Editor-in-chief | E. L. T. Mesens |
---|---|
Categories | Arts magazine |
Frequency | Monthly |
Publisher |
|
Founder | London Gallery |
Founded | 1938 |
First issue | April 1938 |
Final issue Number | June 1940 18–20 |
Country | United Kingdom |
Based in | London |
Language | English |
OCLC | 7419596 |
London Bulletin was a monthly avant-garde art magazine which was affiliated with the London Gallery between April 1938 and June 1940. It was one of the most significant surrealist publications.
The plans to launch the magazine began following the international surrealist exhibition in London in 1936. [1] The magazine was first published in April 1938 with the title London Gallery Bulletin. [1] [2] It was renamed as London Bulletin from the second issue. [2] It came out monthly, [3] and its publisher was the Arno Press based in London. [4] Later the Bradley Press became its publisher. [3] The magazine was financed by Roland Penrose. [5]
London Bulletin regularly published the pamphlets of the exhibitions presented at the London Gallery. [3] [6] It frequently featured reproductions of surrealist paintings and poems of the surrealists. [7] The manifesto of an Egyptian anarchist post-surrealist group, Art et Liberté (Art and Freedom), was published in the magazine in English in 1938. [8] The group members were Anwar Kamel, Ramses Younan and Kamel el-Telmissany who would launch a magazine, Al Tatawwur , in Cairo in 1940. [9] In the document entitled "Long Live Degenerate Art!" they objected to the Nazis' views on "degenerate art" and the Marxists' notion "that modern society looks with aversion on any innovative creation in art and literature which threatens the cultural system on which that society is based, whether it be from the point of view of thought or of meaning." [8] London Bulletin folded before World War II, [10] and its last issue, numbered 18–20, appeared in June 1940. [1] [5] The same year the London Gallery was also closed. [5]
London Gallery News, a small newspaper, was the successor of London Bulletin. [3]
E. L. T. Mesens was the editor-in-chief. [5] Humphrey Jennings contributed to the first two issues of the magazine and then began to work with Gordon Onslow Ford as an assistant editor to Mesens. [1] [3] Roland Penrose served as the assistant editor from issue 8/9 published in January 1939 and was replaced by George Reavey from issue 11 dated March 1939. [3]
Major contributors of London Bulletin included Herbert Read, Samuel Beckett, Eileen Agar, John Banting, Conroy Maddox, the French Paul Éluard, André Breton, and Francis Picabia, as well as Belgian surrealist writer Marcel Mariën. [11] Pictures by photographer Lee Miller appeared in several issues. [12]
Surrealism is an art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike scenes and ideas. Its intention was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or surreality. It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media as well.
The British Surrealist Group was involved in the organisation of the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936.
Ithell Colquhoun was a British painter, occultist, poet and author. Stylistically her artwork was affiliated with surrealism. In the late 1930s, Colquhoun was part of the British Surrealist Group before being expelled because she refused to renounce her association with occult groups.
Paul Nougé was a Belgian poet, founder and theoretician of surrealism in Belgium, sometimes known as the "Belgian Breton".
Sir Roland Algernon Penrose was an English artist, historian and poet. He was a major promoter and collector of modern art and an associate of the surrealists in the United Kingdom. During the Second World War he put his artistic skills to practical use as a teacher of camouflage.
Mary Leonora Carrington was a British-born, naturalized Mexican surrealist painter and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City and was one of the last surviving participants in the surrealist movement of the 1930s. Carrington was also a founding member of the women's liberation movement in Mexico during the 1970s.
Édouard Léon Théodore Mesens was a Belgian artist and writer associated with the Belgian Surrealist movement.
Emma Frith Bridgwater, known as Emmy Bridgwater, was an English artist and poet associated with the Surrealist movement.
The Elephant Celebes is a 1921 painting by the German Dadaist and surrealist Max Ernst. It is among the most famous of Ernst's early surrealist works and "undoubtedly the first masterpiece of Surrealist painting in the de Chirico tradition." It combines the vivid dreamlike atmosphere of Surrealism with the collage aspects of Dada.
The Birmingham Surrealists were an informal grouping of artists and intellectuals associated with the Surrealist movement in art, based in Birmingham, England from the 1930s to the 1950s.
John William Melville was a self-taught British Surrealist painter. He is described by Michel Remy in his book Surrealism in Britain as one of the "harbingers of surrealism" in Great Britain.
Silvano Levy is an academic specializing in surrealism. He has published on Belgian surrealism with studies on René Magritte, E.L.T. Mesens and Paul Nougé. His research on The Surrealist Group in England began with a film on Conroy Maddox and the book Conroy Maddox: Surreal Enigmas (1995), while a wider interest in the movement led to the editorship of Surrealism: Surrealist Visuality (1997). Levy has curated national touring exhibitions of the work of Maddox and Desmond Morris, and has published a monograph on the latter entitled Desmond Morris: 50 Years of Surrealism (1997), which was followed by the enlarged re-edition Desmond Morris: Naked Surrealism (1999). Subsequent books on Morris include Lines of Thought: The Drawings of Desmond Morris (2008) and three volumes of an analytical catalogue raisonné spanning eight decades. Silvano Levy's monograph on Maddox, The Scandalous Eye. The Surrealism of Conroy Maddox, was published by Liverpool University Press in 2003. The year 2015 saw the publication of Decoding Magritte. Further studies cover Sheila Legge, Dalla Husband, Toni del Renzio, André Breton, Dina Lenković, Jean-Martin Charcot, Mary Wykeham and Birmingham surrealism. Dr Levy is editor of Surrealist Bulletin and has held academic posts at the University of Liverpool, Newcastle Polytechnic, the University of Bath, the University of Hull and Keele University, where he was promoted to Senior Lecturer in French in 1998 and then to Reader in 2005.
Women Surrealists are women artists, photographers, filmmakers and authors connected with the surrealist movement, which began in the early 1920s.
Georges Henein (1914–1973) was an Egyptian poet and author. He was a founding member of the Cairo-based, surrealist Art and Liberty Group which brought together artists, writers and various intellectuals of different backgrounds and national origins under the shared cause of anti-fascist activism. The group was active from 1938 up until the late 1940s.
The Adulation of Space is a painting in oil on canvas, 81 × 116 cm, created between 1927–28 by Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte. It is held in a private collection.
Sheila Legge was a Surrealist performance artist. Legge is best known for her 1936 Trafalgar Square performance for the opening of London International Surrealist Exhibition, posing in a costume inspired by a Salvador Dalí painting, with her head completely obscured by a flower arrangement.
Gabrielle Muriel Keiller was a Scottish golfer, art collector, archaeological photographer and heir to Keiller's marmalade in Dundee. She bequested a large collection of Dada and Surrealist art to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
Groupe Art et Liberté was an Egyptian artistic and political movement active from 1938 to 1948, about the time of the Second World War. Among the founders was the Surrealist poet Georges Henein; the group was based mostly but not exclusively on Surrealism.
Don Quichotte was a weekly Communist publication which existed between 1939 and 1940 in Cairo, Egypt. The title, which was given by Henri Curiel, a cofounder, was a reference to Gabriel Alomar, a Catalan poet and writer.
Al Tatawwur was an Arabic language literary and cultural magazine published in Egypt in the period January–July 1940. It was the first avant-garde, surrealist and Marxist-libertarian publication in the Arab world.