JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1994 

Andre Breton (1896-1966)  may be the patron and founding saint of the movement we know as “Surrealism”.  “I believe”, he said, “in the future resolution of the states of dream and reality, in appearance so contradictory, in a sort of absolute reality, or surrealite, if I may so call it”.  So he wrote in his Manifeste du Surrealisme (pp 23-24), published in Paris in 1924, just days after the first meetings of the group of writers and artists to which he belonged called the Centrale Surréaliste or the Bureau of Surrealist Research, (also known as the Bureau of Surrealist Enquiries). Breton’s Manifesto was a defining element of the movement (in spite of its own probably intentional contradictions), and , well, entirely too much to summarize here in this minor post.  I am more interested presently in some of the names he discussed here and in a later work.

[Source: Maurice Nadeau, Histoire du Surrealisme, Editiosn du Soeuil, 1964.]

 Breton made several interesting lists of artists and writers who he identified as Surrelaists or precursors of Surrealism, the names appearing in the  Manifestes… and then in the Anthologie de l’Humor Noir.  The suggestions are factual and fanciful, meant to be taken seriously and not–ir at least his reasons and identifiers of those names were to be taken loosely if not the names themselves.  In any event it is an itneresting amalgamted list, which is presented below, cobbled together from the two sources and then alphabetizied. These are names Breton mentions explicitly in his lists, and do not include all of those folks whos eart he discusses in those works. I mean to return to this with portraits and links, but for a start today I’d at least to start with the backbone of the names.

[Source: the Paris surrealists, 1933: Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard, André Breton, Hans Arp, Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, René Crevel and Man Ray. Photo by Anna Riwkin-Brick.  Image found here: Art and Studio Tumblr, here.]

Manifestes du Surrealisme (1924) is available in French here and in English here.

[Artists in Exile, 1942:   Front row left to right: Matta Echaurren, Ossip Zadkine, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger Second row: André Breton, Piet Mondrian, André  Masson, Amédée Ozenfant, Jacques Lipchitz, Pavel Tchelitchew, Kurt Seligmann and Eugene Berman. (Photo: George Platt Lynes]

Breton’s definitions of surrealism:

SURREALISME, n, m. Automatisme psychique pur
par lequel on se propose d’exprimer, soit verbalement, soit par écrit,
soit de toute autre manière, le fonctionnement réel de la pensée, en
l’absence de tout contrôle exercé par la raison, en dehors de toute
préoccupation esthétique ou morale. [Surrealisme. Noun, masculine. Pure psycic automatism, by which one intends to express verballym in writing or by any other method, the treal functioning of the mind. Dictation by thought, in the absence of any control exercise by reason, and beyond any aesthetic or moral preoccupation] 

ENCYCL; Philso. Le
surréalisme repose sur la croyance à la réalité supérieure de certaines
formes d’associations négligées jusqu’à lui, à la toute puissance du
rêve, au jeu désintéressé de la pensée. Il tend à ruiner définitivement
tous les autres mécanismes psychiques et à se substituer à eux dans la
résolution des principaux problèmes de la vie. [Encycl. Philos. Surrealisme is base on the belief in the superior
reality of certain formes of association heretofore neglected, in the
omnipotence of dreams, in the undirected play of thought…]