealism” is a European creation, then joining it with “Native American” suggests an oxymoron. European surrealism was, however, based in part on Native expression. So “Native American Surrealism” could be used to identify an artistic mode avant la lettre appropriated by non-Natives. And some contemporary art by Native artists could be seen as a complex re-appropriation, a Native American surrealism après la lettre. This paper will examine the conjunction of “Native American” and “surrealism” and its significance by considering the work of five prominent Native artists from the Upper Midwest: Frank Bigbear, Julie Buffalohead, Star Wallowing Bull, Andrea Carlson, and Jim Denomie. To fully engage the issue of surrealism, the paper will also discuss their work in relation to other aspects of contemporary art, including the revival of interest in narrative, post-Pop representational styles, and the current fascination with satire.
