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Overview
"Penelope Rosemont has given us, better than anyone else in the English language, a marvelous, meticulous exploration of the surrealist experience, in all its infinite variety."—Gerome Kamrowski, American Surrealist Painter
One of the hallmarks of Surrealism is the encounter, often by chance, with a key person, place, or object through a trajectory no one could have predicted. Penelope Rosemont draws on a lifetime of such experiences in her collection of essays, Surrealism: Inside the Magnetic Fields. From her youthful forays as a radical student in Chicago to her pivotal meeting with André Breton and the Surrealist Movement in Paris, Rosemont—one of the movement's leading exponents in the United States—documents her unending search for the Marvelous.
Surrealism finds her rubbing shoulders with some of the movement's most important visual artists, such as Man Ray, Leonora Carrington, Mimi Parent, and Toyen; discussing politics and spectacle with Guy Debord; and crossing paths with poet Ted Joans and outsider artist Lee Godie. The book also includes scholarly investigations into American radicals like George Francis Train and Mary MacLane, the myth of the Golden Goose, and Dada precursor Emmy Hennings.
Praise for Surrealism:
"Rosemont is not delivering dry abstractions, as so many academic 'specialists,' but telling us about warm and exciting human encounters, illuminated by the subversive spirit of Permanent Enchantment."—Michael Löwy, author of Ecosocialism
"This compelling and well-drawn book lets us see the adventures, inspirations, and relationships that have shaped Penelope Rosemont's art and rebellion."—David Roediger, author of Class, Race, and Marxism
"The broad sampling of essays included here offer a compelling entry point for curious readers and an essential compendium for surrealist practitioners."—Abigail Susik, professor of art history, Willamette University
"Rosemont's welcome memoir has a double virtue, as testament to the enduring radiance of Surrealism, and as a memento to the Sixties, revealing a sweetly beating wonderment at the heart of that absurdly maligned decade."—Jed Rasula, author of Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century
"Artist, historian, and social activist, Rosemont writes from the inside out. Like a rare, hybrid flower growing out of the earth, she complicates, expands, and opens the strange and beautiful meadow where Surrealism continues to live and thrive.”—Sabrina Orah Mark, author of Wild Milk
"In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Penelope Rosemont, long a keeper of surrealism's revolutionary flame, shows how a penetrating look into the past can liberate the future."—Andrew Joron, author of The Absolute Letter
"Rosemont recreates the feverish antics and immediate reception her close-knit, sleep-deprived, beat-attired squad find in the established, moray-breaking Parisian and international surrealists. Revolution is here, between the covers."—Gillian Conoley, author of A Little More Red Sun on the Human: New and Selected Poems and translator of Thousand Times Broken: Three Books by Henri Michaux
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780872867680 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | City Lights Books |
| Publication date: | 11/12/2019 |
| Pages: | 206 |
| Sales rank: | 838,873 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter Three
Paris Days – Winter to Spring
Our counterculture bookshop group in general had been thinking more and more about a cultural critique, about the synthesis of An- thropology, Freud, and Marxism that for us centered around surreal- ism. Herbert Marcuse’s work Eros and Civilization and its discussion of Freud was important to us, especially his concept of surplus re- pression. There has been a concerted attack on Freud, an attempt to discredit Freud and especially discredit the idea of the repressiveness of civilization. The Right sees this not altogether incorrectly as the basis of the ‘60s radicalism. After all aren’t we the freest people imag- inable? We have the freedom to buy anything we want. What else is freedom? The entire concept of the repressiveness of society has been dismissed. A mistake.
By December 1965, Franklin and I thought IWW efforts were slowing down and were eager to go to Paris. Robert Green and Lester Doré were already traveling there and sending back reports. Lester sent Provo and Revo literature from Amsterdam and wrote that there was a tremendous youth scene. Maurice Nadeau’s History of Surreal- ism had just come out in English and we read with enthusiasm, “the surrealist state of mind or, better still surrealist activity is eternal. Understood as a certain tendency, not to transcend but to penetrate reality, to ‘arrive at an ever more precise and at the same time ever more passionate apprehension of the tangible world.’” I read Nadja: a mysterious and sensuous tribute to a free spirited woman. “Who am I?...perhaps everything amounts to knowing who or what I ‘haunt,’” Breton had written. Fascinated by the idea of wandering the streets of Paris directed by chance alone. What would André Breton be like, I wondered?
