Pussy Galore Stripped Bare by Her Gauchos, Even

originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
I meant abstraction in art. Surrealism was locked in a power struggle with rival isms like De Stijl, etc.

But I was railing against the popularity of the Surrealist visual arts vs. the sooty obscurity of brilliant Surrealist literature.

Apples v. oranges, non? Visual arts engage the senses and, only isofar as we desire, the intellect. In contast, surrealist literature engages the senses only insofar as it's needed to impart the image of the print to the visual cortex and then on to the language-processing centers. Appreciation for surrealist literature almost entirely arises from our sense of language, a cognitive element. I'd posit that fewer people derive pleasure from that activity than from the playfulness of visual surrealism.

Merdre!

Mark Lipton
 
De par ma chandelle verte, these chemists are cooking up some thinkin'.

Mark, I see your point but will respond in due time. (Viz., demain. It is finally late in Parigi and the Verre Volé has done its work too well for chiseled responses hereabouts!)
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
De par ma chandelle verte, these chemists are cooking up some thinkin'.

Mark, I see your point but will respond in due time. (Viz., demain. It is finally late in Parigi and the Verre Volé has done its work too well for chiseled responses hereabouts!)

À votre santé, winegrrrl.

Anon,
Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Joel Stewart:
Magritte's "This is not a pipe.", + image of a pipe worked both quite well, I thought.

A great example of a work that straddles both worlds, Joel.* And, given the popularity of the work, I'll further hazard that visual appeal combined low-level linguistic playfulness (pitting visual evidence over that of the received text) falls into the "easy to understand" category.

Mark Lipton
(also a fan of the Ursonate)

* ETA: And there's really no shortage of such examples. Indeed, Duchamp's readymades rely on the short texts that accompany the visual element. But now I'm shading into Dada and leaving true Surrealism...
 
originally posted by MLipton:
pitting visual evidence over that of the received text

Most people, shown a picture of (say) a pipe and asked what is it? would answer a pipe. But the "correct" answer, of course, is a picture of a pipe.

My (kinda obvious) take is that Magritte wasn't being so much linguistically playful by contradicting our eyes but, instead, making the point that it wasn't a pipe, but a picture of one.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
...asked what is it?...
I would ask someone, "What is this a picture of?"

And you're about as representative of the man in the street as I am.

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Oh, and have I complained about "An Oak Tree" lately?

Craig-Martin, my drinking buddy (for some reasons he always orders a glass of water), says your licence only allows one mention every twelve months.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Craig-Martin, my drinking buddy (for some reasons he always orders a glass of water), says your licence only allows one mention every twelve months.
Is he a surrealist?
 
Let me just say for the record that I hate Oswaldo's subject line for this thread. "Pussy," as used to mean "vagina," is just, well, kind of grody. I say this for the record. Better a hard, Germanic word like "cunt." (Why wasn't he drinking Comtes Lafon, dammit?)

Anyway. That is neither here nor there.

Let us talk Surrealism, art, and literature and pretend to be solely the cerebral elements we play at.

(I was thinking about this the other day: who these days reads Valéry's Monsieur Teste? And am I the only person who finds it humorous? (Or who enjoys reading it?) Hmm; on a related note, would two copies of that book be Messieurs Testes?)

I will pursue my response in a subsequent post, so that this one can remain, in its integrity, detached. Also, I have to quote people & stuff.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
I was railing against the popularity of the Surrealist visual arts vs. the sooty obscurity of brilliant Surrealist literature.

Apples v. oranges, non? Visual arts engage the senses and, only isofar as we desire, the intellect. In contast, surrealist literature engages the senses only insofar as it's needed to impart the image of the print to the visual cortex and then on to the language-processing centers. Appreciation for surrealist literature almost entirely arises from our sense of language, a cognitive element. I'd posit that fewer people derive pleasure from that activity than from the playfulness of visual surrealism.

I like where this is leaning, and would have to have more background than vague rememberings in the way one learns (visual, aural, written, etc.) and in what is most immediate to people. But obviously, yes, looking at a picture makes sense. And HA HA HA, a picture that's weird is going to be even more grabbing.

On the other hand, much of Surrealist art is allusive. You have to know the art historical context or the way artworks are usually done in order to see what's so tweaked and zozo about them. Yet they claim masses. (Perhaps some are simple.)

I also wonder if the fact that the bulk of Surrealist literature is written in the French language, spoken by a small and dwindling slice of humanity, is what keeps it at bay for all.

(It's fricking hard to translate, as you might imagine. Webs of allusions. Perhaps we should see what happens when you do.)

I think of how much I love the films of Luis Buñuel, and maybe someone like Levi can talk about this because I don't know, but I wonder: how are they received in general? I find them fascinating and adore the sudden incursion of the oneiric. However, someone like my former boyfriend A. could not stand Buñuel films or Surrealism at all; he felt them an affront. (That said, he didn't like Eric Rohmer, either; maybe that was hyper-naturalism also affronting the willing suspension of disbelief.)

