Surrealist Shop Windows: Marketing Breton’s Surrealism in Wartime New York

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During his wartime exile in New York City, André Breton responded to the popular entrenchment of Surrealism as a language of shop window merchandising by leading a small group of artists and writers to take the publicity of Surrealism into

During his wartime exile in New York City, André Breton responded to the popular entrenchment of Surrealism as a language of shop window merchandising by leading a small group of artists and writers to take the publicity of Surrealism into their own hands. At Breton’s behest, Marcel Duchamp designed three shop windows to advertise texts released by the French publishing arm of the Fifth Avenue bookstore Brentano’s in 1943 and 1945. Although art historians have called attention to the relationship between these designs and the iconography of better-known works by Duchamp, this paper considers them as instantiations of Breton’s evolving thought within the context of a commercial environment already saturated with surrealist imagery. It places them within an iconographic web that includes, among others, Salvador Dalí’s famed fashion displays of the preceding decade, multiple iterations of Duchamp’s “twine,” and works by Kurt Seligmann, Roberto Matta, and Breton himself. The paper argues that, exemplifying the prewar surrealist motif of interior and exterior permeability and bringing it to a breaking point, these obscure windows for French-language texts became an important laboratory for the engaged critique of consumerism that would come to the forefront of the surrealist movement during the postwar period.

Date Created
2021
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Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 12 No. 1 (2021)

Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 12 No. 1 (2021)
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The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 12 No. 1 (2021) - Table of Contents

"Introduction, Special Issue on Fashion" by Jennifer R. Cohen, Michael Stone-Richards, pp. 1-5

"Fashion in the Formative Years of Parisian Surrealism: The Dress of Time, the Dress of

The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 12 No. 1 (2021) - Table of Contents

"Introduction, Special Issue on Fashion" by Jennifer R. Cohen, Michael Stone-Richards, pp. 1-5

"Fashion in the Formative Years of Parisian Surrealism: The Dress of Time, the Dress of Space" by Krzysztof Fijalkowski, pp. 6-32

"Surrealist Shop Windows: Marketing Breton’s Surrealism in Wartime New York" by Jennifer R. Cohen, pp. 33-59

"Object Study: Binding Saint Glinglin" by Jenny Harris, pp. 60-77

"‘Always for Pleasure’: Chicago Surrealism and Fashion, An Interview with Penelope Rosemont" by Abigail Susik, pp. 78-92

"Sade for the Brave and Open-Minded: Review of Alyce Mahon, The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde" by Joyce Cheng, pp. 93-99

"Review of Henri Behar, Potlatch, André Breton ou la cérémonie du don" by Pierre Taminiaux, pp. 100-103

 

Date Created
2021
Agent

The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas: Vol. 10 No. 1 (2019)

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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

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.   

Date Created
2019
Agent