First, we planned to go to London and visit the anarchist Free- dom Press there. We expected to be gone six months or more, spend- ing most of the time in London, maybe a week in Paris. Only a week in Paris because we didn’t know anyone in Paris that we could stay with and felt our French needed a lot of work. Further, we were shy about meeting André Breton. We were just kids; we hadn’t really done anything we considered significant yet. But drawn to surre- alism, we wanted to go and see for ourselves what was happening. What would the surrealists be doing, thinking, would we be able to meet them? Would we be able to meet Breton? He was nearly sev- enty, but still living at 42 Rue Fontaine where he had lived when he wrote Nadja. We wondered, would we be able to see the famous 42 Rue Fontaine?
When we left it was indeed dismal days for the bookshop; Soli- darity Bookshop was in storage, driven out of 713 Armitage by irate neighbors, the school board, police, red squad, etc. Our tolerant landlord, Jerry the hairdresser, was visited by the FBI and he worried his Beauty Shop business would suffer. We were determined, howev- er, not to give up. Tor Faegre and Bernard Marszalek were going to search for a new store front. Larry and Dotty DeCoster would soon arrive on the scene. At Union Station we boarded the train for New York. From there our plane left for London.
New York, December 1965
During our brief stop in New York we met Nicolas Calas at his apart- ment. Probably the tallest surrealist, Calas was close to seven feet. From his coffee table I picked up a copy of the surrealist journal La Brèche; in it I found the names Franklin Rosemont and Larry DeCoster. Their friend Claude Tarnaud had sent a letter to Robert Benayoun in Paris, describing his meeting with them. The letter had been published two years ago, in 1963. What a surprise, we were astonished, it seemed a remarkable sign.
We left and strolled randomly through the streets of New York unmindful of the raging blizzard about us. We came upon a man standing on a corner in the snow near Rockefeller Center, but stand- ing there so rigid and so tall, I thought he was a statue, wearing a long cape that flowed in the wind, a Viking helmet, shoulders and beard frosted over with snow. Even up close I couldn’t tell if he was alive. So I said, “Who are you?”
“I am God!” came a deep, booming voice with long pauses be- tween words, I had to smile I was not expecting to run into a god standing on a street corner in a Manhattan snow storm, “but people call me Moondog.”
“What’s that you’re carrying?” said I.
“Music, music that I wrote. Do you want to buy some?” Well, it turns out this was Moondog, a remnant of the old beat scene gone practically catatonic on a street corner.
Then to the airport and on to our BOAC plane, this was our first flight, first time up in the air, but I wasn’t frightened, I was elated because of my desire to see the Earth from the air, because of my excitement of going, going across the ocean, going to England, going to France, going on a great adventure, doing it together with my lover.
Leaving just before Christmas the plane was not crowded, it was a long flight, perhaps eight hours; the plane was so empty we stretched out, lying down over three seats and slept a bit. Mostly we enjoyed being in cloudland and staring down at the gray endless ocean and dreaming of what could be awaiting us on the other side of the vast wilderness of water.
Our Adventures at Heathrow Airport
At Heathrow Airport in London, we got in line, we were dressed in simple beatnik style, black turtleneck shirts and jeans. Franklin was wearing his black leather jacket; I was wearing a fringed black tweed shawl Franklin’s mother made for me; it made me look spectacularly countercultural. We waited in line impatiently to get through cus- toms. Finally, it was our turn; the agent asked us “How long are you planning to stay?”
“Three to six months.”
“How much luggage have you got?” “Four pieces.”
“Rather a lot of luggage, don’t you think?” He commented and asked, “How much money have you got?”
“A thousand dollars.”
“What are your occupations?” Franklin answered, “Musician.”
“Mmm,” said the agent our first clear indication of hostility. “We’ve rather enough musicians here already! What about the draft?”
Franklin answered, “I’ve got a student deferment.”
Agent, “Well, you can’t very well be a student and be here at the same time, can you? You can’t do it in this country at least. I think you are trying to avoid the draft, trying to emigrate to our country.”
We insisted this was not the case. It didn’t work. “We’re going to send you back on the next plane.”
“Wait,” I interrupted, “I want to appeal, I want to see someone else about this.”
“Well, there’s no one else to see tonight, we’re going to keep you in detention overnight and then back you go.”
