ANDRE BRETON, his quotes & art statements on French Surrealism & the Surrealist artists; from the Manifesto
Andre Breton (1896 – 1966), art quotes and statements by the founding artist of French Surrealism and the inventor of the great concept of the ‘Surreal’ & automatic writing (drawing / painting). Breton wrote the famous Surrealist Manifesto – here presented in his quotes. He was strongly connected with most of the famous artists in French Surrealism like Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Picabia, Miró and Masson. Later in America Breton admired younger American artists like William Baziotes and Arshile Gorky.
* At the bottom more biography facts & art links for the French famous artist Andre Breton and its Surrealism. – the editor
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Breton’s portrait on poster: poetry performance |
Andre Breton, his art quotes on Surrealism & automatic writing – from ‘Surrealist Manifesto’
– Children set off each day without a worry in the world. Everything is near at hand; the worst material conditions are fine. The woods are white or black, one will never sleep.
* his artist quote on child experience, taken from:the introducing line in his ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life — real life, I mean — that in the end this belief is lost. Man, that inveterate dreamer, daily more discontent with his destiny, has trouble assessing the objects he has been led to use, objects that his nonchalance has brought his way, or that he has earned through his own efforts, almost always through his own efforts, for he has agreed to work, at least he has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luck!). At this point he feels extremely modest: he knows what women he has had, what silly affairs he has been involved in; he is unimpressed by his wealth or his poverty, in this respect he is still a new-born babe and, as for the approval of his conscience, I confess that he does very nicely without it. If he still retains a certain lucidity, all he can do is turn back toward his childhood which, however his guides and mentors may have botched it, still strikes him as somehow charming. There, the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of everything.
* source of Breton’s artist quote – founder of Surrealism: first line in ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924 ( French poet /writer, leader of Surrealist art movement and famous for his invention of the ‘Surreal’; poetry and novels like Nadja and Mad Love; more biography below)
But it is true that we would not dare venture so far, it is not merely a question of distance. Threat is piled upon threat, one yields, abandons a portion of the terrain to be conquered. This imagination which knows no bounds is henceforth allowed to be exercised only in strict accordance with the laws of an arbitrary utility; it is incapable of assuming this inferior role for very long and, in the vicinity of the twentieth year, generally prefers to abandon man to his lusterless fate.
* artist quote : ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.
There remains madness, ‘the madness that one locks up,’ as it has aptly been described. That madness or another…
* quote on imagination from: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton, 1924
– We all know, in fact, that the insane owe their incarceration to a tiny number of legally reprehensible acts and that, were it not for these acts their freedom (or what we see as their freedom) would not be threatened. … …that they derive a great deal of comfort and consolation from their imagination, that they enjoy their madness sufficiently to endure the thought that its validity does not extend beyond themselves. And, indeed, hallucinations, illusions, etc., are not a source of trifling pleasure. … …These people are honest to a fault, and their naiveté has no peer but my own. Christopher Columbus should have set out to discover America with a boatload of madmen. And note how this madness has taken shape, and endured.
* taken from: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– It is not the fear of madness which will oblige us to leave the flag of imagination furled.
* Breton, artist quote on imagination: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– We are still living under the reign of logic: this, of course, is what I have been driving at. But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism that is still in vogue allows us to consider only facts relating directly to our experience. Logical ends, on the contrary, escape us. It is pointless to add that experience itself has found itself increasingly circumscribed. It paces back and forth in a cage from which it is more and more difficult to make it emerge. It too leans for support on what is most immediately expedient, and it is protected by the sentinels of common sense.
* art quote on the place of logic and experience by the founder of the Surrealism art movement, from: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– If the depths of our mind contain within it strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of waging a victorious battle against them, there is every reason to seize them–first to seize them, then, if need be, to submit them to the control of our reason. The analysts themselves have everything to gain by it. But it is worth noting that no means has been designated a priori for carrying out this undertaking, that until further notice it can be construed to be the province of poets as well as scholars, and that its success is not dependent upon the more or less capricious paths that will be followed.
* Breton’s remark on the depth of the mind, from: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– Freud very rightly brought his critical faculties to bear upon the dream. It is, in fact, inadmissible that this considerable portion of psychic activity (since, at least from man’s birth until his death, thought offers no solution of continuity, the sum of the moments of the dream, from the point of view of time, and taking into consideration only the time of pure dreaming, that is the dreams of sleep, is not inferior to the sum of the moments of reality, or, to be more precisely limiting, the moments of waking) has still today been so grossly neglected.
