Ubu Roiand the surrealistlivre de peintre

Abstract

Abstract Both André Breton and Antonin Artaud devoted many pages to the creator of Ubu.1 ‘Jarry est surrealiste dans l'absinthe’ said André Breton in his 1924 Manifesto, approving performance rather than text. Breton was eager to demystify the real Jarry hidden behind a mask of his own making. In Le Théâtre Jarry et l'hostilité publique, first published in 1930, Artaud formulated his ideas on integral spectacle and justified his rejection of drama as a distinct genre. Both Breton and Artaud saw in Jarry a liberating force and potential for the future. No less than Rimbaud, Lewis Carroll and Lautreamont, Jarry belongs to the repertory of surrealist writers and painters. Ubu Roi, an attack on the bourgeoisie, on power politics, on institutionalization, whose protagonist caricatures all heroic postures and language, was bound to appeal to the surrealists. Max Ernst, Dora Maar, Joan Miró, and Sebastian Matta enthusiastically ‘adopted’ Ubu Roi. It remained for them to find ways and means to convey their endorsement without limiting the viewer's vision, without transgressing surrealist rules which forbade analysis and imitation.