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. 

The first translations of Georges Bataille work available to a Mexican audience were made by writer Salvador Elizondo. After having read Les larmes d’eros (The Tears of Eros) in 1961, he founded S.NOB magazine one year later with the help of a wide group of collaborators that included Surrealist artists like Leonora Carrington and Kati Horna. S.NOB set out to oppose the closed-off nature of Mexican ‘official culture’, at the time dominated by State-promoted cultural nationalism. The magazine was part of a wider crisis of Mexican art and identity triggered in the 1950s and later known as la Ruptura (the Rupture). This new wave was concurrent with the growth of youth and mass popular culture, which found weapons of revolt against cultural nationalism in foreign cinema, music, and other emergent culture industries.

This essay will argue that S.NOB articulates an avant-garde, surrealist discourse that departs from the main current associated with André Breton. Instead, it closely follows the late writings of Georges Bataille via Elizondo’s translations and interpretations of his work. It will overview the theoretical aspects of Elizondo’s reading of Bataille in order to assess images and texts of the magazine, primarily Kati Horna’s photography, Alberto Gironella’s paintings (reproduced in print), and Tomás Segovia and Fernando Arrabal’s writings.

The objective is to show, through a sample analysis of the magazine’s discourse, the Bataillean construction of this particular collective’s avant-garde revolt. In it, the legacy of the surrealist movement in Mexico finds itself at a distance from the recurrent associations of Breton’s proclamations about the country, as well as the polemics derived from the "International Surrealist Exhibition" held in 1940 and the status of the “fantastic” in the history of Mexican art thereafter.

The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 4 No. 1 (2010) - Table of Contents

“Out of Field (Fuera de campo): Marcel Duchamp in Buenos Aires” by Graciela Speranza, p. 1-14. 

“Légitime défense: From Communism and Surrealism to Caribbean Self-Definition” by Lori Cole, p. 15-30. 

“Remedios Varo's Mexican Drawings” by Rosa Berland, p. 30-42.

“Bee Dreaming: the Surreal Odysseys Behind Alan Glass’ Wunderkabinetts” by Gloria Orenstein, p. 43-59.

“Review of Patricia Allmer, ‘René Magritte: Beyond Painting’ by Terri Geis, p. 60-63.

“Review of Eric Ratcliffe, ‘Ithell Colquhoun: Pioneer Surrealist, Artist, Occultist, Writer and Poet’” by Elisabeth Sherman, p. 64-68. 

“‘Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective’: Issues of Identity and Camouflage” by Samantha Kavky, p. 69-72.

“Review of Catherine Millet, ‘Dalí and Me’” by Jonathan S. Wallis, p. 73-77.

“Maria Martins: the Open Secret of Étant donnés. Review of ‘Marcel Duchamp. Étant donnés’” by Frédérique Joseph-Lowery, p. 78-85. 

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.

“Fantasyland or Wackyland? Animation and Surrealism in 1930s America” by Jorgelina Orfila and Francisco Ortega Grimaldo, p. 1-19.

“El único punto de resistencia: Cultural, Linguistic and Medial Transgressions in the Surrealist Journal VVV” by Andrea Gremels, p. 20-41.

“Chicago Surrealism, Herbert Marcuse, and the Affirmation of the ‘Present and Future Viability of Surrealism’” by Abigail Susik, p. 42-62.

“Surrealist Associations and Mexico’s Precariat in Roberto Wong’s París D.F.” by Kevin M. Anzzolin, p. 63-80.

“Book Review: New Books on Dorothea Tanning” by Katharine Conley, p. 81-83.

“Exhibition Review: ‘Photography and the Surreal Imagination’” by Sandra Zalman, p. 84-89.

“Exhibition Review: ‘Monsters and Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s’” by Jonathan S. Wallis, p. 86-93