Very dejected, we were shunted off to overnight detention in some cement-block rooms that looked like motel rooms but with no windows, and were locked in for the night. We weren’t the only ones; there were quite a few people from Pakistan who were likewise enjoying the hospitality of Heathrow.
In the morning, however, we were ready with our arguments, these would probably have fallen on deaf ears except we had pur- chased only a one-way ticket and had come on BOAC, the British state-owned airline. Therefore, because of international agreements, they would have to return us at their own expense. We were escorted around the airport from bureaucrat to bureaucrat accompanied by an entourage of two guards, (so we wouldn’t escape) and two luggage carriers. This situation attracted plenty of attention from other trav- elers who thought we must be bank robbers or at least rock stars. In retrospect it has provided us with a lot of amusement.
After arguing with three different sets of officials I finally said, “How about if we purchase a ticket to Paris; you can ship us on to Paris and you’ll be rid of us!” This definitely appealed to them, pass- ing this bureaucratic problem on to the French, we put out the cash and bought the tickets and they made arrangements for us to be on the very next plane to Paris, and I do mean the very next.
Most humorous of all was our departure. In fact, they called over to the airfield and held a plane, then piled us and all our luggage and all our guards into a large, black limousine and drove us out onto the airfield right up to the plane. The boarding ramp had already been removed and had to be brought back for us, I could see faces gawking out the plane’s windows; planes wait for no one; we were hurried up the stairs accompanied by our guards and escorted to our seats in the crowded plane. The last words from the chief guard to the stewardess were: “Here is their passport, don’t give it to them until you are off the ground!” (This was so we didn’t bolt and jump off the plane in a daring last second escape, I suppose?) It made us seem really desperate and dangerous, heads turned, everyone had to get a look at us, but no one said anything, international spies, jewel thieves at least! And I thought it only happened in movies.
This short flight was fraught with anxieties; would we get into France? There was a large black X on our passport and a message “refused entrance to U.K.” After landing, we got in line with all the other tourists; there were lots; French Customs was just waving peo- ple through as they held up their passports. We walked by but just didn’t believe it for a while, didn’t believe we had actually gotten through customs and were in France. Then we were jubilant, elated
. . . but, what next? Somehow we had to figure out what to do now.
Christmas in Paris!
Our trip began with an amazing demonstration of objective chance. We started for London but here we were in Paris. Little did we real- ize how fortunate this was. The surrealist group had several special events going on.
When we arrived in France at Le Bourget Airport on December 22, we had no plans, no place to stay, and no one had been informed of our arrival, suddenly we were just there; disoriented but ecstat- ic! All our careful plans demolished. Our relatives back in the U.S. didn’t have a clue as to where we were, at last report, the day before, I had called my mother and told her we were being held in detention in London, the relatives wouldn’t know where we were for days.
As soon as we could find a phone at Le Bourget, we tried to call Robert Benayoun, the member of the Surrealist group with whom we’d been corresponding. We looked up his number in the Paris phone directory and dialed anxiously, a woman answered, she didn’t speak English. Then she informed us that M. Benayoun was very ill. Too ill, in fact, to come to the phone. What to do? I explained we were friends of his from Chicago. She was astonished, she didn’t know that M. Benayoun had any friends in Chicago. When Franklin said, “Is this the home of Robert Benayoun, Surréaliste?” She hung up.
We just couldn’t stand airports or their atmosphere for one more minute. We moved our luggage to a locker and equipped with Europe on $5.00 A Day, caught a bus for Paris.
Outside the window a curious world passed by, new and mod- ern buildings were rising next door to tiny one-room cottages hardly large enough for a bed and chair, and barely high enough to stand up in, but surrounded by neatly kept tiny gardens.
We arrived at Les Invalides air terminal somewhere in central Paris, we didn’t have a map yet, so we had no idea where we were, but left and wandered instinctively down toward the Seine and across a bridge, just soaking in wonderful new sensations on all sides. Not believing it, everything seemed so different, we just wandered and looked at the people, the buildings, the traffic. Finally, we woke up to the fact that we had to find a place to stay and much of the day had already passed. I’m not sure if Hotel des Acacias was in Europe on
$5.00 A Day, but I think it was. It was already towards evening then, the day after the shortest day of the year, and around 4:00 p.m. when we wandered there. It was snowing lightly and beautifully against the dark Paris stones. The Rue des Acacias bent gracefully. We went into the hotel and I practiced my phrase-book French, “Avez-vous un chambre pour deux? Combien?”