* quote on the dream and Freud: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton, 1924
– I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams. It is because man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all the plaything of his memory, and in its normal state memory takes pleasure in weakly retracing for him the circumstances of the dream, in stripping it of any real importance, and in dismissing the only determinant from the point where he thinks he has left it a few hours before: this firm hope, this concern. He is under the impression of continuing something that is worthwhile. Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night. And, like the night, dreams generally contribute little to furthering our understanding. This curious state of affairs seems to me to call for certain reflections.
* artist quote on the role of dream and the night, taken from ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– What I most enjoy contemplating about a dream is everything that sinks back below the surface in a waking state, everything I have forgotten about my activities in the course of the preceding day, dark foliage, stupid branches. In “reality,” likewise, I prefer to fall. What is worth noting is that nothing allows us to presuppose a greater dissipation of the elements of which the dream is constituted. I am sorry to have to speak about it according to a formula which in principle excludes the dream. When will we have sleeping logicians, sleeping philosophers? I would like to sleep, in order to surrender myself to the dreamers, the way I surrender myself to those who read me with eyes wide open; in order to stop imposing, in this realm, the conscious rhythm of my thought. Perhaps my dream last night follows that of the night before, and will be continued the next night, with an exemplary strictness.
* Breton, quote on dream and dreaming: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– Why should I not expect from the sign of the dream more than I expect from a degree of consciousness which is daily more acute? Can’t the dream also be used in solving the fundamental questions of life? Are these questions the same in one case as in the other and, in the dream, do these questions already exist? Is the dream any less restrictive or punitive than the rest? I am growing old and, more than that reality to which I believe I subject myself, it is perhaps the dream, the difference with which I treat the dream, which makes me grow old.
* Andre Breton on dream and consciousness as source for creation: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton, 1924
– Let me come back again to the waking state. I have no choice but to consider it a phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind display, in this state, a strange tendency to lose its bearings (as evidenced by the slips and mistakes the secrets of which are just beginning to be revealed to us), but, what is more, it does not appear that, when the mind is functioning normally, it really responds to anything but the suggestions which come to it from the depths of that dark night to which I commend it.
* quote on the waking state in life, from: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– The mind of the man who dreams is fully satisfied by what happens to him. The agonizing question of possibility is no longer pertinent. Kill, fly faster, love to your heart’s content. And if you should die, are you not certain of reawaking among the dead? Let yourself be carried along, events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The ease of everything is priceless.
* artist quote on the role of dream in the mind: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– What reason, I ask, a reason so much vaster than the other, makes dreams seem so natural and allows me to welcome unreservedly a welter of episodes so strange that they could confound me now as I write? And yet I can believe my eyes, my ears; this great day has arrived, this beast has spoken.
* André Breton on the strong convincing power of the dream: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton
– If man’s awaking is harder, if it breaks the spell too abruptly, it is because he has been led to make for himself too impoverished a notion of atonement.
* artist quotes by the founder of Surrealism: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton, 1924
– From the moment when it is subjected to a methodical examination, when, by means yet to be determined, we succeed in recording the contents of dreams in their entirety (and that presupposes a discipline of memory spanning generations; but let us nonetheless begin by noting the most salient facts), when its graph will expand with unparalleled volume and regularity, we may hope that the mysteries which really are not will give way to the great Mystery. I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak. It is in quest of this Surreality that I am going, certain not to find it but too unmindful of my death not to calculate to some slight degree the joys of its possession.
* quote by founder of Surrealism on the existence of Surreality, taken from: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton
– A story is told according to which Saint-Pol-Roux, in times gone by, used to have a notice posted on the door of his manor house in Camaret, every evening before he went to sleep, which read: ‘THE POET IS WORKING’.
* artist quote on Saint-Pol-Roux, taken from: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton, 1924
– For today I think of a castle, half of which is not necessarily in ruins; this castle belongs to me, I picture it in a rustic setting, not far from Paris. The outbuildings are too numerous to mention, and, as for the interior, it has been frightfully restored, in such manner as to leave nothing to be desired from the viewpoint of comfort. Automobiles are parked before the door, concealed by the shade of trees.
A few of my friends are living here as permanent guests: there is Louis Aragon leaving; he only has time enough to say hello; Philippe Soupault gets up with the stars, and Paul Eluard, our great Eluard, has not yet come home.
There are Robert Desnos and Roger Vitrac out on the grounds poring over an ancient edict on duelling; Georges Auric, Jean Paulhan; Max Morise, who rows so well, and Benjamin Péret, busy with his equations with birds; and Joseph Delteil; and Jean Carrive; and Georges Limbour, and Georges Limbours (there is a whole hedge of Georges Limbours); and Marcel Noll; there is T. Fraenkel waving to us from his captive balloon, Georges Malkine, Antonin Artaud, Francis Gérard, Pierre Naville, J.-A. Boiffard, and after them Jacques Baron and his brother, handsome and cordial, and so many others besides, and gorgeous women, I might add.
