Bulletin international du surréalisme
By Laura Zhang '26
Access the scans of this periodical via Princeton University Library.
The International Bulletin of Surrealism (1935-6) was a periodical spanning four issues, each of them published in a different European country. As its title suggests, the Bulletin was meant to speak to the international spread of surrealism. The first issue was spurred by surrealism’s success in Czechoslovakia. Specifically, in the 1920s, the Devětsil group, which practiced “poeticism,” a combination of constructivism and Dadaism, primarily dominated Prague’s avant-garde scene, making it difficult for surrealism to take root in Czechoslovakia (Sayer 2021, 87). However, the 1930s, marked by the Great Depression, signaled a turn inwards for the Devetsil artists, which made surrealism’s focus on the internal psyche more attractive than continuing to engage in its ongoing practices of whimsical, detached poeticism (Ibid.). In 1932, Devětsil artists, including poet Vítězslav Nezval, met André Breton, the founder of surrealism, and other surrealists in Paris, and vowed to forge closer ties. The Devětsil group also held the surrealist exhibition Poesie 1932 in Prague, and translated the surrealist texts Nadja and The Communicating Vessels into Czech (Ungureanu 2018). The close ties between the Paris surrealists and the Devětsil Group led to the creation of the Czech surrealist group in 1934.
In 1935, Breton, and his friend, poet Paul Éluard, traveled to Prague (Sayer 2021). This trip was partially motivated by their admiration of the Czech surrealists due to their close relations with the Czech Communist Party, which Nezval was a member of – Éluard proclaimed that “Prague is the gate to Moscow” (Éluard qtd. in Ibid., 89). This contrasted with the Parisian group’s sour relationship with the French Communist Party at that point. During this trip, Breton gave several lectures, most notably “The Surrealist Situation of the Object,” which he presented in front of 700 people at the Mánes Artists’ Society galleries (Ibid., 85). Breton, by touring through Czechoslovakia with the Czech group and giving speeches, gained sufficient material to publish the first out of four issues of the bilingual International Bulletin of Surrealism in April, 1935 (Ungureanu 2018). This issue contained transcriptions of Breton and Eluard’s speeches, in both Czech and French. The cover of the issue contains a painting by Jindřich Štyrský and an anonymous opening statement, which emphasized the Bulletin’s commitment to covering the international spread of surrealism (Figure 1). This is shown particularly through this question:
“...once [a Surrealist] has ceased to believe in the existence of a barrier between waking and sleep, between conscious and unconscious, between objectivity and subjectivity, how can he account for the frontiers that still separate nations and languages, how could he not enter in a practical sense into the sphere of international activity towards which he had forever oriented himself through his enquiries at the same time as through his negation of artificial antinomies?”
That is, the Bulletin aimed to break down the barrier between national identities, serving as a way to promote a borderless, transnational movement. This statement also spoke to the international mission of the Bulletin: it decried nationalist and traditional notions of statehood and identity and simultaneously celebrated the inter- and multi-national provenance of its contributors. This international scope overlaps with the universalist vision which is present within surrealism: surrealism is a movement centered around liberation, the conciliation of the unconscious and the conscious mind, sleeping and waking, and ultimately strives to be a collective effort that unites humans through a different way of living.
The remaining issues of the Bulletin transformed it into a “travelogue to promote surrealism” (Ungureanu 2018, 73). After Prague, Breton traveled to Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, where he collaborated with artists like Oscar Domínguez and published the second issue in April 1936, this time containing text in both French and Spanish (Ibid.). The third issue, published on August 20, 1935, was made in collaboration with the Brussels group, with participation from artists like René Magritte, and was written entirely in French (Ibid.). The content of the Belgian issue was overtly political, with the opening statement, titled “the knife in the wound” (Le couteau dans la plaie), centered around the Franco-Soviet pact and the threat of an upcoming war.
