Surrealism, Photography and the research of urban space: Surrealism, Photography and the research of urban space Surrealist works,Nadja, and photography of Eugene Atget


Slide2: Surrealism Start at 1924 when Andre Breton publish Manifeste du surréalisme. Stop at 1969, after 3years of the death of Andre Breton. Inherited (Le negativisme) from Dadaism


Slide3: Surrealism Then Abandon to pureness resistance of Art Start to Inspired by Psychoanalysis


Slide4: Surrealism Related to 相信於精神層面的某一點，生與死，事實與想像，過去與現在，可言喻與不可言喻的，高與低，將不再對峙。超現實主義活動沒有別的動機，只有全心期望能確定尋獲此精神點。因此超現實主義既非文學性活動，也非藝術性活動，而是完全解放精神的一種方式。 Manifeste du surréalisme, Ander Breton 1924


Slide5: Surrealism L’Imaginationation Automatic Writing La Pensee Parlee Le Collage


Eugene Atget: Eugene Atget Born at Lilbourn in South-West France on 12 feb 1857 Son of wheelwright Photographing Paris for over 25 years Died on 4 August 1927


Slide7: In1926 Atget’s 4 photographs were introduced into La- Revolution surrealiste by Man Ray ‧3 photographs issue into no.7 in June 1926 ‧one more in no.8 in Dec 1926


Slide8: First photo: “the crowd of people” appears on the cover Second photo: “image of corset shop” with the text byMarcel Noll Third photo: “ prostitutes” with the text by Rene Crevel


Slide9: Fourth photo: “staircase” with the text: “ the Underside of a life or the Human Pyramid” by Paul Eluard” Julien Levy -surrealist painting by pierre roy: Danger on the stairs


Slide10: After atget died, he left his achieve to his closed friend Andre Calmette. The bulk of the images was bought by Man Ray’s assistant, Berenice Abbott, a young American photography. Her first impreesion as “ the shock of realism unadorned’ In 1928, pictures from abbott’s collection were shown in exhibition in Paris and Brussels *referred to atget as a forerunner of contemporary photography *In 1930, the 1st monograph of atget’s photography was published in Paris, Leipzig and New york; a selection of 96 images with an introduction written by pierre macorlan.


Slide11: Walter Benjamin “he (atget) was the first to disinfect the stifling atmosphere generated by conventional portrait photography in the age of decline” Berenice Abbott “ atget as a realist –’ a Balzac of the camera” “it is impossible to put ourselves back in time to 1926. For the modern spectator, these pictures are authored, touched by genius, they are ‘atgets’”


Slide12: Robert Desnos and Albert Valentin A central member of the Parisian group of surrealists. Desnos: through the 1920s, publishing two magazines articles on atget. “ atget had the innocence of soul of a Douanier Rousseau, and the attention to detail of a Parisian flaneur” “ atget has photographed all of Paris with the marvelous objective of creating a dream & a surprise” Valentin: a Belgian novelist first published an essay on atget in dec 1928 Both of them: “his viewpoint of the world, determined by an apparently mechanical medium, is also the vision of his soul’


Slide13: Waldemar George, the art critic wrote about atget on 2 occasions “before the surrealist painters, atget understood the potential and meaning of facts juxtaposed, confronting each other without any logical line to justify their juxtaposition”


Slide14: Atget’s images could take their place in the surrealist notion of the urban, soluble city. ‘those dead –end streets in the outlying neighborhoods, those peripheral district’ – reading them as images of discomfort and threat.


Slide15: Walter Benjamin “Atget’s photographs been likened to those of the scene of the crime.” “It’s photographed for the purposes of establishing evidence” “ the forerunners of the surrealist photography”


Slide16: Nadja (written in 1928) by Andre Breton


Slide17: André BRETON, 1896-1966 Born in France Tinchebray, 19-FEB-1896 Psychologist, first world war Dadaist, 1916 Surrealist


Slide18: Manifeste du surréalisme, 1924 found the basis and content of Literature, Art, Movie Depth psychology Automatic Writing Oneirology Hypnosis


Slide19: France communist, 1927-1935 Dead at Paris, 28-9-1966 Famous Literatrue: Manifeste du surréalisme, 1924, 1930, 1942 Les Champs Magnetiques, 1919 Les Vases communicants, 1932


Slide20: Nadja, publish at 1928 It is… anti-novel autobiography detective love story cityscape clinicopathology p.s. Nadja = the beginning of hope in Russian.