Nothing is too good for these young men, their wishes are, as to wealth, so many commands. Francis Picabia comes to pay us a call, and last week, in the hall of mirrors, we received a certain Marcel Duchamp whom we had not hitherto known. Picasso goes hunting in the neighbourhood.
The spirit of demoralization has elected domicile in the castle, and it is with it we have to deal every time it is a question of contact with our fellowmen, but the doors are always open, and one does not begin by “thanking” everyone, you know. Moreover, the solitude is vast, we don’t often run into one another. And anyway, isn’t what matters that we be the masters of ourselves, the masters of women, and of love too?… … What if this castle really existed! My guests are there to prove it does; their whim is the luminous road that leads to it. We really live by our fantasies when we give free reign to them. And how could what one might do bother the other, there, safely sheltered from the sentimental pursuit and at the trysting place of opportunities?
* Andre Breton, artist quote of a list of friends, creating Surrealism art: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton, 1924
– I was composing, with a concern for variety that deserved better, the final poems of ‘Mont de piété’, that is, I managed to extract from the blank lines of this book an incredible advantage. These lines were the closed eye to the operations of thought that I believed I was obliged to keep hidden from the reader. It was not deceit on my part, but my love of shocking the reader. I had the illusion of a possible complicity, which I had more and more difficulty giving up. I had begun to cherish words excessively for the space they allow around them, for their tangencies with countless other words which I did not utter. The poem BLACK FOREST derives precisely from this state of mind. It took me six months to write it, and you may take my word for it that I did not rest a single day. But this stemmed from the opinion I had of myself in those days, which was high, please don’t judge me too harshly. I enjoy these stupid confessions. At that point cubist pseudo-poetry was trying to get a foothold, but it had emerged defenseless from Picasso’s brain, and I was thought to be as dull as dishwater (and still am).
* artist quote on his poenm Dark forest, from: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– I had a sneaking suspicion, moreover, that from the viewpoint of poetry I was off on the wrong road, but I hedged my bet as best I could, defying lyricism with salvos of definitions and formulas (the Dada phenomena were waiting in the wings, ready to come on stage) and pretending to search for an application of poetry to advertising (I went so far as to claim that the world would end, not with a good book but with a beautiful advertisement for heaven or for hell).
* artist quote on his poetry, in: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– In those days, a man at least as boring as I, Pierre Reverdy, was writing:
‘The image is a pure creation of the mind. It cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be–the greater its emotional power and poetic reality… (Nord-Sud, March 1918)’.
These words, however sibylline for the uninitiated, were extremely revealing, and I pondered them for a long time…
* artist quote of Pierre Reverdy, quoted by Breton in ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– One evening, therefore, before I fell asleep, I perceived, so clearly articulated that it was impossible to change a word, but nonetheless removed from the sound of any voice, a rather strange phrase which came to me without any apparent relationship to the events in which, my consciousness agrees, I was then involved, a phrase which seemed to me insistent, a phrase, if I may be so bold, which was knocking at the window. I took cursory note of it and prepared to move on when its organic character caught my attention. Actually, this phrase astonished me: unfortunately I cannot remember it exactly, but it was something like: ‘There is a man cut in two by the window,’ but there could be no question of ambiguity, accompanied as it was by the faint visual image* (Were I a painter (Breton is writer and poet, fh), this visual depiction would doubtless have become more important for me than the other. It was most certainly my previous predispositions, which decided the matter. Since that day, I have had occasion to concentrate my attention voluntarily on similar apparitions, and I know they are fully as clear as auditory phenomena.
With a pencil and white sheet of paper to hand, I could easily trace their outlines. Here again it is not a matter of drawing, but simply of tracing. I could thus depict a tree, a wave, a musical instrument, all manner of things of which I am presently incapable of providing even the roughest sketch. I would plunge into it, convinced that I would find my way again, in a maze of lines which at first glance would seem to be going nowhere. And, upon opening my eyes, I would get the very strong impression of something “never seen.” … …But this window having shifted with the man, I realized that I was dealing with an image of a fairly rare sort, and all I could think of was to incorporate it into my material for poetic construction. No sooner had I granted it this capacity than it was in fact succeeded by a whole series of phrases, with only brief pauses between them, which surprised me only slightly less and left me with the impression of their being so gratuitous that the control I had then exercised upon myself seemed to me illusory and all I could think of was putting an end to the interminable quarrel raging within me.
* Andre Breton on the ‘never seen before’, in: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton, 1924
– Apollinaire asserted that Chirico‘s first paintings were done under the influence of kinesthetic disorders (migraines, colic, etc.)