Just some thoughts.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Let me just say for the record that I hate Oswaldo's subject line for this thread. "Pussy," as used to mean "vagina," is just, well, kind of grody. I say this for the record. Better a hard, Germanic word like "cunt." (Why wasn't he drinking Comtes Lafon, dammit?)

Hmph...seemed like a fun reference to the Bond girl in Goldfinger. But I've never been much of a fan of over analysis.
 
originally posted by David M. Bueker:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Let me just say for the record that I hate Oswaldo's subject line for this thread. "Pussy," as used to mean "vagina," is just, well, kind of grody. I say this for the record. Better a hard, Germanic word like "cunt." (Why wasn't he drinking Comtes Lafon, dammit?)

Hmph...seemed like a fun reference to the Bond girl in Goldfinger. But I've never been much of a fan of over analysis.

Exactly, I am but a mere citational instrument, laying traps for the unwary. Pousse d'Or lies halfway between Pouce d'Or (gold finger, sort of) and Pussy Galore (from Goldfinger), so blame Ian Fleming, not me (a mere citational instrument).
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:

I like where this is leaning, and would have to have more background than vague rememberings in the way one learns (visual, aural, written, etc.) and in what is most immediate to people. But obviously, yes, looking at a picture makes sense. And HA HA HA, a picture that's weird is going to be even more grabbing.

On the other hand, much of Surrealist art is allusive. You have to know the art historical context or the way artworks are usually done in order to see what's so tweaked and zozo about them. Yet they claim masses. (Perhaps some are simple.)

But, as with so much of art, one can appreciate it at several different levels. It takes no great skill or knowledge to be amused by a melting clock or an object apparently defying physical law. [aside: was Bosch a proto-Surrealist? Was MC Escher a Surrealist? If the answer to the latter is no, why was de Chirico classified as such? Little to no allusiveness there, though]

I also wonder if the fact that the bulk of Surrealist literature is written in the French language, spoken by a small and dwindling slice of humanity, is what keeps it at bay for all.

(It's fricking hard to translate, as you might imagine. Webs of allusions. Perhaps we should see what happens when you do.)

Spot on. It certainly doesn't help. I read Georges Perec's La disparition in translation, though, so anything's possible.

I think of how much I love the films of Luis Buñuel, and maybe someone like Levi can talk about this because I don't know, but I wonder: how are they received in general? I find them fascinating and adore the sudden incursion of the oneiric.

Buñuel's work I have an on-and-off relationship with. Un Chien Andalou: mheh. I love Viridiana, though.

Mark Lipton
 
My art historian wife would like to send her guffaws and uproarious laughter at the general direction of the (many-levelled) punnery and thread title, Oswaldo.

Props!

cheers,

Kevin
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Let me just say for the record that I hate Oswaldo's subject line for this thread. "Pussy," as used to mean "vagina," is just, well, kind of grody. I say this for the record. Better a hard, Germanic word like "cunt."
Pussy is more grody than cunt? Stodgy, old-fashioned or cutesy maybe, but grody? I suppose anything's possible in a world where we have such wildly different perceptions of brett or acidity. Maybe I just have a low threshold for hard consonants.

I also wonder if the fact that the bulk of Surrealist literature is written in the French language, spoken by a small and dwindling slice of humanity, is what keeps it at bay for all.
I suspect the response will be whizzing over my head, but what is Surreal literature and who are Surreal authors? Would Vian and Ionesco be such? (Who happen to be the only ones I've read who I imagine might fit the description)
 
surrealistsphoto24.jpg
André Breton, Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, Robert Desnos, Philippe Soupault, Raymond Queneau, Antonin Artaud, René Char, René Crevel, for a while Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris, and some more lesser-knowns.

(To answer your question, Ionesco and Vian were a couple of decades later, but definitely influenced by the movement.)

André Breton, the "pope of Surrealism" considered himself to have launched it as a literary movement with Les Champs magnétiques [The Magnetic Fields] in 1920. Written with Soupault, it was the first piece of "automatic writing." They drew their inspiration from pre- or proto-Surrealists of the 19th c.: Lautréamont, Jarry; and the Dada movement in Switzerland, with notably Tristan Tzara (who wasn't much of a pen, in truth).

Interesting thing is, they were all a bunch of mid-20somethings and were friends. They went to the same cafés, they met up and held seances, they did automatic writing experiments (different speeds, different states of mind, sleep-writing, etc.), they went to the movies together. Eluard stole Max Ernst's wife (who, years later, would then marry Salvador Dalí). Etc.

To get a lot and an overview read their literary review, La Révolution Surréaliste (and ten years later, Bataille's L'Acéphale). Read Breton's Nadja.

This link looks interesting.

jenevoispaslafemme.jpg
amourlibre.jpg
 
Oh, and they were virulently (especially André Breton) against the traditional realist novel. Virulently. There was animosity between Breton and André Gide.

This became problematic for Louis Aragon, easily the brightest pen among the group, who had to pretend that things like his Anicet ou le Panorama wasn't one. Finally, he did write a series of pretty awesome traditional-ish novels, starting with Les Cloches de Bale.
 
Back
Top