Andre Breton
Birth
Andre Breton was born in
1896 as the son of a shopkeeper in Tinchebray (Orne). His childhood was spent in
the coasts of Brittany.
Psychiatry
Breton studied medicine
and later psychiatry. His early interest was in being a psychoanalyst and met
Freud in Vienna in 1921. During the first world war Breton served in the
neurological ward in Nantes, but never qualified as a psychoanalyst.
The birth of surrealism
Breton
was part of the Dadaist movement in 1916, but soon went on to initiate the first
of the surrealist meetings. The arguments he had as part of the Dadaist movement
caused him to move on:"
Leave everything. Leave Dada. Leave your
wife. Leave your mistress. Leave your hopes and fears. Leave your children in
the woods. Leave the substance for the shadow. Leave your easy life, leave what
you are given for the future. Set off on the road".
Influenced by psychological theories, Breton defined Surrealism as
"pure psychic automatism, by which an attempt is
made to express, either verbally, in writing or in any other manner, the true
functioning of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control
by the reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation."
In
the first
Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), Breton declared that the new
movement's defining principle was
"psychic automatism," by which he meant
thought freed from
"any control exercised by reason, exempt from any
aesthetic or moral concern." Surrealism "
is based on the belief in the
superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the
omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought." And further:
"I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality,
which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a
surreality [sur = "on", "above" in French], if one may so speak."In the
Second
Manifesto Breton stated that the surrealists strive to attain a
"mental vantage-point (point de l'esprit)
from which life and death, the reral and the imaginary, past and future,
communicable and incommunicable, high and low, will no longer be perceived as
contradictions."
After writing the
Surrealist manifestos Breton continued to publish his poems and , during the
1930s published several. These included Mad Love – which used the Cinderella
myth. Breron is also famous for his prose and one of his acclaimed pieces is
called Nadja (1928), which is a portrait of Breton and a mad woman, a patient of
Pierre Janet. The title refers to the name of a woman and the beginning of the
Russian word for hope
Communism
From 1927 to 1935 Breton
was a member of the
French Communist Party. Although he broke with the
party in disgust with Stalinism and Moscow show trials, he remained committed to
Marxism. In June and July 1938 Leon Trotsky, exiled Russian revolutionary, and
Breton, collaborated in Mexico on the writing of an extraordinary "Manifesto for
an Independent Revolutionary Art." This declaration remains the most eloquent
expression yet produced of the commonality of interests of the artist and the
revolutionary Marxist. The statement began:
"Without any exaggeration one can
say that human civilization has never before been exposed to so many dangers."
The authors took note of the
"ever more widespread transgression of those
laws" that govern intellectual creation, particularly in Nazi Germany and
Stalinist Russia.
"If ... we reject all solidarity with the caste that is
currently ruling the USSR, it is precisely because, in our eyes, it represents
not communism but its most treacherous and dangerous enemy," the manifesto
explained. "
The communist revolution," it continued,
"is not afraid of
art. It has learned from the study of the development of the artistic calling in
the collapsing capitalist society that this calling can only be the result of a
clash between the individual and various social forms that are inimical to him."
The declaration concluded:
"Our goals: the independence of art-for the
revolution; the revolution-for the liberation of art once and for all."When the Nazis occupied
France, Breton fled to the United States with Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst. He
held there a broadcasting job and arranged a surrealist exposition at Yale in
1942.
Death
Andre Breton died in
Paris on September 28, 1966.
