In 1916, a trainee doctor befriended a wounded young soldier in a hospital in Nantes. André Breton was working in the neurological ward and reading Freud. Jacques Vaché was a war interpreter, moving across the front between the Allied positions and disrupting where he could; he once collected cast-off uniforms from different armies, including enemy forces, and sewed them together to make his own “neutral” costume. He sent Breton letters describing his “comatose apathy” and indifference to the conflict, though, he wrote, “I object to dying in wartime”.

Weeks after the Armistice, Vaché killed himself in a hotel room. Breton hailed him “the deserter from within” and one of the key inspirations for “The Surrealist Manifesto”, published in Paris in 1924.

This slim volume turned out to be the most influential artistic pronouncement of the century. Breton argued that rational realpolitik had created the catastrophe of the first world war. Championing the irrational, the subconscious, dream states — “pure psychic automatism” — he called for a revolution of the mind: “thought dictated in the absence of all control exercised by reason.”

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  • gregorum@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Ce n’est pas une critique

    i’ll assume what you’re referring to here is likely the entirety of post-modernism (or some of its constituent elements), and while i’ll be the first to praise Dadaism, it’s a little irresponsible (edit: lazy?) to hand-wave away an entire art movement like that-- especially post-modernism. it may not be your cup of tea (I’m not the biggest fan, myself), but reducing post-modernism (or any art movement) to “increasingly infantile and outrageous stunts passed off as serious art” is… well… more of an infantile and outrageously reductionist insult passed off as serious critique.

    • darkphotonstudio@beehaw.org
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      11 months ago

      Who said I wasn’t insulting all post-modernism? You can call that infantile, I don’t care. I’m far past critique and anyway, I’m a nobody with an incomplete art history education. Dismiss me if you wish. But note, I won’t say post-modernism isn’t art. It’s just largely trash art. I maintain Dada was the first and last word on what post-modernism continues to do, just without any of the self-awareness. They took the joke seriously.