* Breton, artist quote on the kinesthetic in the art of the painter De Chirico ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– Completely occupied as I still was with Freud at that time, and familiar as I was with his methods of examination which I had some slight occasion to use on some patients during the war, I resolved to obtain from myself what we were trying to obtain from them, namely, a monologue spoken as rapidly as possible without any intervention on the part of the critical faculties, a monologue consequently unencumbered by the slightest inhibition and which was, as closely as possible, akin to spoken thought. It had seemed to me, and still does–the way in which the phrase about the man cut in two had come to me is an indication of it–that the speed of thought is no greater than the speed of speech, and that thought does not necessarily defy language, nor even the fast-moving pen. It was in this frame of mind that Philippe Soupault — to whom I had confided these initial conclusions — and I decided to blacken some paper, with a praiseworthy disdain for what might result from a literary point of view. The ease of execution did the rest. By the end of the first day we were able to read to ourselves some fifty or so pages obtained in this manner, and begin to compare our results.
* artist quote on ‘automatic writing / drawing’ s by founder of Surrealism, from: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton, 1924
– All in all, Soupault’s pages and mine proved to be remarkably similar: the same over-construction, shortcomings of a similar nature, but also, on both our parts, the illusion of an extraordinary verve, a great deal of emotion, a considerable choice of images of a quality such that we would not have been capable of preparing a single one in longhand, a very special picturesque quality and, here and there, a strong comical effect. … … Nonetheless, with this thought-writing, where one is at the mercy of the first outside distraction, “ebullitions” can occur. It would be inexcusable for us to pretend otherwise. By definition, thought is strong, and incapable of catching itself in error. The blame for these obvious weaknesses must be placed on suggestions that come to it from without.
It is, in fact, difficult to appreciate fairly the various elements present: one may even go so far as to say that it is impossible to appreciate them at a first reading. To you who write, these elements are, on the surface, as strange to you as they are to anyone else, and naturally you are wary of them. Poetically speaking, what strikes you about them above all is their extreme degree of immediate absurdity, the quality of this absurdity, upon closer scrutiny, being to give way to everything admissible, everything legitimate in the world: the disclosure of a certain number of properties and of facts no less objective, in the final analysis, than the others.
* André Breton on the practice of automatic writing, in: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924 ( French poet /writer, leader of Surrealist art movement and famous for his invention of the ‘Surreal’; poetry and novels like Nadja and Mad Love; more biography below)
– In homage to Guillaume Apollinaire (famous French poet, art critic and writer, fh), who had just died and who, on several occasions, seemed to us to have followed a discipline of this kind, without however having sacrificed to it any mediocre literary means, Soupault and I baptized the new mode of pure expression which we had at our disposal and which we wished to pass on to our friends, by the name of SURREALISM. I believe that there is no point today in dwelling any further on this word and that the meaning we gave it initially has generally prevailed over its Apollinarian sense.
* quote on the start of Surrealism together with Soupault, in ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924 ( French poet /writer, leader of Surrealist art movement and famous for his invention of the ‘Surreal’; poetry and novels like Nadja and Mad Love; more biography below)
– Those who might dispute our right to employ the term SURREALISM in the very special sense that we understand it are being extremely dishonest, for there can be no doubt that this word had no currency before we came along. Therefore, I am defining it once and for all: SURREALISM, Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express–verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner–the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.
* artist quote on the practice of Psychic automatism: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton, 1924
– After you have settled yourself in a place as favorable as possible to the concentration of your mind upon itself, have writing materials brought to you. Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of mind as you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone else. Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that lead to everything. Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you’re writing and be tempted to reread what you have written. The first sentence will come spontaneously, so compelling is the truth that with every passing second there is a sentence unknown to our consciousness which is only crying out to be heard.
* quote on advising how to do automatic writing as a part of creating Surrealism art, in: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– It is somewhat of a problem to form an opinion about the next sentence; it doubtless partakes both of our conscious activity and of the other, if one agrees that the fact of having written the first entails a minimum of perception. This should be of no importance to you, however; to a large extent, this is what is most interesting and intriguing about the Surrealist game. The fact still remains that punctuation no doubt resists the absolute continuity of the flow with which we are concerned, although it may seem as necessary as the arrangement of knots in a vibrating cord.
Go on as long as you like. Put your trust in the inexhaustible nature of the murmur. If silence threatens to settle in if you should ever happen to make a mistake — a mistake, perhaps due to carelessness — break off without hesitation with an overly clear line. Following a word the origin of which seems suspicious to you, place any letter whatsoever, the letter “l” for example, always the letter “l,” and bring the arbitrary back by making this letter the first of the following word.