The fourth issue of the Bulletin accompanied the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London, and served as the manifesto of the newly-formed English surrealist group. The exhibition, held in New Burlington Galleries, was the first surrealist exhibition to be called “International.” The exhibition contained works from 68 artists of 14 nationalities and was the British general public’s inaugural introduction to surrealism (Heflin 2023). Artist Roland Penrose organized the exhibition and Breton was invited to lead the opening ceremony, which had over 2,000 people in attendance (Ibid.). This issue of the Bulletin contained a description of the Exhibition, a declaration of the formation of an English surrealist group, a transcript of a speech by poet and critic Herbert Read, extracts from poet Hugh Sykes Davies’ lecture on biology and surrealism, reviews from the press on the Exhibition, and a selection of photographs of works presented.
The section on the creation of the English surrealist group is particularly illuminating for providing context to how surrealism had influenced the British art scene. When explaining why an English surrealist group took so long to form, the authors of the issue highlighted the unique challenges of British “pathological individualism,” present in political and art systems, where individuals are taught to think, consume, and create for themselves (Figure 3). This attitude thereby saw any form of collaboration as a hindrance to individual freedom and expression. However, the formation of the surrealist group was an acknowledgement of the necessity to collectivize and stop this “individual anarchy,” especially with the threat of fascism looming (Figure 4). Similar to the Prague group, the British group found in surrealism a form of self-expression that reacted against the oppressive historical forces present during this period.
The section on the reaction of the popular press to the exhibition is also useful to situate English surrealism within the broader surrealist movement. Whilst some members of the press gave somewhat positive reviews of the International Surrealist Exhibition, stating that “Surrealism… in Paris is decrepit, [but] it may yet become fashionable in London,” (The Listener qtd. In Appendix A Figure 5) others reacted negatively, with one journalist stating that “[h]aving seen examples of ‘Dadaism’ and ‘Cubism,’ I was prepared for all the terrors of ‘Surrealism’” (Daily Dispatch qtd. In Appendix A, Figure 5). This inclusion of negative comments and the surrealists’ response to them in the section after, granted this Bulletin issue a subversive quality. Indeed, the English surrealists did not want to be defined only in relation to the French surrealists, as an extension of a pre-existing group, but instead wanted to mark their own independent existence. Outlining the unique political and artistic environment of Britain and highlighting some of the criticism aimed at the group, thereby granted purpose and meaning to the English surrealists. Viewed within the greater context of the International Bulletin of Surrealism, the fourth issue speaks especially to surrealism’s goal to become a broader, international movement whilst preserving the unique and autonomous goals of each national movement.
After 1936, the surrealist groups highlighted in the Bulletin experienced different trajectories. In 1938, Nezval announced to the KSČ (Communist Party of Czechoslovakia) press that he had disbanded the Czech surrealist group – but the group carried on without him and continues to the present day (Sayer 2021). The English surrealist group, whilst also continuing in some fashion into the present day, has been described as having gone through “a number of small successes within an overall failure” (Helfin 2023, 232). Regardless of these eventual outcomes, at the time of its publication, the Bulletin represented a critical opportunity for the surrealist movement to establish itself as an international one, committed to both celebrating its reach over various nationalities, and uniting its members, beyond their national identities.
Bibliography
Fijalkowski, K. "Limits Not Frontiers: Surrealist Resistance to Nationalism, Patriotism, and Militarism." In The Routledge Companion to Surrealism. Edited by K. Strom, New York: Routledge, 2023.
Heflin, C. "Surrealism in England." In The Routledge Companion to Surrealism. Edited by K. Strom, New York: Routledge, 2023.
Sayer, D. "Surrealist Prague (this Little Mother Has Claws)." New Perspectives: Interdisciplinary Journal of Central & East European Politics and International Relations 26, no. 2 (2021): 85-96. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2336825X1802602S03.
Ungureanu, D. From Paris to Tlön : Surrealism as World Literature. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/IFA0DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP1.