VVV was a magazine devoted to the dissemination of Surrealism published in New York City from 1942 through 1944. [1] It was the product of leading Surrealists.
VVV was first published in June 1942. [2] The magazine was published and edited by David Hare [3] in collaboration with Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, and Max Ernst. VVV's editorial board also enlisted a number of associated thinkers and artists, including Aimé Césaire, Philip Lamantia, and Robert Motherwell. Each edition focused on "poetry, plastic arts, anthropology, sociology, (and) psychology," and was lavishly illustrated by Surrealist artists, including Giorgio de Chirico, Roberto Matta and Yves Tanguy.
The magazine was experimental in format and in content. VVV included fold-out pages, sheets of different sizes and paper stock, and bold typography and color. The second magazine (which included issues two and three) featured a "readymade" by Duchamp as the back cover which was a cutout female figure "imprisoned" by a piece of actual chicken wire.
Only four issues of VVV were published (the second and third issues were printed as a single volume). The last one was published in February 1944. [2] However, it provided an outlet for European Surrealist artists, who were displaced from their home countries by World War II, to communicate with American artists.
Surrealism was a cultural movement which developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I and was largely influenced by Dada. The movement is best known for its visual artworks and writings and the juxtaposition of distant realities to activate the unconscious mind through the imagery. Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes, sometimes with photographic precision, creating strange creatures from everyday objects, and developing painting techniques that allowed the unconscious 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.
André Robert Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the co-founder, leader, principal theorist and chief apologist of surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism".
Penelope Rosemont a visual artist, writer, publisher, and social activist attended Lake Forest College. She has been a participant in the Surrealist group founded by Andre Breton since 1965. With Franklin Rosemont, Bernard Marszalek, Robert Green and Tor Faegre, she established the Chicago Surrealist Group in 1966. She was in 1964-1966 a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), commonly known as the Wobblies, and was part of the national staff of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1967-68. Her influences include Andre Breton and Guy Debord of the Situationist International, Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons.
Four Surrealist Manifestos are known to exist. The first two manifestos, published in October 1924, were written by Yvan Goll and André Breton, the leaders of rivaling Surrealist groups. Breton published his second manifesto for the Surrealists in 1929, and wrote his third manifesto that was not issued during his lifetime.
Wolfgang Robert Paalen was an Austrian-Mexican painter, sculptor, and art philosopher. A member of the Abstraction-Création group from 1934 to 1935, he joined the influential Surrealist movement in 1935 and was one of its prominent exponents until 1942. Whilst in exile in Mexico, he founded his own counter-surrealist art-magazine DYN, in which he summarized his critical attitude towards radical subjectivism and Freudo-Marxism in Surrealism with his philosophy of contingency. He rejoined the group between 1951 and 1954, during his sojourn in Paris.
Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion is an extremely sporadically appearing surrealist magazine published in Chicago and edited by Franklin Rosemont, though The Beat Page claims Philip Lamantia was a "contributing editor". The first issue of the magazine was published in October 1970. Four issues have appeared, the second in 1973, the third in 1976 and the fourth and most recent in 1989. The publisher of the first three issues was Black Swan Press.
La Révolution surréaliste was a publication by the Surrealists in Paris. Twelve issues were published between 1924 and 1929.
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.
Jacques Baron (1905–1986) was a French surrealist poet whose first collection of poems was published in Aventure in 1921. Although he was initially involved with the Dada movement, he became a founding member of the Surrealist movement following his meeting with André Breton in 1921, and contributed to La Révolution surréaliste. In 1927, like many of his contemporaries, Baron joined the Cercle Communiste Démocratique. Although fascinated by dream-like states of the nomadic unconscious and other imaginary worlds of the "marvelous", a dispute with Breton in 1929 got him expelled from the movement, and prompted him to contribute to Un Cadavre, an anti-Breton pamphlet. After the break with Surrealism, Baron became associated with Georges Bataille and Documents, in which he published a short essay on "Crustaceans for the Critical Dictionary", an article on the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, and a poem dedicated to Picasso, "Flames". He later collaborated on a number of reviews such as Le Voyage en Grèce, La Critique Sociale and Minotaure. Baron also wrote a novel, Charbon de mer (1935), a mémoire, L’An 1 du Surréalisme (1969), and a collection of poems, L’Allure poétique (1973).
Roger Vitrac was a French surrealist playwright and poet.
View was an American literary and art magazine published from 1940 to 1947 by artist and writer Charles Henri Ford, and writer and film critic Parker Tyler. The magazine is best known for introducing Surrealism to the American public. The magazine was headquartered in New York City.
Arturo Umberto Samuele Schwarz is an Italian scholar, art historian, poet, writer, lecturer, art consultant and curator of international art exhibitions. He lives in Milan, where he has amassed a large collection of Dada and Surrealist art, including many works by personal friends such as Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, Man Ray, and Jean Arp.
DYN was an art magazine founded by the Austrian-Mexican Surrealist Wolfgang Paalen, published in Mexico City, and distributed in New York City, Paris, and London between 1942 and 1944. Only six issues were produced.
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.
The Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme was an exhibition by surrealist artists that took place from January 17 to February 24, 1938, in the generously equipped Galérie Beaux-Arts, run by Georges Wildenstein, at 140, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. It was organised by the French writer André Breton, the surrealists' brain and theorist, and Paul Éluard, the best known poet of the movement. The catalogue listed, along with the above, Marcel Duchamp as generator and arbitrator, Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst as technical advisers, Man Ray as head lighting technician and Wolfgang Paalen as responsible for the design the entrance and main hall with "water and foliage". The exhibition was staged in three sections, showing paintings and objects as well as unusually decorated rooms and mannequins which had been redesigned in various ways. With this holistic presentation of surrealist art work the movement wrote exhibition history.
Marko Ristić was a Serbian surrealist poet, writer, publicist and ambassador.
Maria Martins was a Brazilian visual artist who was particularly well known for her modern sculptures.
Isabelle Waldberg, néeIsabelle Margaretha Maria Farner (1911–1990) was a French-Swiss sculptor associated with surrealism.
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