* quote on advising how to do automatic writing as a part of creating Surrealism art: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word Memory begins. Do not forget to make proper arrangements for your last will and testament: speaking personally, I ask that I be taken to the cemetery in a moving van. May my friends destroy every last copy of the printing of the Speech concerning the Modicum of Reality.
* Breton is criticizing reality: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– Language has been given to man so that he may make Surrealist use of it. To the extent that he is required to make himself understood, he manages more or less to express himself, and by so doing to fulfill certain functions culled from among the most vulgar. Speaking, reading a letter, present no real problem for him, provided that, in so doing, he does not set himself a goal above the mean, that is, provided he confines himself to carrying on a conversation (for the pleasure of conversing) with someone. He is not worried about the words that are going to come, nor about the sentence which will follow after the sentence he is just completing.
To a very simple question, he will be capable of making a lightning-like reply. In the absence of minor tics acquired through contact with others, he can without any ado offer an opinion on a limited number of subjects; for that he does not need to “count up to ten” before speaking or to formulate anything whatever ahead of time. Who has been able to convince him that this faculty of the first draft will only do him a disservice when he makes up his mind to establish more delicate relationships? There is no subject about which he should refuse to talk, to write about prolifically. All that results from listening to oneself, from reading what one has written, is the suspension of the occult, that admirable help. I am in no hurry to understand myself (basta! I shall always understand myself).
* source of artist quote on Surrealism: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– The forms of Surrealist language adapt themselves best to dialogue. Here, two thoughts confront each other; while one is being delivered, the other is busy with it; but how is it busy with it? To assume that it incorporates it within itself would be tantamount to admitting that there is a time during which it is possible for it to live completely off that other thought, which is highly unlikely. And, in fact, the attention it pays is completely exterior; it has only time enough to approve or reject — generally reject — with all the consideration of which man is capable.
This mode of language, moreover, does not allow the heart of the matter to be plumbed. My attention, prey to an entreaty which it cannot in all decency reject, treats the opposing thought as an enemy; in ordinary conversation, it ‘takes it up’ almost always on the words, the figures of speech, it employs; it puts me in a position to turn it to good advantage in my reply by distorting them. This is true to such a degree that in certain pathological states of mind, where the sensorial disorders occupy the patient’s complete attention, he limits himself, while continuing to answer the questions, to seizing the last word spoken in his presence or the last portion of the Surrealist sentence some trace of which he finds in his mind.
* artist quote on forms of Surrealist language, from: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– Poetic Surrealism, which is the subject of this study, has focused its efforts up to this point on re-establishing dialogue in its absolute truth, by freeing both interlocutors from any obligations and politeness. Each of them simply pursues his soliloquy without trying to derive any special dialectical pleasure from it and without trying to impose anything whatsoever upon his neighbor. The remarks exchanged are not, as is generally the case, meant to develop some thesis, however unimportant it may be; they are as disaffected as possible. As for the reply that they elicit, it is, in principle, totally indifferent to the personal pride of the person speaking. The words, the images are only so many springboards for the mind of the listener. In ‘Les Champs magnétiques’, the first purely Surrealist work, this is the way in which the pages grouped together under the title ‘Barrières’ must be conceived of — pages wherein Soupault and I show ourselves to be impartial interlocutors.
* artist quote on Poetic Surrealism by Breton, taken from: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– Surrealism does not allow those who devote themselves to it to forsake it whenever they like. There is every reason to believe that it acts on the mind very much as drugs do; like drugs, it creates a certain state of need and can push man to frightful revolts. It also is, if you like, an artificial paradise, and the taste one has for it derives from Baudelaire’s criticism for the same reason as the others. Thus the analysis of the mysterious effects and special pleasures it can produce — in many respects Surrealism occurs as a new vice which does not necessarily seem to be restricted to the happy few; like hashish, it has the ability to satisfy all manner of tastes–such an analysis has to be included in the present study.
* artist quote on Surrealism, from: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton, 1924
– It is true of Surrealist images as it is of opium images that man does not evoke them; rather they ‘come to him spontaneously, despotically. He cannot chase them away; for the will is powerless now and no longer controls the faculties.’ (Charles Baudelaire.)
It remains to be seen whether images have ever been “evoked.” If one accepts, as I do, Reverdy’s definition it does not seem possible to bring together, voluntarily, what he calls “two distant realities.” The juxtaposition is made or not made, and that is the long and the short of it. Personally, I absolutely refuse to believe that, in Reverdy’s work, images such as:
– In the brook, there is a song that flows
or: – Day unfolded like a white tablecloth
or: -The world goes back into a sack
reveal the slightest degree of premeditation. In my opinion, it is erroneous to claim that “the mind has grasped the relationship” of two realities in the presence of each other. First of all, it has seized nothing consciously. It is, as it were, from the fortuitous juxtaposition of the two terms that a particular light has sprung, the light of the image, to which we are infinitely sensitive. The value of the image depends upon the beauty of the spark obtained; it is, consequently, a function of the difference of potential between the two conductors. … …We are therefore obliged to admit that the two terms of the image are not deduced one from the other by the mind for the specific purpose of producing the spark, that they are the simultaneous products of the activity I call Surrealist, reason’s role being limited to taking note of, and appreciating, the luminous phenomenon.