The room was about $5.00 and that seemed exceedingly ex- pensive to us, but we were just exhausted; I was too exhausted to walk another step, so we agreed on it. It was quite a lovely hotel and room, I remember going to the casement window, opening it wide and looking out over the chimneys and rooftops with Paris all lit up and glowing and beautiful snow falling, somehow not really still believing it, we were actually in Paris. The view out the window was so beautiful, I would have been satisfied if we had done nothing else for our trip.
For a moment we thought about going out for food, but we were exhausted and just lay down, fell asleep, and didn’t awaken until late the next morning.
Amazingly, when we awoke, we discovered we were still in Paris; it hadn’t been a dream, so here we were, two kids in our early twen- ties having grown up with the corn of the vast Midwest. Franklin had at least been to Mexico, I had never really been anywhere outside the country except to Canada for a day. But suddenly the boring sameness of everyday life had vanished, everything seemed different, unexpected, sensuous, new, its routine peeled away. Just being there standing on the street was an adventure.
Well, according to our infallible guide, Europe on $5.00 A Day, we could find a cheaper hotel on the Left Bank so we headed for St. Germain des Pres near the Sorbonne, and thus a student center in Paris. We walked down the steps into the Metro, after first admir- ing and running our hands over the beautiful turn-of-the-century art nouveau entrances designed by Hector Guimard, purchased two second-class tickets and consulted the Metro machine for finding our route. You pressed a button indicating where you wanted to go, and the entire route with transfer points lit up on a glass map of the whole system in red, yellow, or green lights. The Metro had a sub- stantial tunnel system for getting passengers to their trains, and iron gates near the boarding platform closed automatically as the train pulled into the station to keep frantic riders from mobbing the train and not letting it leave the station, and Metro riders were usually frantic.
The first hotel we checked out on the Left Bank was awful, a closet with a bed in it that slanted severely downhill. But, then, at 52 Rue Dauphine we found Le Hotel du Grand Balcon. This time, more cautious, we asked to see the room, it was a beautiful light room with French windows that looking down on Rue Dauphine from the fourth floor, by U.S. ideas of floors, at $2.22 per day.
In our room a sink and bidet, down the hall was the toilet, the halls and stairs were lit by a lumerie (a timed light), which we nev- er timed correctly, consequently we were always running down the stairs in the dark. There was not a lot of heat, so we spent much of our time in bed, reading with all of our clothes on, including extra sweaters. We had to wear all of our clothes outside, also, so instead of presenting a fashionable lean Parisian appearance, we looked more like Russian bears.
People asked us if we were from Marseilles, a more working class, tougher place than Paris. When they found we spoke English, they asked if we were from Canada; we thought about this, why Canada, and decided they were hoping against hope they hadn’t run into more awful American tourists. We replied we were from Chi- cago; that was all right. They would laugh and do a machine gun imitation, “Rat-tat-tat! Capone!” Being from Chicago made us okay; it made us human. Often people would ask, “Why are you in Viet- nam?” and, of course, we would explain we opposed the war. The walls in Paris had “U.S. out of Vietnam” graffiti all over the place.
Our room was a long walk up; only one other floor above us; all the rooms on this top floor were already rented by students. That first day, we parked our bags in our room, paid up, and rushed back outside, hungry to experience Paris, by this time, actually very hun- gry for food. The last time we had eaten was when BOAC had fed us on the plane crossing the Atlantic close to two days ago. We went to a very small French bistro down a couple of stairs, with three tables, and ordered bread and cheese and wolfed it down. We felt better with each bite.
Our hotel was located at the remarkable intersection of Rue Mazarin, Rue Dauphine, Rue Buci, Rue St. André des Arts, and Rue d’Ancienne Comedie. This last was a very short street, but the name was such a wonder, evoking for me a whole array of images.
There was still a slight touch of snow on the ground. Parisians didn’t seem equipped to deal with it; no shovels were used, only brooms, but it melted quickly. It stayed cold, though, and damp; colder than we had anticipated. It proved to be the coldest winter in France in fifteen years.
We were not dressed very warmly as we had expected it to be milder than Chicago. Franklin had only his black leather jacket, pur- chased from Sears, Roebuck & Co., and a white silk scarf with a letter “H” embroidered on it; it was his brother Hank’s; I had only the fringed wool shawl Franklin’s mother had made for me, not very warm, but very elegant and Bohemian; we had to walk very fast to keep warm.
