<a title="Le Festin" href="http://www.andrebreton.fr/fr/item/?GCOI=56600100328930#" target="_blank">Photograph</a> of "Le Festin" or "Cannibal Feast" by Meret Oppenheim
"Le Festin" or "Cannibal Feast" by Meret Oppenheim
Oppenheim used a female model's nude body as a table to serve a meal at the 1959 International Surrealist Exposition.
Meret Oppenheim
[Expositions] 1959-1960, [E.R.O.S.] Exposition inteRnatiOnale du Surréalisme
Galerie Daniel Cordier
1959-1960
William Klein, photographer
© William Klein, SAIF, 2005.
30,5 x 40 cm (12 x 15 3/4 in.) - Tirage argentique sur papier
<a title="Pere Ubu" href="http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/286239" target="_blank">Pere Ubu</a>
Photograph by Dora Maar
"The Surrealist artist Dora Maar is better known as Picasso's dark-haired model and companion in the late 1930s than for her astonishing works. Her incarnation of the bestial nature of man is titled after the infamous and absurd dictatorial antihero of Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roi (1896). Maar's imaginative evocation of the pear-shaped, breast-plated Ubu in the monstrous reality of a baby armadillo is one of the most compelling and repellent of Surrealist photographs." - From image website
Dora Maar
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1936
© 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
<a title="Surrealisme et Sexualite" href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61zKz0yBZzL._SL500_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" target="_blank">Surréalisme et Sexualité</a> by Xavière Gauthier
A feminist critique of the mystification of women by the surrealist movement.
Influenced by SImone de Beauvoir, Gauthier analyses how the female body is used as a muse and as an erotic image in surrealist art.
Xavière Gauthier
Can be found in the <a title="Gauthier in Encore" href="http://encore.unco.edu/iii/encore/search/C__SSurr%C3%A9alisme%20et%20sexualit%C3%A9__Orightresult__U1?lang=eng&suite=cobalt" target="_blank">UNC library</a>!
Gallimard
1971
French
<em>A Nice Family </em>
Poem
Gisele Prassinos
Paris Review
1977
Ellen Nations, translator
<p>Giaconda, 1953</p>
<a title="Giaconda" href="http://www.mattesonart.com/Data/Sites/1/magritte/Giaconda%201953.jpg">Giaconda</a>, 1953
<p>Maybe you can guess, but the instant I saw this image, I thought of George Orwell's <em>Coming Up for Air</em>. While Orwell's novel actually came first, this painting shows the mundane life that George, the protagonist, was speaking of. The men in bowler hats could even be insurance salesmen. This image had to be added to show the relationship between art and writing going the other direction. Orwell predicted this painting, in a way.</p>
<p>Here's some more about <a title="Magritte" href="http://www.mattesonart.com/1949-1960-mature-period.aspx">René Magritte</a>, the painter of Giaconda, and one of the most influential surrealists of the 20th Century.</p>
René Magritte
Matteson Art
1953
Menil Collection, Houston, TX
oil on canvas
A Quotation
Surrealism in the <a title="Duchamp quote" href="http://fantasticvisions.net/events/2011/02/17/surrealisme-national-art-centre-tokyo/">words of Duchamp</a>
I have chosen to include the words of Duchamp here because I believe that they reveal a truth about both surrealism and the works that are classified as such. There isn't a book we read in this class that didn't have something to do with the mind, and Duchamp makes surrealism a dream in itself, though it deals with that dream-like state. As a whole, all of these books deal with identity and how it is defined. It is important to have something that connects all of the pieces together as Duchamp's words do here.
Marcel Duchamp
Fantastic Visions
English
Androgyny, Interview with Meret Oppenheim
An interview with surrealist Meret Oppenheim
The author and Oppenheim discuss her views on the role of dreams and women in the Surrealist movement.
Robert J. Belton
Dada/Surrealism
No. 18 Surrealism and Women
The University of Iowa
1990
English
Journal
Cover Illustration for Harper's Bazaar by Leonor Fini
Example of the collaboration between the surrealists and fashion More examples can be found in <a title="Vogue and Surrealism" href="http://www.vogue.it/en/people-are-talking-about/obsession-of-the-day/2012/02/surrealism-steven-meisel#ad-image160403" target="_blank">this article by Vogue.</a>
Leonor Fini
Haper's Bazaar
1947
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate. One Second before Awakening
By Salvador Dali
Example of typical portrayals of idealized women by male surrealists.
Salvador Dali
<a title="Dali Painting" href="http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/salvador-dali/dream-caused-by-the-flight-of-a-bee-around-a-pomegranate-one-second-before-awakening" target="_blank">Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid, Spain</a>
1944
Freedom of Love
<a title="Freedom of Love" href="http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/freedom-of-love/">Freedom of Love</a>
This poem by André Breton disects the female body and compares the parts to very non-bodylike things. This made me think of Breton's speaker as someone who objectifies the woman he is with, much like Rochester does to Annette in <em>Wide Sargasso Sea</em>. Rochester objectifies Annette to pieces, but does so so much that he even finds it impossible to refer to her by her own name. He begins calling his objectified wife by the name Bertha, likely because he doesn't know what else to call her. Though Breton's poem is more sexualized than Rhys's novel, the ideas expressed appear to be quite similar. Both deal with the idea of identity and how that identity is related to the body.
André Breton
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/freedom-of-love/
Edouard Rodti, translator
French, translated to English
poem