* Andre Breton, quote on the image and its simultaneous aspects, in: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton,
– And just as the length of the spark increases to the extent that it occurs in rarefied gases, the Surrealist atmosphere created by automatic writing, which I have wanted to put within the reach of everyone, is especially conducive to the production of the most beautiful images. One can even go so far as to say that in this dizzying race the images appear like the only guideposts of the mind. By slow degrees the mind becomes convinced of the supreme reality of these images. At first limiting itself to submitting to them, it soon realizes that they flatter its reason, and increase its knowledge accordingly. The mind becomes aware of the limitless expanses wherein its desires are made manifest, where the pros and cons are constantly consumed, where its obscurity does not betray it. It goes forward, borne by these images which enrapture it, which scarcely leave it any time to blow upon the fire in its fingers. This is the most beautiful night of all, the lightning-filled night: day, compared to it, is night.
* artist quote on the ‘lightning-filled night’ in Surrealism: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– The countless kinds of Surrealist images would require a classification which I do not intend to make today… … what I basically want to mention is their common virtue. For me, their greatest virtue, I must confess, is the one that is arbitrary to the highest degree, the one that takes the longest time to translate into practical language, either because it contains an immense amount of seeming contradiction or because one of its terms is strangely concealed; or because, presenting itself as something sensational, it seems to end weakly (because it suddenly closes the angle of its compass), or because it derives from itself a ridiculous formal justification, or because it is of a hallucinatory kind, or because it very naturally gives to the abstract the mask of the concrete, or the opposite, or because it implies the negation of some elementary physical property, or because it provokes laughter. Here, in order, are a few examples of it:
– The ruby of champagne. (LAUTRÉAMONT)
– Beautiful as the law of arrested development of the breast in adults, whose propensity to growth is not in proportion to the quantity of molecules that their organism assimilates.(LAUTRÉAMONT)
– A church stood dazzling as a bell. (PHILIPPE SOUPAULT)
* artist quotes on some Surrealist images of LAUTRÉAMONT and Soupault, from: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– The mind which plunges into Surrealism relives with glowing excitement the best part of its childhood. For such a mind, it is similar to the certainty with which a person who is drowning reviews once more, in the space of less than a second, all the insurmountable moments of his life. Some may say to me that the parallel is not very encouraging. But I have no intention of encouraging those who tell me that. From childhood memories, and from a few others, there emanates a sentiment of being unintegrated, and then later of having gone astray, which I hold to be the most fertile that exists. It is perhaps childhood that comes closest to one’s “real life”; childhood beyond which man has at his disposal, aside from his laissez-passer, only a few complimentary tickets; childhood where everything nevertheless conspires to bring about the effective, risk-free possession of oneself. Thanks to Surrealism, it seems that opportunity knocks a second time.
* quote on the mind in childhood: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– It is as though we were still running toward our salvation, or our perdition. In the shadow we again see a precious terror. Thank God, it’s still only Purgatory. With a shudder, we cross what the occultists call dangerous territory. In my wake I raise up monsters that are lying in wait; they are not yet too ill -disposed toward me, and I am not lost, since I fear them. Here are ‘the elephants with the heads of women and the flying lions’ which used to make Soupault and me tremble in our boots to meet, here is the ‘soluble fish’ which still frightens me slightly. POISSON SOLUBLE, am I not the soluble fish, I was born under the sign of Pisces, and man is soluble in his thought! The flora and fauna of Surrealism are inadmissible.
