Surrealists - 1974 - The Surrealist Revolution in France

The Surrealist Revolution in France

Herbert S. Gershman

University of Michigan Press

1974

253 pages

This book is a survey of Surrealism in France that places a particular emphasis on defacto group-leader Andre Breton and his immediate circle (Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, etc) - in other words, the official members of the Surrealist group. Gershman writes in a dense poetic prose that may sometimes confound the reader although it makes his book a far less dry piece of academic writing than most treatments on Breton’s group.

The author looks to the Surrealists for their inspirations, leading him to discuss love, or mad love (amour fou), more than the Freudian theory that unquestionably had a role in the Surrealist emergence out of Dada. Gershman is priviledging the poetic aspect of Surrealism over even a basic discussion of their theoretical inspirations.  Love, of course, has to be the most widespread inspiration for poetry in history, and its difficult, as a reader, to accept that a movement such as the Surrealists, new in the twentieth century, were driven only by love and dreams. So were the New Kids on the Block.  

Gersham’s book is strong but it’s directed by concerns with the poetic rather than the aesthetic. it’s longest chapter is the chapter on surrealist poetry and literature, which is clearly Gershman’s chief interest with the movement while painting, the best known component of the Surrealist work, is much shorter and often focuses on the artist’s relationship to the writings of Surrealist poets.

Probably the best chapter of the book is the second last, Surrealism and Politics, which describes in detail Surrealism’s attempt to balance its own artistic worldview and its notions of revolution through realizing desire, with that of Moscow directed Communist orthodoxy.  

ku klux klan - book - 1992 - The Invisible Empire in the West: Towards a New Historical Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s

The Invisible Empire in the West: Towards a New Historical Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s

Shawn Lay (ed.)

University of Illinois Press

1992, 2004

248 pages

The Invisible Empire in the West is a collection of essays on the presence and activities of the Ku Klux Klan in a number of then small cities in the Western United States. There are a total of seven essays and six are focused on specific urban centres: Denver, El Paso, Salt Lake City, Anaheim, Eugene, and La Grande. Each of these essays focuses on the specific details of each localized Klan unit, and the challenges that the social composition of each of these cities presented to the Klan in those regions.  

This volume is edited by Shawn Lay, a professor of history and current chair of the Department of History, Philosophy and Religion at Coker College in Hartsville, South Carolina. Lay has written a number of books on Klan history and it appears as though this may be the domain of his expertise.  Many of the contributors to his collection also appear to be Klan historians, and this book may represent the efforts of a particular generation of KKK experts (Lay, in his conclusion to The Invisible Empire, uses the phrase “klan studies”) to impose a radical new historical vision of the once national, ultra-conservative organization.  In the introduction and the conclusion, Lay discusses how recent research into the Klan during the early 1920s (when the Klan was modeled after fraternal groups such as the Lions Club) has revealed the organization to be, at that time, primarily urban and middle class in its cultural situation and composition, and that it was not necessarily focused on preserving privilege for white Americans.  

Lay insists that the view this book presents of the KKK is radically different from the representation produced by earlier Klan historians such as David Mark Chalmers (in his book Hooded Americanism) or Wyn Craig Wade (via his book The Fiery Cross). Lay’s arguments rest on the fact that these earlier historians constructed the Klan as a phenomenon that arose out of rural backwardness.  The historical representation of the Klan as constructed by Lay and company is certainly radically different from that of earlier histories, however I prefer when a historian is also willing to account for the previous, in his or her eyes inadequate or inaccurate, interpretation of a historical phenomena.  Lay simply points out that Wade, Chalmers, and a selection of other Klan historians, simply failed to properly apprehend the KKK of the early 1920s.  

While many of the essays are quite interesting in their investigations of the Klan in various regional contexts (including, for example, an essay about the tensions of a predominantly and militantly protestant KKK recruiting in the almost entirely Mormon Salt Lake City, Utah), Lay’s own assertions about this new vision of the Klan is not really supported by his fellow “Klan Studies” academics.  In his conclusion, Lay argues that this book has shown the Klan of the 1920s to not have been overtly bigoted or violent.  Certainly, the Klan held many prejudices, not just their world famous disdain for blacks, and Lay’s book shows that they were also opposed to Catholics and Jews. The essays in The Invisible Empire in the West, recant numerous instances of local Klaverns (the KKK name for a regional chapter of the organization) expressing their not-so-positive opinions on these other, non-black, socio-cultural groups. Perhaps the specific regional contexts spotlighted by the authors of these essays gave more opportunity to the Klaverns that formed there to target Catholics with their bigotry than they did for other groups. Furthermore, while physical violence may have been rare, the essays include a fair number of accounts of the Klan using intimidating and threatening language against their targets in their crusade to maintain a social order that privileged white protestant Americans.

avant-garde - book - 1985 - The Dada & Surrealist Word Image

The Dada & Surrealist Word Image
Judi Freedman & John C. Welchman
The MIT Press
1989
141 pages

The Dada & Surrealist Word Image is a hardcover catalogue for a travelling exhibition of Dada and Surrealist works of art.  The exhibition’s first location was the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where it was shown from June 15-August 27, 1989 before being transported to other locations around the United States and Europe.  

I think that the title of the catalogue makes its content, and the theme of the exhibition, quite clear.  Play with language featured prominently in the programs of the Dada and Surrealist movements who sought to unlock the liberatory potential of nonsense and incongruity in written and visual creative work.  The Dadaists focus on language is driven by a desire for nonsense and a will to break down the structures of control that edify culture.  The ‘word salad’, jumbles of words juxtaposed with jumbles of images, often in the photomontage, became the primary Dadaist mode of representing language in visual art.  Raoul Hausmann was a particularly strong proponent of this kind of work.

Raoul Hausmann - Elasticum (1920) 

More specific to this catalogue however, are detailed analyses of two of the most famous word/image works of these two movements.  Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q., from 1919:

Marcel Duchamp - L.H.O.O.Q. (1919)

a postcard reproduction of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa featuring a hand-drawn moustache and goatee over the famous portrait, and the letters LHOOQ written at the bottom, which, when pronounced out loud in French, are meant to sound as: "Elle a chaud au cul" which translates to English as, "She has a hot ass."  Duchamp was intentionally bringing bathroom stall humour to the eminent High Renaissance portrait.  

The other work of great importance to this exhibition was The Treachery of Images, the famous “this is not a pipe” painting of 1928 by the Belgian Surrealist Rene Magritte (side note: Magritte is heavily represented in this text!).  This is the work that inspired Michel Foucault to investigate relationships between written language and its visual referrents, and is perennially used as a background or an introductory image to semiotic lectures and academic discussions on representation and reality.

Rene Magritte - The Treachery of Images (1928)

While the written component of this catalogue focuses on these particular works of art, or on the overarching concepts and strategies that these movements were working with, the actual catalogue component shows a variety of images from a wide swath of the Dada/Surrealism ranks.  Max Ernst, Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters, Raoul Hausmann, Jean Crotti, Francis Picabia, and many more are represented.  There are also a number of works by figures such as Jean Cocteau, who were only tangentially connected to Surrealism, but whose visual works bear the influence of that movement’s ideas.  All of the images are in black and white, which isn’t so bad, since many of the works are drawings.  Also, the catalogue includes an interesting essay about Joan Miro and Magritte and critical theory (mostly Julia Kristeva’s) by University of California, San Diego professor John C. Welchman.