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Title: Surrealism is (Still) Elsewhere
Author: Ron Sakolsky
Date: Fall / Winter 2014
Language: en
Topics: art, surrealism, Fifth Estate
Source: Retrieved on December 11th from http://www.fifthestate.org/archive/392-fallwinter-2014/surrealism-still-elsewhere/
Notes: Ron Sakolsky edits The Oystercatcher on Denman Island, British Columbia. oystercatcher (at) uniserve (dot) com

Ron Sakolsky

Surrealism is (Still) Elsewhere

It seems that the more art school training one receives at the academy,

the more one is likely to be confused about surrealism or overtly

hostile to it. Much of the malaise around surrealism in art circles

stems from the insularity of the art world itself.

While surrealist ideas and practices can be expressed artistically,

surrealism cannot be reduced to a style or school of art, even one aimed

at inspiring radical political action. Nevertheless, surrealism is

typically portrayed by academics as merely one historical moment in the

grand cavalcade of failed avant-garde art movements of the 20th century.

Likewise, for many art critics, surrealism can be summed up as a passe,

cliched, and easily imitated style of art. So it goes for the art

taste-makers. In the words of an incendiary 1985 Chicago Surrealist

Group broadside pointedly aimed at unmasking the deceptive nature of the

art market racket: “Surrealism is elsewhere!”

Though surrealists are not anti-art in the Dadaist sense of calling for

the destruction of art, the core concerns of surrealism cannot be

encompassed within the artistic realm. This is not to say that

surrealism’s emphasis on ending the artificial dichotomy between dream

and reality cannot be elegantly and/or disturbingly rendered in a

creative context.

However, in the case of poetry, the surrealist poem is all too often

conflated with surrealism’s ultimate championing of the Cause of Poetry.

The latter not being concerned with a singular poem, but with the

realization of poetry in everyday life.

Accordingly, this quest involves the creation of a world in which people

can live more poetic lives. While surrealism does not limit itself to

the visual arts, since a painting can embody one of the most emblematic

forms of surrealist activity, it is often confused with the essence of

surrealism that inhabits it.

Even the “surrealist object” is not, in and of itself, the object of

surrealist research. The power of such an object lies in its ability to

act like a beacon that illuminates the As Is shipwreck of consensus

reality in which we are trapped or to reveal the beckoning shores of the

What If?

Surrealism has always refused to be enclosed in the airtight boxes that

art historians have constructed for it. Outside of the museum-mausoleum,

surrealism cannot simply be equated with dated tropes or stylized forms

of artistic expression. Nor can surrealism be reduced to replicating the

mechanics of its experimental practices.

For example, the surrealist process of automatism, best known in

relation to the unconscious processes of automatic writing, drawing and

musicality, is not an end in itself. Automatism is highly valued by

surrealists because it can conceivably create fertile conditions for the

chance emergence of a spontaneous opening into the dazzling realm of the

Marvelous.

It is in this sense that what André Breton referred to as “pure psychic

automatism” exhibits a “will to deepen the real” by seeking to find more

“exalted” versions of reality than those conventionally available to us

by the use of instrumental reason. In this context, automatism might

ideally provide the opportunity for a transformative unfettering from

socially constructed, imposed and reinforced notions of reality.

As Penelope Rosemont has speculated, “If we can imagine a world of

marvelous freedom, we can make it be.”

Surrealism seeks a rupture with the impoverished version of what passes

for reality by actively questioning, critiquing and attacking what is

deemed “realistically” possible. It is at the flashpoint of poetic

action that surrealism and anarchy can inspire each other.

Like anarchy, surrealism boldly demands the impossible. It is not about

creating a more permissive version of authoritarianism. It is not

content to merely construct a bigger cage for our confinement. Instead

it asks us to take our desires for reality. Because it is concerned with

inciting individual revolt and fomenting social rebellion, surrealism

seeks to unleash the poetic power and subversive laughter of the radical

imagination.

Surrealism is not merely an art movement despite the many evocative

artistic manifestations inspired by what surrealists call the Marvelous.

Surrealist art swims in a sea of surrealism, but it is only a creature

of that sea and not the sea itself.

Surrealist works of art might best be viewed as vehicles for plunging

wildly into the foggy depths of the uncanny and for freely playing in

the sublime wonderlands beyond reality rather than being exclusively

perceived as discrete products.

Surrealists have not been afraid to engage with art and literature, but

that interaction has often been antagonistic. They offer not only an

explicit challenge to, or even an assault upon, previous modes of

artistic expression, but intuitively undermine the institutional

foundations of art and literature themselves.

In the expansive spirit of the 19th century, Uruguayan-born

proto-surrealist Comte de Lautréamont’s proclamation that “poetry must

be made by all,” surrealists contend that shimmering traces of the

Marvelous can be found everywhere, not just in works of art.

Though surrealist artworks might brilliantly reveal what surrealist poet

Phillip Lamantia once called “touches of the Marvelous,” they themselves

are not the Marvelous. That these glimpses of the Marvelous cannot only

be viewed in a surrealist looking glass is most obviously evidenced by

referencing their appearances in visionary shamanic cultures the world

over.

However, if one is attuned to the insights offered by a surrealist

sensibility, the doors to the Marvelous can swing open unexpectedly at

any given moment. What fascinates me most about surrealism are the

myriad ways that it intersects with anarchy, and the exciting interplay

between the two as anti-authoritarian uprisings against voluntary

servitude and societal alienation.

Surrealism is both destructive and creative in the anarchist spirit of

Bakunin’s statement: “The urge to destroy is a creative urge.” It

rejects the reformist politics of mitigation, and instead resonates with

Fourier’s utopian call for “absolute divergence.”

It refuses to accept the cramped and uninspiring reduction of political

action into the utilitarian “art of the possible.” Like Melville’s

Bartleby the Scrivener, surrealism emphatically exclaims to the bosses

of the world, “I would prefer not to!”

In engaging in such willful disobedience, it eschews the debilitating

relations of mutual acquiescence by which we convince each other that

our shared misery is the only possible reality, and reminds us that

mutual aid can be an exhilarating collective adventure.

Surrealism, like anarchy, is a theoretical touchstone and a way of being

that is always immanent by nature. It is not a static thing or a fixed

entity to be pinned down and mounted by art historians like a butterfly

specimen that remains a captive creature no matter how enticingly it is

displayed.

Riding on the exhilarating winds of change, it incites us to embrace the

subversive power of fluidity. In the words of gender-bending surrealist

photographer, Claude Cahoun, “Open up–and someone will knock.”

In spite of the many art world obituaries that have been written for it

over the years, surrealism lives!