The Small Magazines That Gave Rise to Surrealism
Sure! Here’s an informative article based on the correct topic, focusing on Surrealism and the new book “Les portes du rêve: 1924–2024 Surrealism Through Its Journals”:
—
# Revisiting Surrealism’s Roots: A Century Through Its Journals
In October 1924, poets André Breton and Yvan Goll each published a Surrealist Manifesto, officially launching an artistic movement that had already been gestating for years. Although the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire first coined the term “surrealism” in 1917, it wasn’t until Breton and Philippe Soupault’s experiments with automatic writing in works like *Les Champs Magnétiques* (1920) that the movement found a coherent voice. Yet it was 1924 — with these dueling manifestos — that cemented Surrealism’s identity, setting in motion a century of creativity, contradiction, and evolution.
As the movement marks its centenary, a new book — *Les portes du rêve: 1924–2024 Surrealism Through Its Journals*, edited by artist Franca Franchi — invites readers to return to Surrealism’s literary origins. Through an exploration of the magazines and journals that shaped and propagated Surrealist ideas, the book challenges the widely held notion that Surrealism is most accurately understood through its visual artworks.
## Surrealism: A Literary Beginning
Today, mention Surrealism, and names like Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and René Magritte often leap to mind. However, Surrealism started not as an artistic style of melting clocks or dreamlike landscapes, but as a literary movement emphasizing unconscious expression, irrational juxtaposition, and the liberation of thought from societal constraints.
Writers such as Paul Éluard, Max Morise, and of course, Breton himself were instrumental in articulating the movement’s early concepts. Automatic writing, dream analysis, and revolutionary politics were central to the Surrealist ethos — best exemplified not just by paintings but also through manifestos, essays, and the publications that carried these ideas across continents.
## The Importance of Journals
*Les portes du rêve* focuses on the many periodicals that nurtured Surrealist thought. Publications such as *Proverbe*, *Littérature*, *La Révolution surréaliste*, and later, *Minotaure* provided platforms for debate, experimentation, and ideological battles. These journals were, as editors Franca Franchi and contributors argue, collective products — spaces where the Surrealist ideas could unfurl in unpredictable, collaborative ways.
Journals also served as ideological battlegrounds. The early 20th-century avant-garde landscape was fragmented, with competing factions constantly reassessing the purpose and direction of revolutionary art. Surrealist publications often took sides, staking claims in the larger debates over the movement’s relation to Dadaism, Communism, psychoanalysis, and modernity itself.
For example, the Parisian *Littérature*, edited by Breton, Soupault, and later Louis Aragon and others, bridged the divide between Dada’s irreverence and Surrealism’s more earnest quest for psychological truth. Italian humor papers like *Marc’Aurelio* and *Bertoldo* reflected an entirely different context, wrestling with the challenges of publishing under the growing shadow of Fascism. Meanwhile, the American magazine *View* helped transplant Surrealist ideas to the United States during World War II.
## Language as the Core of Surrealism
One of the central arguments of *Les portes du rêve* is that truly grasping Surrealism requires an engagement with its language. Visual art, while crucial, represents only one facet of the movement. Reading the essays, manifestos, and experimental writing produced by Surrealists offers a fuller, more complex understanding.
The nine essays in the volume proceed more or less chronologically, each focusing on particular journals or key themes. They assume a degree of familiarity with Surrealist history, often deploying academic styles suited for readers with some expertise. Topics range from the roles women played in Surrealist magazines — often underappreciated — to the portrayal of theater within Surrealist periodicals like *Comœdia*.
As art historians Anna Maria Testaverde and Elena Mazzoleni point out, journals often operated like “monitoring posts,” simultaneously broadcasting ideas and patrolling the boundaries of the movement. They illustrate how Surrealism deliberately distinguished itself from Dada, using its journals to articulate differences, ambitions, and theories about the role of the unconscious in creative expression.
## From Reinterpretation to Reduction
Over the past 100 years, public perception of Surrealism has shifted dramatically. What began as a radical literary and philosophical experiment is now often represented mainly through iconic imagery. The melting clocks of Dalí or Magritte’s enigmatic bowler-hatted men have, in many ways,