Patrick Waldberg (1913-1985) was a Franco-American art critic known for his profiles of Surrealist artists.
Born in Santa Monica, California, Waldberg moved to Paris as a child with his family. In 1932, and while still a student (age 19), he joined Boris Souvarine's Democratic Communist Circle. There he met Georges Bataille and his friends Michel Leiris and André Masson, and was initiated by them into a wild night life. Waldberg would chronicle those years in his novel La Clé de cendre (The key made of ashes), published posthumously in 1999. [1]
1937 saw him back in California to take care of "family matters". However, a letter from Georges Bataille reached him there, urging him to return to Paris in order to take part in a Nietzschean secret society Bataille was then forming, called Acéphale ("headless"). Waldberg heeded the call in September 1938, and he says this permanently changed his life. From 1938 to 1940 Waldberg would serve as the secretary of Bataille's "official" group, the College of Sacred Sociology. [2]
In the winter of 1939, Waldberg was invited by Georges Bataille to move in with him to his house in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a suburb of Paris. [2]
In the fall of that year he joined the French army to help repel the German invasion. In March 1940, Isabelle Farner gave birth to his son Michel Waldberg . After the French defeat Patrick and Isabelle fled to the USA where they took up residence in New York. In 1941 Patrick became a founder of the "Voice of America" radio broadcasts. It seems it was he who then attracted André Breton to also become an announcer on Voice of America.In 1942 Waldberg quit Voice of America to join the US army intelligence service, taking part in the African campaign and then the Normandy invasion. During this time Isabelle stayed in New York. [3] [4]
In 1959 he left Paris to move to the French village of Seillans, where his second wife Line Jubelin was from. Max Ernst and his own second wife Dorothea Tanning joined him there. Their houses are now a Max Ernst museum and a Maison Waldberg museum. In 1964 Waldberg organized a major Surrealist exhibit at Gallerie Charpentier. André Breton took umbrage at this however, due to Waldberg's defection in 1951. Breton and his group printed a declaration condemning the show, ""Face aux liquidateurs", and then a subsequent pamphlet, "Cramponnez-vous à la table (Petite Suite surréaliste à l'affaire du Bazar Charpentier)". [3] [4]
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim 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.
Raymond Queneau was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor and co-founder and president of Oulipo, notable for his wit and cynical humour.
André Robert Breton was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism".
André-Aimé-René Masson was a French artist.
Robert Desnos was a French poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement.
The Surrealist Manifestos refer to several publications by Yvan Goll and André Breton, leaders of rival Surrealist groups. Goll and Breton both published manifestos in October 1924 titled Manifeste du surréalisme. Breton wrote his second manifesto for the Surrealists in 1929, and later wrote his third manifesto in 1942.
La Révolution surréaliste was a publication by the Surrealists in Paris. Twelve issues were published between 1924 and 1929.
Julien Michel Leiris was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer. Part of the Surrealist group in Paris, Leiris became a key member of the College of Sociology with Georges Bataille and head of research in ethnography at the CNRS.
Minotaure was a Surrealist-oriented magazine founded by Albert Skira and E. Tériade in Paris and published between 1933 and 1939. Minotaure published on the plastic arts, poetry, and literature, avant garde, as well as articles on esoteric and unusual aspects of literary and art history. Also included were psychoanalytical studies and artistic aspects of anthropology and ethnography. It was a lavish and extravagant magazine by the standards of the 1930s, profusely illustrated with high quality reproductions of art, often in color.
Documents was a Surrealist art magazine edited by Georges Bataille. Published in Paris from 1929 through 1930, it ran for 15 issues, each of which contained a wide range of original writing and photographs.
Charles Duits (1925–1991) was a French writer of the fantastique.
Georges Alexandre Malkine was the only visual artist named in André Breton's 1924 Surrealist Manifesto among those who, at the time of its publication, had “performed acts of absolute surrealism." The rest Breton named were for the most part writers, including Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos, and Benjamin Peret. Malkine's 1926 painting Nuit D'amour was the precursor of the lyrical abstract school of painting.
Georges Limbour was a French writer, poet and art critic, and a regent of the Collège de 'Pataphysique.
Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution was a periodical issued by the Surrealist Group in Paris between 1930 and 1933. It was the successor of La Révolution surréaliste and preceded the primarily surrealist publication Minotaure.
Acéphale is the name of a public review created by Georges Bataille and a secret society formed by Bataille and others who had sworn to keep silent. Its name is derived from the Greek ἀκέφαλος.
Émile Savitry (1903–1967) was a French photographer and painter.
Isabelle Waldberg, néeIsabelle Margaretha Maria Farner (1911–1990) was a French-Swiss sculptor associated with surrealism.
Michel Surya is a French writer, philosopher and publisher. A specialist of Georges Bataille, he is the founder and director of the journal Lignes and the Éditions Lignes.
Robert Lebel was a French art historian, specializing in modern French art. He was also an essayist, poet, novelist, and art collector, He wrote the first fundamental essay on Marcel Duchamp and remained close to the artists and poets of Surrealism. For example, Lebel was the friend and advisor of André Breton and close to Max Ernst, Jacques Lacan, André Masson and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Pierre de Massot was a French writer associated with the Dada and surrealist movements.