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Drawing

Author

By (artist) André Breton

Description

Drawing and manuscript text in the style of the story of ‘Bloody Mary’ as told by Robert Benayoun.

Indian ink on a folded sheet bearing the stamp of the Généralité de Bourgogne. A manuscript text by Breton: ‘And this gentleman, arriving home very late in a state of inebriation, who on waking discovers his canary in its cage, beak to the floor and covered in blood… Ah yes, that’s right: before going to sleep he had the bright idea of making some fresh lemonade.’

‘André Breton’s manuscript text is the transcription of a story in the style known as ‘Bloody Mary’, as told by Robert Benayoun, the author of the Anthologie du nonsense published by Jean-Jacques Pauvert, at the café La promenade de Vénus.’ Octavio Paz (preface), Jean-Michel Goutier (editor), André Breton, Je vois, j'imagine, Paris, Gallimard, 1991.

Drawings by André Breton
‘What is in play? It’s painting, writing, making poetry. When you’re alone, just you, at the table so as to write, you start to play a game with yourself.’ Jacques Hérold (Alain Jouffroy, ‘Les jeux surréalistes (entretien avec Jacques Hérold)’, XX^e siècle, Le surréalisme I, new series, volume XXXVI, no. 42, June 1974, p. 151).

‘As I observed on the occasion of one of the first International Surrealist Exhibitions, the one held in Copenhagen in 1935, “painting, until these last few years, was almost entirely given over to the expression of the manifest relationships that existed between external perception and the self. The expression of this relation turned out to be less and less adequate, more and more disappointing.” Relying on the structures of the material world, it began to invest an immoderate interest in some of these even while once again the evolution of mechanical modes of figuration rendered futile a good proportion of its claims. Under these conditions the surrealists considered that “the only viable domain for the artist was becoming that of pure mental representations, such as this domain reaches beyond that of true perception”. What mattered, I continued, was that this appeal to mental representation offered, as Freud claimed, “sensations relating to processes taking place in the most diverse, if not the deepest, layers of the psychic mechanism”. In art, the search for these sensations works towards the abolition of the ego within the self… 
Nurtured by surrealism, the artist has by definition enjoyed a total freedom of inspiration and technique... What characterises the surrealist work strictly speaking, whatever expression it may offer, is the intention and the will to elude the empire of the physical world (which by holding humanity a prisoner of its appearances has tyrannized art for so long) so as to attain the absolute psychophysical domain (of which the field of conscience is only a very small segment). The unity of surrealist conception, which takes on the value of a criterion, cannot be sought along conventional ‘paths’ that can vary enormously. It resides in the profound community of its aims: to attain the realm of desire that, in our times, everything conspires to veil from us, and to exploit them in every way possible until they deliver the secret of “changing life”.’ (André Breton, preface, Sarrebruck, Mission diplomatique française en Sarre, Peinture surréaliste en Europe, 1952, pp. 5-6.)

Translated by Krzysztof Fijalkowski

Bibliography

Jean-Michel Goutier (choix des textes et catalogue établi par), André Breton, Je vois, j'imagine, Paris, Gallimard, 1991, rep. p. 99, n° 71

Exhibition place

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