Workshops > Surrealism and the Americas: new historiographical perspectives

SURREALISM AND THE AMERICAS: NEW HISTORIOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

Organization: Célia Stara (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) and Brianna Mullin (University of Toronto).

Abstract:

The history connecting Surrealism to the Americas is a long and winding one, full of projections, idealizations and, sometimes, frustrations. From the 1930s on, the so-called “New World” fascinated Surrealist artists who were interested in cultures deemed as “primitive,” from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. The Second World War and the ensuing exile of a number of European intellectuals in New York, Mexico and Haiti marked a significant turning point in the movement wherein the unprecedented convergence of Surrealism and the Americas was solidified.

It thus seems necessary to examine the conditions of the movement’s circulation, reception, and redefinition in light of its internationalization: in what way do the artists of these regions renegotiate the fundamental principles of Surrealism? How do they position themselves within and around the movement? Conversely, how much does this encounter with the Americas ensure a renewal of Surrealist form and thought?

The goal of this thematic workshop is to study the richness of the expressions and manifestations of Surrealism on the other side of the Atlantic, and to explore the numerous places in which the history of the movement was written, in a perspective that is simultaneously transhistorical and transnational. This reflection will concern the spontaneous emergence of new groups and artistic movements—such as the Brazilian Anthropophagous movement, the Chilean Mandrágora, the Québécois Automatists or the Chicago Group—as much as specific figures whose trajectory condenses these ideas of circulation, such as the Peruvian poet César Moro, the African American surrealist Ted Joans or the Hungarian-Chilean-Canadian artist Susana Wald.

As we celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of the first Surrealist Manifesto (1924), it is in fact appropriate to revisit this long historiographical tradition that considers this collective adventure as an exclusively French (if not Parisian) one, of the interwar period, centered around the charismatic figure of André Breton. By example of the Americas, we wish to propose a new theoretical definition of the movement in favour of its specific variations and manifestations in order to better question the very notions of centre, periphery, heritage or descendance and, in this way, bring to light the new actors of global Surrealism.