Incredibly eager to see everything in Paris after a total life ex- perience of American Midwestern sameness; a processed and canned version of daily existence that somehow presented itself as the only real possibility of life in the ’50s and ’60s. Our desire for something more had already caused us to be fascinated with anthropology and Surrealism, the idea of the reinvention of daily life. In Paris, we felt suddenly wide-awake and alert in a newly discovered world.
The smell was different, a crazy brew of onion soup, crepes, and diesel fuel; the sounds were new, a delirious French language, often stripped of its meaning because it was too fast for us and appreciated for its pure sound and music, combined with horns of frantic French drivers seemingly engaged in honking competitions, tires on cobble- stones. And the darkness, Paris is actually farther north than Chicago and thus has less winter daytime.
To compensate, there are lights and mirrors everywhere, highly polished. Plenty of things to do. Commenting on the Left Bank, I wrote in a letter home, “There are more than two bookstores per block.” They all had Le Surréalisme et la peinture by André Breton prominently displayed in the center of their windows. It had just come out in a new edition. Posters announced there was being held, at this very moment, the 11th International Surrealist Exhibition, right here on the Left Bank at the Galerie L’Oeil at 3 Rue Seguier, just a few blocks from our hotel. We couldn’t believe our good for- tune and immediately walked over. This was December 24, Christmas Eve.
Absolute Divergence
The exhibition was called “L’Ecart absolu,” absolute divergence; its poster and the cover of the catalog featured a portrait of Charles Fourier, the French utopian socialist; but the portrait was redone in the spirit of absolute divergence in a harmonic variation, creating an unusual pattern and compelling image, the face became a geometric form in its infinite variations, refracted as is light by a prism. Several other of these harmonic portraits invented by Pierre Faucheux were in the exhibition and catalog.
Inside, near the entrance, was a shimmering bead work by Max Walter Svanberg and an intensely dark ink drawing by Adrien Dax; standing nearby, a glass case that contained a small army of amusing bread dough figures by Reinhoud. Along the wall was the control panel of a machine, a collective object of the Surrealist group called the “Disordinator,” perhaps the opposite of coordinator. When one pressed a button or two on the panel, special glass windows would light up containing Surrealist objects, it bore a humorous analogical resemblance to the ingenious Metro machine meant to give passengers their coordinates and get them from one place to another. It was made up of ten windows or cases, some of the captions were “Cri- tique of the Machine,” “The Conquest of Space,” “Disordination of Work,” “Disordination of Leisure.”
The exhibition contained many classic works of Surrealism, Marcel Duchamp’s “Why Not Sneeze?” a ready-made from 1921, a small white cage filled with white marble cubes and a cuttle bone, a Max Ernst frottage from 1926, “L’Jole,” a Man Ray work, “L’Impos- sibilité” from 1920, even a precursor of Surrealism, Gustave Moreau, with “Le Sphinx vainqueur.” I laughed merrily at Wolfgang Paalen’s “Nuage articulé,” an umbrella made of sponges.
An object by André Breton from 1931 consisted of found objects arranged in a manner that indeed fulfilled its name, “Object à fonctionnement symbolique,” an exotic fetish of erotism.
The antipatriotic object, the “Arc of Defeat,” the famous Arc de Triumph redone with a wooden leg suggested by Mimi Parent and assembled so it filled the center of the room and stood perhaps eight feet tall.
Then in the next room, we found a huge pink robot sprouting police sirens, while the walls around it lit up with little white lights, BIP!-BIP!-BIP!, this monster, a collective Surrealist object called the “Consumer!” Its body consisted of a pink overstuffed mattress with upholstered arms and square head encircled by cone-shaped police sirens; its one staring eye, a TV set; its stomach was a washing ma- chine filled with daily newspapers; its back contained a refrigerator that opened revealing a bridal gown and veil, truly a fine piece, won- derful; so savagely accurate in its humorous appraisal of the “modern human,” reduced to the role of “consumer.”
In the same room was a large Alechinsky called “Central Park” done in 1965; years later I came across it in a book I was reading at Northwestern Universityand said to myself, “What a wonderful thing!” Then, I remembered where I had first seen it, it was like rec- ognizing an old friend.
