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
<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
Night Work is about to Commence by Emmy Bridgwater
Painting by British, female surrealist Emmy Bridgwater
Emmy Bridgwater
<a title="Birmingham Museums Trust" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/night-work-is-about-to-commence-34084" target="_blank">Birmingham Museums Trust</a>
1940–1943
© the artist's estate
Oil on board, 46 x 61 cm
<em>A Nice Family </em>
Poem
Gisele Prassinos
Paris Review
1977
Ellen Nations, translator
Lessons of War: <a title="Naming of Parts" href="http://www.solearabiantree.net/namingofparts/namingofparts.html" target="_blank">Naming of Parts</a>
War, specifically World War II, mixed with the feelings of being a young man.
<p>Henry Reed is a poet with whom the Birmingham Surrealists associated. He's best known for the series he wrote <em>Lessons of War</em>, but most specifically for Part 1: "Naming of Parts." "Naming of Parts" is an excellent link between surrealism as an art movement and the topic of war that was so prevelant in Europe during the first half of the 20th century. Although "Naming of Parts" is about WWII, I saw a connection between this poem and Rebecca West's <em>Return of the Soldier</em> because of the routine it implied. The women in West's novel live routine lives while they wait for their soldier to return, just as this soldier learns to use his weapon. </p>
<p>Part of what allows this poem to fit into the idea of surrealism is that it sounds like a villanelle, but that format is actually much stricter than the one that Reed's poem follows. Apart from form, this poem also echos some of the key thematic elements of the surrealist movement.</p>
Henry Reed
http://www.solearabiantree.net/namingofparts/namingofparts.html
This poem can be found in Reed's <em>Collected Poems,</em> which was published most recently in 1991 by Jon Stallworthy,<em> </em>but for the purposes of this project, the publisher is www.solearabiantree.net.
May 2013
web document, audio recording
English
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
Is there a connection?
<p>Lewis Carroll's <em>Alice's Adventures in wonderland</em> was a work that might have eaisly slipped into the cultural movement of surrealism if not way ahead of his time. The dream state created, to reflect the political times, fits the understanding of what the cultural movement was about. Carroll's imaginary land could not be viewed for it's importance in its time because of the political environment. It would have been a hit during the Surrealist cultural movement because Carroll would have been allowed to present this idea with a different understanding.</p>
<p>Jean Rhys has also created a work that falls after the the Surrealist movement. <em>Wide Sargasso Sea </em>hold many of the same characteristics of Carroll's childrens novel. When placing the novels story line into a side by side viewing many similarities can be detected in the use of colors, the characters constant feeling of being in a dream state, the reflective nature of the political turmoil and social roles of individuals with in the story. </p>
"17 Adaptations Of "Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland" Through The Years" is a reflective view of the many ways that Lewis Carroll's original novel has been adapted to film and movies over the last
Louis Peitzman
<a title="17 Adaptation of Alice's Adventures in wonderland" href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/louispeitzman/adaptations-of-alices-adventures-in-wonderland">Buzz Feed Entertainment</a>
Buzz Feed Entertainment
Posted October 10th, 2013
<p>Buzz Feed</p>
<p>Gutenberg collection</p>
<p><em>The Independent</em></p>
Un Chien Andalou (Andalusian Dog)
<a title="Un Chien Andalou" href="http://vimeo.com/18540575">Un Chien Andalou</a> (Andalusian Dog)
This is a film written by Salvador Dali, a Catalan surrealist. I'm not going to attempt to explain what is going on in the <a title="IMDB's interpretation" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020530/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm">film</a>, as surrealism is left open to interpretation intentionally. To continue the theme here, though, this film relates to many of the books we read in this class because of the way it looks at the inner workings of the self. Most specifically, we can put this film next to Jean Rhys's <em>Wide Sargasso Sea</em>. Rhys's project in writing <em>Wide Sargasso Sea</em> was to give voice to the crazy lady in the attic, which meant that we as readers got to watch the slow descent into insanity from inside her mind. However, we are still, by virture of being readers of an interpretation of a person's mind, on the outside. The same can be said for Dali's film. For all we know, Dali was showing a slow descent into insanity by following the inner workings of this man's mind, but we are on the outside, and therefore understand nothing of the sort. This item had to be included in this timeline of surrealism to show that the concept of surrealism did not change throughout the movement, and that the statement surrealists made through visual art can also be seen in novels and other writings.
Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dali
viveo.com
viveo.com
This film was originally released in 1929
film
silent, French
horror, surrealism, art
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
<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