Abstract
The avant-garde movement Surrealism claimed historical figures as supposed ancesters, as is well known, but also interacted with the past, and especially art of the past, in other ways. This article explores the reception of the European Middle Ages in French Surrealism, in particular medieval art, by means of a case study: illustrations of medieval and early-modern Western art in the surrealist periodicals Documents (1929-1931) and Minotaure (1933-1939). The cerebral and contrary Documents challenged the canon of art by actively looking at the margins of European art, reproducing medieval art from a wide variety of periods and geographic locations, and in very differing media, including jewelry and vessels, murals, bronze church doors, and manuscript illuminations. The glossy art review Minotaure, which came with coloured inserts, was more conventional in its selection, reproducing primarily late-medieval and renaissance art works, mainly (panel) paintings. However, the intention is just as contrary, as late-medieval and renaissance art in Minotaure is framed in terms of surrealist aesthetics in a manner undermining the conventional canon. In Documents medieval art primarily serves to makes points about style and iconography, which is often posited as primitive or exotic. In Minotaure, medieval art serves to make points about Surrealism, about the oneiric qualities of form or iconography. Both periodicals offered an interesting array of medieval and renaissance art and introduced this art into the surrealist discours.
Highlights
For the surrealists, periodicals were an important channel of communication
Contributing to the wider discussion about surrealist medievalism and proceeding from the view that surrealist periodicals provide a tangible expression of its discourse, this article presents a case-study of the illustrations of medieval art in two of French surrealism’s most prominent periodicals: Documents (1929–31; fifteen issues) and Minotaure (1933–39; thirteen issues)
Documents and Minotaure reproduced medieval art in part to rival Cahiers d’Art as all-encompassing art reviews, yet as earlier and related surrealist periodicals published very little to no medieval art in their pages, they still introduced it prominently into the surrealist discourse
Summary
Whereas academic specialists were amongst Documents’s prominent contributors, certainly with regards to medieval art, in Minotaure art was discussed by diverse authors with differing expertise, including contemporary art critics such as Raynal, collectors such as James, and art historians of the renaissance such as Pudelko. The images were positioned and arranged for particular, often subversive, effect, but these montage practices operate primarily on the basis of groupings of images, and the associative connections within such groups, rather than across an issue as a whole.60 Both Documents and Minotaure aimed to draw medieval art into dialogue with the contemporary by reproducing medieval art and contemporary art and culture side-by-side.. Depicting these works side by side highlights Seligmann’s interaction with and revision of Grafian themes and styles, it brings a modern flavour to Graf ’s etchings.65 Such visual framing of surrealist art by late-medieval/early-renaissance art, and medieval art by surrealist art, establishes a relation between surrealist and medieval art more direct than anything seen in Documents. The subsequent issue of Cahiers d’Art presents twelve figures illustrating tenth and eleventh-century Armenian and Georgian churches and sculpture. reproducing medieval art and diagrams of medieval art was not unique to Documents or Minotaure; the particulars of positioning and engagement still make the periodicals stand out.
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