Slide21: Divide Nadja in 3 parts Explore question about chance and inspiration, beauty and love. Recounts the events of nearly two years earlier starting on 4 Oct 1926 4th-12th,Oct in diary form about the start with Nadja. Nadja committed to an asylum. Explore question about chance and inspiration, beauty and love.


Slide22: “她的頭高高昂起，和人行道上的每一個人都不一樣。她顯得如此輕盈優雅，以致於連走路都似乎很少碰到地面……我从来没有見這樣迷人的眼睛。我没有絲毫猶豫，就跟這位不知姓名的女子交往起来。”艷遇就這樣開始了。 Nadja - Andre Breton


Slide23: Nadja contained 44 images include: Documents Objects Work of art Sequence of drawing by Nadja herself Photographs number of portraits include: 3 by man ray 3 by the commercial photographer Henri Manuel 14 images of place which feature in the book 12 of them in Paris


Slide24: Nadja is… Breton think that Nadja is full of inspiration, represent surrealism. Psychologist descript Nadja as a women who has hallucination akoasm and living in her own fantasy. Rationalist said that Nadja is not exists. Nadja think that herself is just a wandering soul.


Slide25: [WHO AM I?] If this once I were to rely on a proverb, then perhaps everything would amount to knowing whom I haunt. I must admit that this last word is misleading, tending to establish between certain beings and myself relations that are stranger, more inescapable, more disturbing than I intended. Such a word means much more than it says, makes me, still alive, play a ghostly part, evidently referring to what I must have ceased to be in order to be who I am. hardly distorted in this sense, the word suggest that what I regard as the objective, more or less deliberate manifestations of my existence are merely the premises, within the limits of this existence, of an activity whose true extent is quite unknown to me………………… Nadja - Andre Breton


Surrealist ethnography: Surrealist ethnography James Clifford: Anthropological humanism - They begin with different and renders it through naming, classifying, describing, interpreting. - therefore, comprehensible and familiarizes Ethnographic surrealist - attacks the familiar, - provoking the irruption of otherness- the unexpected


Slide27: James Clifford argues: Ethnography has been an modernist preoccupation - It share a great deal with art - begin ”with a reality deeply in question” More than an “empirical research technique” but a more “general cultural disposition” that share with art and writing in twentieth-century


Documents: Documents Documents is a journal edit by Georges Bataille 17 issue were published from 1929-1930 Conjunction of ethnography and surrealism One of the objective was the promotion of an anti-aesthetic mode of representation and attraction to the grotesque and the “dirty” but equally to the collection and description of objects and practices.


Slide29: Documents Included written text, photo, It challenged bourgeois humanist norms of art and museology It technique of juxtaposition create ironic effect of cultural collision, brought together “high” and “low”, the familiar (European) and the strange (mainly African)


Slide30: Clifford describes Documents As a “subversive, nearly anarchic documentary attitude” “An epistemological horizon for twentieth-century culture studies It techniques of collage and juxtaposition and its transgression of cultural purities involved the recognition


Slide31: In many way, it is the originary moment of subversive culture criticism


Dakar Djibouti: Dakar Djibouti Primarily a scientific expedition to collecting material and photos 3500 object, 200 sound recording, and zoological specimens was collected And 6000 photographs was taken by Marcel Griaule


Slide33: 3 version of the mission - Musee de l’Homme,paris - Griaule’s book - Minotaure (issue no.2) 1933


Musee de l’Homme: Musee de l’Homme In the museum Masque “jeune fille”,1932 was displayed, with an actual mask of the same type next to it


Griaule’s book: Griaule’s book Description of the mask Transcript of the chants Drawings of variations on the mask type Griaule: Precise description is notably lacking…they are record and together they elaborate and reinforce an overall sense of documentation


Slide36: He believe “primary role of the ethnographer was documentation and interpretation came later” For him photography appear to have been a part of that process of simple, direct observation


minotaure: minotaure Minotaure Magazine (issue no.2) It is a most luxurious production (large format page, elegant layout) compare with La Revolution surrealiste Desire to espouse the “primitive in opposition to high or find art Emphasize the unconscious a prime site for such a continuing surrealist quest


Slide38: Jean Jamin: Minotaure version is interested in spectacular dimension (presentation and content) without challenging the preconception of the readers, dangerously close to the touristic.