Standing motionlessly in a quiet room, looking at first glance like a suit of armor, stood “The Necrophile,” a work by Jean Benoît, a man’s form clothed in light gray from head to foot; its cloak and suit were gray blocks of stone, its face half mask, its mouth opened to reveal a flame-red tongue, its collar a field of tombstones. At its waist a chain hung with hammer, knife, and other tools, in its right hand was held a staff, on top of which a gray devil held a white angel, from the crotch hung a long, gray, segmented penis-tail that looped, nearly touching the floor. On its face an odd expression, ready to laugh.
Leonora Carrington was represented by a painting, “El Ravarok,” filled with marvelous people and animals, a carriage drawn by a woman-horse with prominent female breasts.
A painting by Toyen glowed from its dark canvas, a shell, a dark flying bat, a purse with glowing red tongue, luminous white evening gloves, a dark phantom woman’s face with golden eyelids. A work done in wood burning technique by Mimi Parent, “En Veilleuse,” a proud woman glowed with surrealist passion.
On a dark wall hung a cabinet by Jorge Camacho “La Souri- ceir d’amour (1965),” a cutout painting by Jean-Claude Silbermann, “Au plaises des demoiselles (1964),” a Konrad Klapheck sensuous machine painting, “Le Visage de La Terreur,” a wonderful Robert Legarde object box, “Maison close sur la cour, en visite le jardin (1965).”
The Surrealists in the show were from all over the world, Sur- realism had always attracted an international following, people from everywhere joined together by their “passional attraction” for the Surrealist project. “Passional attraction” was a concept of Charles Fourier, through which human society would be linked together by its desires, loves, and interests rather than the chains of nationality and religion, ghosts of a blood-soaked past.
After we went through the exhibition twice very thoroughly, we talked with the gallery managers, telling them we had come to Paris in hopes of meeting the Surrealists, but that our correspondent, Robert Benayoun, seemed to be very ill when we phoned. No, they insisted, Benayoun was not ill, he had been seen very recently. They gave us Benayoun’s correct phone number.
When we got back to our hotel, we called him, rather our ho- telkeeper called him, and then we talked (French phones remained difficult); he invited us over to his place at 179 Rue de la Pompe.
We went over as soon as we could, my first impression was that he had a lot of books; Benayoun’s large apartment had books stacked up everywhere, on the floor, between the furniture, behind the drapes, very appealing to us book lovers; we had to suppress the desire to browse. Fortunately for us, Benayoun spoke a flawless English. Initially we talked about Positif, the film journal he was editing, and he gave us the names of several bookstores. I liked him at once, he was delightful company, we had a very fine time. A Surrealist New Year’s Eve party was being planned for December 31st at the Theatre Ranelagh; he invited us and gave us the address. About our phone call to the Robert Benayoun who was ill, he said, “I’ll have to call and see how I’m doing.”
For us Paris was an absolute divergence, L’Ecart Absolu from our lives up to that point. Sometimes I think about the amazing chance of it; the certainty that if we hadn’t been rejected from En- gland, we would not have seen this international Surrealist exhibi- tion, or visited 42 rue Fontaine, and would have missed entirely so many other of our other experiences in Paris. We might not have met André Breton and the Surrealist Group. But circumstance or desire or fate or all combined together into objective chance conspired to get us to Paris to see this exhibition, the last that André Breton himself inspired and organized.
New Year’s Eve, 1966
The Surrealist New Year’s Eve party was held at the Theatre Ranelagh near the Bois de Boulogne across Paris from our hotel. This was the first time we would meet the Surrealists. I wore my light-gray wool dress with a red paisley pattern and suede boots, felt hopelessly out of fashion by Paris standards, where every woman working in every shop looked like a fashion model, I felt rather nervous and anxious. We arrived around nine or ten at the Ranelagh, a very romantic-looking place, even more so, as the outside was entirely dark. Benayoun told us the antique theater was one of the oldest in Par- is and, indeed, guide books tell of Marie Antoinette’s masked balls there. It was now owned by a friend of the Surrealists, Henri Ginet, who was thus our host for the evening and who had contributed a work to the L’Ecart Absolu exhibition.
We met no one as we entered and followed the lights downward into the theater. I was impressed by the tiers of broad stairs carpeted in red, with huge crystal chandeliers on every landing; after the dark- ness outside, the effect of these blazing chandeliers was dazzling; the carpeted stairs and chandeliers seemed endless as we walked down from level to level, lower and into the depths of the building, certainly a dramatic setting for a grand entrance. (Were we off to see The Wizard?)