* Breton’s quote on images in Surrealism: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– Surrealist methods would, moreover, demand to be heard. Everything is valid when it comes to obtaining the desired suddenness from certain associations. The pieces of paper that Picasso and Braque insert into their work have the same value as the introduction of a platitude into a literary analysis of the most rigorous sort. It is even permissible to entitle POEM what we get from the most random assemblage possible (observe, if you will, the syntax) of headlines and scraps of headlines cut out of the newspapers:
* Breton, quote on Surrealist methods, in: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton, 1924
– POEM – A burst of laughter – of sapphire in the island of Ceylon – The most beautiful straws -HAVE A FADED COLOR – UNDER THE LOCKS – on an isolated farm – FROM DAY TO DAY – the pleasant- grows worse – coffee – preaches for its saint – THE DAILY ARTISAN OF YOUR BEAUTY – MADAM – of silk stockings – is not – A leap into space – A STAG -Love above all (etc…,fh)
* artist quote. Practicing the surrealist method: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– … I would like to know how the first punishable offenses, the Surrealist character of which will be clearly apparent, will be judged. Will the accused be acquitted, or will he merely be given the benefit of the doubt because of extenuating circumstances? It’s a shame that the violation of the laws governing the Press is today scarcely repressed, for if it were not we would soon see a trial of this sort: the accused has published a book which is an outrage to public decency. Several of his “most respected and honorable” fellow citizens have lodged a complaint against him, and he is also charged with slander and libel. There are also all sorts of other charges against him, such as insulting and defaming the army, inciting to murder, rape, etc. The accused, moreover, wastes no time in agreeing with the accusers in “stigmatizing” most of the ideas expressed. His only defence is claiming that he does not consider himself to be the author of his book, said book being no more and no less than a Surrealist concoction which precludes any question of merit or lack of merit on the part of the person who signs it; further, that all he has done is copy a document without offering any opinion thereon, and that he is at least as foreign to the accused text as is the presiding judge himself.
* artist quote on reactions against Surrealism: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– What is true for the publication of a book will also hold true for a whole host of other acts as soon as Surrealist methods begin to enjoy widespread favor. When that happens, a new morality must be substituted for the prevailing morality, the source of all our trials and tribulations. — I have intimated it often enough — are the applications of Surrealism to action. To be sure, I do not believe in the prophetic nature of the Surrealist word. ‘It is the oracle, the things I say.’ (Rimbaud.) Yes, as much as I like, but what of the oracle itself? (Still, STILL…. We must absolutely get to the bottom of this. Today, June 8, 1924, about one o’clock, the voice whispered to me: “Béthune, Béthune.” What did it mean?
I have never been to Béthune, and have only the vaguest notion as to where it is located on the map of France. Béthune evokes nothing for me, not even a scene from The Three Musketeers. I should have left for Béthune, where perhaps there was something awaiting me; that would have been to simple, really. Someone told me they had read in a book by Chesterton about a detective who, in order to find someone he is looking for in a certain city, simply scoured from roof to cellar the houses which, from the outside, seemed somehow abnormal to him, were it only in some slight detail. This system is as good as any other.
* quote on the meaning of a word and the surrealist method: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– Surrealism, such as I conceive of it, asserts our complete nonconformism clearly enough so that there can be no question of translating it, at the trial of the real world, as evidence for the defense. It could, on the contrary, only serve to justify the complete state of distraction which we hope to achieve here below. Kants absentmindedness regarding women, Pasteurs absentmindedness about “grapes,” Curies absentmindedness with respect to vehicles, are in this regard profoundly symptomatic. This world is only very relatively in tune with thought, and incidents of this kind are only the most obvious episodes of a war in which I am proud to be participating.
‘Ce monde nest que très relativement à la mesure de la pensée et les incidents de ce genre ne sont que les épisodes jusquici les plus marquants dune guerre dindépendence à laquelle je me fais gloire de participer.’ Surrealism is the ‘invisible ray’ which will one day enable us to win out over our opponents. ‘You are no longer trembling, carcass.’ This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.
* artist quote on Surrealism and absentmindedness: last line of the ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton
– Pure psychic automatism, by which one seeks to express, be it verbally, in writing, or in any other manner, (is) the real working of the mind. Dictated by the unconsciousness, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, and free from aesthetic or moral preoccupations.
* André Breton on automatic writing in Surrealism: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, André Breton, Paris, Editions KRA, 1929 ( French poet /writer, leader of Surrealist art movement and famous for his invention of the ‘Surreal’ & automatic writing; novels like Nadja and Mad Love; more biography below)
– Have someone bring you writing materials after getting settled in a place as favourable as possible to your mind’s concentration on itself. Put yourself in the most passive, or receptive, state you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and those of everyone else.. tell yourself that literature is the saddest path that leads to everything. Write quickly, without a preconceived subject, fast enough not to remember and not to be tempted to read over what you have written.
* artist quote and advice on practicing automatic: ‘Manifesto du Surréalisme’, Andre Breton, 1924
– Divine Dali!
