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- Genre: Periodicals
- Genre: Motion picture reviews
- Creators: Mesch, Claudia
General Topics Issue No. 2
Cover Image: Kati Horna, S.NOB #1 cover, 1962, ink on paper. Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Mexico City, Mexico
Published: 2021-04-19
The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 11 No. 2 (2020) - Table of Contents
"Agustín Cárdenas: Sculpting the 'Memory of the Future' by Susan L. Power, p. 98-119.
"Bataillean Surrealism in Mexico: S.NOB Magazine (1962)" by David A.J. Murrieta Flores, p. 120-151.
"Mexican Carnival: Profanations in Luis Buñuel's Films Nazarín and Simón del desierto" by Lars Nowak, p. 152-177.
"Giorgio de Chirico, the First Surrealist in Mexico?" by Carlos Segoviano, p. 178-197?
"Exhibition Review: 'I Paint My Reality: Surrealism in Latin America' by Danielle M. Johnson, p. 198-204.
Like a phoenix arising from the ashes of destruction in the aftermath of World War II, the surrealist movement, under the leadership of André Breton, reiterated its guiding principles and reasserted its aims at a time when interest in surrealism was waning and its relevance was increasingly contested. Reassembled in Paris after the displacement of exile, the core group resumed the staging of international exhibitions and the publication of journals, catalogues, and tracts—all privileged vehicles of collective activity ever since the interwar years. The collective spirit of the movement—a defining characteristic and the very foundation upon which surrealism had been established—remained central to its identity and its very existence in the postwar period. The rosters of those shows and publications attest to the renewal of surrealist ranks and reflect the movement’s shifting boundaries, both geographically and generationally.
The Cuban sculptor Agustín Cárdenas (1927-2001) offers a case in point. Arriving in Paris in 1955, thanks to a government-funded scholarship, Cárdenas quickly found himself within the surrealist orbit when he was invited to present his work at L’Étoile Scellée and La Cour d’Ingres galleries, both affiliated with postwar surrealism. His sculptures were also included in the movement’s last three “official” international exhibitions: "Exposition inteRnatiOnale du Surrealisme (EROS)" in 1959-60, "Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanters’ Domain" in 1960-61, and "Absolute Deviation" in 1965. Surrealism thus provided a platform from which Cárdenas launched his career in Paris.
This paper will examine how the primitivist-inflected abstract modernist idiom characteristic of Cárdenas’ sculpture, from the early 1950s on, serves to position it at a nexus between surrealism and postwar abstraction, and increasingly—especially after the dissolution of the Parisian surrealist group in 1969—within an expanding network, exemplified by group shows organized along entirely different lines (medium-specific, geographic or national affiliation, etc.), such as the New School of Paris, Latin American and eventually Cuban art. An analysis of selected readings of Cárdenas work, by “certified” members of the surrealist movement (Breton and his close collaborator José Pierre) or fellow travelers, who crossed paths with surrealism (French art critic and theorist of postwar European abstraction, Charles Estienne and Martiniquan poet and author Edouard Glissant), will shed light on its reception. And finally, I will address Cárdenas’ Afro-Cuban heritage in relation to his compatriot Wifredo Lam as well as the broader Caribbean context in which surrealism intersects with anti-colonial, revolutionary action and post-colonial discourses.
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. 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.
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.
The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 6 No. 1 (2012) - Table of Contents
“Notes for a Historiography of Surrealism in America, or the Reinterpretation of the Repressed” by Samantha Kavky, p. i-ix.
“What Makes a Collection Surrealist?: Twentieth-Century Cabinets of Curiosities in Paris and Houston” by Katharine Conley, p. 1-23.
“Dalí, Magritte, and Surrealism’s Legacy, New York c. 1965” by Sandra Zalman, p. 24-38.
“‘What Makes Indians Laugh’: Surrealism, Ritual, and Return in Steven Yazzie and Joseph Beuys” by Claudia Mesch, p. 39-60.
“Cracking up an Alligator: Ethnography, Juan Downey’s Videos, and Irony” by Hjorleifur Jonsson, p. 61-86.
“Review of Effie Rentzou, ‘Littérature Malgré Elle: Le Surréalisme et la Transformation du Littéraire’” by Pierre Taminiaux, p. 87-90.
“In Wonderland: the Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States” by Susan L. Aberth, p. 91-94.
This is a film review of the German film Run Lola Run, released in 1988.
The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 1 No. 1 (2007) - Table of Contents
"Introduction to the Journal" by Samantha Kavky, Claudia Mesch, and Amy H. Winter, p. i-iii.
"Anti-Surrealist Cross-Word Puzzles: Breton, Dalí and Print in Wartime America" by Julia Pine, p. 1-29.
"William Carlos Williams’ A Novelette: an American Counterproposal to French Surrealism" by Céline Mansanti, p. 30-43
"The Vernacular as Vanguard: Alfred Barr, Salvador Dalí, and the U.S. Reception of Surrealism in the 1930s" by Sandra Zalman, p. 44-67
"Ben Cobb, Anarchy and Alchemy: The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky" by David Church, p. 68-71
"Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted" by Marta Julia Clapp, p. 72-76
"Robert Desnos, Surrealism, and 'Poetic Politics'" by Terri J. Gordon, p. 77-80
"Dali and the Specter of Cinema" by Frédérique Camille Joseph-Lowery, p. 81-84
"Julia Kelly's Art, Ethnography and the Life of Objects: Paris, c. 1925-1935" by Susan Power, p. 85-90
"The Janus-faced Legacy of Joseph Beuys" by Tatjana Myoko von Prittwitz, p. 91-93
"A.J. Meek, Clarence John Laughlin: Prophet Without Honor" by Jeffrey Ian Ross, p. 94-98