Then the huge dark theater, we walked down a long, long center aisle, me wanting to turn back and perhaps reconsider all this; Frank- lin nervous, too, we held hands to encourage each other. From the stage we heard Jean-Claude Silbermann say “Chicago!” Benayoun had told everyone to expect us.
On the stage, a buffet dinner was set on a long table. We came up, all eyes on us, nervous as could be but then we were given a marvelous welcome by all in the Surrealist tradition, kissed twice, once on each cheek, and greeted warmly. I felt incredibly awkward at all of this, but it made me feel so good, so welcome; I bumped noses with Jean Benoît while trying to get my kisses exchanged.
Benoît bounded up with some champagne and gave me a cou- ple more kisses. He said to Franklin, “I like you, Chicago!” and grabbed a chunk of Franklin’s face, announcing to all, “I like him. Yes, I like him, he is trés sympatique. Yes, I like you, Chicago, but I like your wife better.” Mimi Parent, his companion, laughed. “Just ignore him,” she said. Not easy, as he was good sized, stocky, wearing a short pink dress with puffy sleeves and using two balloons as false breasts which he kept shifting around “to see where they looked best.” Big legs with heavy black hair glared out from under the short pink skirt. Further, Benoît had the habit of grabbing me by the arm and dragging me off to say hello to someone on the other side of the stage.
Several years earlier Benoît, I knew, had branded himself using a hot iron with the letter “S” for Sade during a ritual in celebration of the Marquis de Sade. He had performed this ritual at the time of the last Surrealist exhibition; I asked if I could see the scar. Obligingly, he pulled down the front of his pink dress and showed a now faint “S” among the hairs on his chest. Then he related the great tale of how he prepared for a long, long time, preparing both his costume and his mind spending days and nights obsessed with the idea, working himself into a frenzy of anticipation and desire. Those in the group who witnessed his ritual found it profoundly hypnotic and symbolic. After the dramatic moment in which Benoît burned the “S” into his chest, a much inspired Matta jumped up to join him, seized the hot iron, and pressed it against his naked chest also, Mimi added. But Matta hadn’t prepared for it, was badly burned, let out a horrible scream, and fainted.
Benoît told us he and Mimi had come to Paris from Canada to meet André Breton and join the Surrealist group, but while they stayed in Paris for ten years, he was too shy to contact Breton and the group. Finally he met André through his daughter Aube. I certainly understood this suffering. Now, however, Benoît was madly overthrowing his inhibitions. He arranged one balloon in back, one in front, and sat down in Mimi’s lap, Bang!, one of the balloons exploded.
There were perhaps forty people present, Surrealists and their close friends. We did our best to meet and greet everyone. Radovan Ivsic was there with a camera, taking pictures all evening, tall, ex- tremely thin, pale, and quiet, with a disconcerting way of standing absolutely still and motionless, Radovan had come from Yugoslavia. We met Alain Joubert, Nicole Espagnol and Giovanna and Jean-Mi- chael Goutier ...
Table of Contents
PrefaceIntroduction: The Magnetic Fields, Cinema, & the Penetrating Light of the Total Eclipse
1) My Days in the Mimeo Revolution
2) Paris Days
3) Chicago: Maxwell Street in the Sixties
4) Toyen and The Sleeping Girl
5) The Hermetic Windows of Joseph Cornell
6) Citizen Train Defends the Haymarket Anarchists
7) Mary Maclane, A Daughter of Butte, MT
8) Surrealist Encounters, Ted Joans, Jayne Cortez, Black Power
9) Unexpected Paths: Gustav Landauer
10) Mimi Parent & the Art of Luminous Laughter
11) The Life and Times of the Golden Goose
12) Nancy Cunard & Surrealism: Thinking Sympathetically Black
13) Lee Godie, Queen of the Outsiders
14) Dada: Emmy Hennings, Kandinsky, & the Theory of Relativity
15) Surrealism and Situationism: King Kong vs. Godzilla
16) Sex, the Sleeping Girl, and the Crisis of the Object: Toyen
17) Grant’s Tomb to the Emerald Tablet
18) Leonora Carrington in Chicago, and the Lion and the Unicorn in the Theater of Analogy
19) Restless, Reckless, Rendezvous of Women Surrealists
Works Cited
Bibliography of Penelope Rosemont