* André Breton, admiring Salvador Dali: the prologue of “The Diary of a Genius”’, Salvador Dali, London Pan Books, 1976, 1980 p. 35
– As we liked to do as children, extracting from the soft forest floor the light chestnut trees only a few centimetres high at the base of which the chestnut continues to shine to the sun its clods of soil from the past, the chestnut conserving all of its presence and witnessing with its presence the power of green hands, of shadow, of airy white or pink pyramids of dances… and of future chestnuts which, under new dust, would be discovered by the marvelled sight of other children. It is in this perspective that the work of Arp, more than any other, should be situated. He found the most vital in himself in the secrets of this germinating life where the most minimal detail is of the greatest importance, where, on the other hand, the distinction between the elements becomes meaningless, adopting a peculiar under the rock humor permanently
* quote on the art of Hans Arp, by the founder of Surrealism: ‘Anthologie de l’humour noir’, Andre Breton; as quoted in “Arp”, ed. Serge Fauchereau, Ediciones Poligrafa S. A., Barcelona, Spain, 1988
– Under his (Marc Chagall, fh) sole impulse metaphor made its triumphal entry into modern painting.
* Ande Breton, artist quote on the art of the painter Chagall: “ Chagall – a biography”, Jackie Wullschlagger, Knopf, Publisher, New York 2008, text from inside-cover
– I say that the eye is not open when it is limited to the passive role of a mirror – even if the water of that mirror offers some interesting peculiarities… …that eye impresses me as no less dead than the eye of a slaughtered steer if it has only the capacity to reflect – what if it reflects the object in one or in many aspects, in repose or in motion, in waking or in dream? The treasure of the eye is elsewhere! Most artists are still for tuning around the hands of the clock… …without having the slightest concern for the spring hidden in the opaque case. The eye-spring… …Arshile Gorky – for me the first painter to whom the secret have been completely revealed.
* André Breton admired the art of painter Gorky in his American period: ‘Introduction to the exhibition of Gorky’s first show’ at Julien Levy Gallery, March 1945 ; as quoted in “Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof”, ed. by Matthew Spender, Ridinghouse, London, 2009, pp. 257-258
– Truly the eye was… …made to cast a lineament, a conducting wire between the most heterogeneous things. Such a wire, of maximum ductility, should allow us to understand, in a minimum of time, the relationship which connect, without possible discharge of continuity, innumerable physical and mental structures… …the key (of the mental prison, fh) lies in a free unlimited pay of analogies… …one can admire today a canvas signed by Gorky, “The liver is the Cock’s Comb”, which should be considered the great open door to the analogy world.
* André Breton’s comment on the art of Arshile Gorky: ‘Introduction to the exhibition of Gorky’s first show’ at Julien Levy Gallery’, March 1945 ; as quoted in “Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof”, ed. by Matthew Spender, Ridinghouse, London, 2009, p. 258
– In short it is my concern to emphasize that Gorky is, of all the surrealist artists, the only one who maintains direct contact with nature – sit down to paint before her. Furthermore, it is out of the question that he would take the expression of this nature as an end in itself – rightly he demands of her that she provide sensations that can serve as springboards for both knowledge and pleasure in fathoming certain profound states of mind…. …Here for the first time nature is treated as a cryptogram. The artist has a code by reason of his own sensitive anterior impressions, and can decode nature to reveal the very rhythm of life, in the discovery of the very rhythm of life.
* André Breton’s comment on the art of Arshile Gorky: ‘Introduction to the exhibition of Gorky’s first show’ at Julien Levy Gallery, March 1945 ; as quoted in “Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof”, ed. by Matthew Spender, Ridinghouse, London, 2009, p. 258
biography of the French poet Andre Breton, founder of Surrealism
André Breton was born in Normandy France. In World War 1 he was active as a psychiatric ward which resulted in both traumatic and informative experiences. In 1919, together with Aragon and Soupoult he founded ‘Litérature’ and he started contact with the Swiss Dada movement lead by Tzara. In 1924 Breton published his first ‘Surrealist Manifesto’ and founded later the magazine La ‘Révolution Surréaliste’. He is the inventor of the surreal and of the Surrealist method: automatic writing, drawing and painting, with its huge impact on later modern art like in abstract Expressionism.
Breton arrived as many other famous European artists in New York in 1941; Peggy Guggenheim offered him a monthly grant. From 1942 he worked as a reader for French radio broadcasts. He didn’t speak English very well, so his influence in the New York art scene was limited. He organized a lot of art shows in New York and contributed articles on surrealism. He was connected with William Baziotes and admired the art of Arshile Gorky a lot. He studied Native American artifacts, together with the famous French anthropologist Levi Strauss, and wrote in 1944 his long prose poem ‘Arcane 17’.
Later in his life, in 1946, Breton returned to France but soon he found difficulties with the disciplined French communist party. He remained in Paris an became an admired but somewhat marginal figure till in the 1960’s he found his way back as a ‘grand old man’ with the rediscovered ‘surrealist’ happenings of the mid 1960’s… .
links for more biography facts about Andre Breton – poet and writer of the Surrealist Manifesto
* biography facts about life and creating poetry in Surrealism, on Wikipedia
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