SURREALISM

A Bridge Between Heaven and Earth
by Graeme Jones
copyright 2008

In the early 1970’s I concluded that the remarkable hatred and fear directed at Communism by the miserable, small-minded cretins that ran the New Zealand Government suggested that there just had to be something good about that political philosophy. And quite possibly something important. In my instinctive and unschooled response I was applying the Hegelian dialectical principle; if evil organizes itself against a thing, then search within that thing for a boon. So I decided to take a look at Marxism, and therein began my journey.

This same law of opposites comes to our aid when we examine the political focus of those really serious Fascists, the Nazi’s. When Hitler’s jackbooted legions strutted their way into Paris in May 1940 high on their political agenda was the extermination of the Surrealist art movement, which was centered in that city. Over the ensuing months, employing the epithet “decadent art,” the Nazis completely suppressed the vibrant cultural movement known as French Surrealism. Why were the German Fascists so determined to annihilate a school of French artists? Surrealism itself reveals the answer.

Surrealism is an artistic movement characterized by its emphasis upon the opening to the psychological unconscious. In Surrealism the artist is inviting the unconscious to take over the artistic process. The colorful vibrancy and creativity of the unconscious is glorified, to the point where the unconscious tends to become the subject of the art itself. This is most famously exemplified in the works of Salvador Dali. Surrealists saw their movement as a cultural vanguard, its task being to communicate the social importance of the collective opening to the psychological unconscious. But Surrealism was more than merely a collection of talented individual artists. It was a living cultural movement in the best European tradition, a continuation of the spirit of the French Revolution.

Here was a talented intelligentsia who understood the importance of consciously integrating their innovative artistic styles into the variegated dimensions of European progressive life. They saw themselves as a “school” in the real sense of the word. The genius of the inspired individual that marked the cultural life of Paris was being employed to delve into the hidden depths of the modern psyche, and to relate that exploration to all aspects of progressive culture. Their ambition was to cultivate the living spirit of Europe by using art to foster a conception of organic unity that satisfied the modern psyche. And they regarded the psychological unconscious as an actual participatory agent in that endeavor.

Accordingly, it was both natural and unavoidable that Surrealists would recognize the living force of the unconscious inside early 20th century Socialist political struggles. The logic of Surrealism itself obliged them to fold the Socialist vision into the general outlook of that artistic movement. Inspired, individual subjectivity and the political cause of the progressive masses began to converge via the unifying medium of Surrealism. The psychology of the unconscious and Marxism were beginning to coalesce into a unified cultural stream.

The leading Surrealists were openly Socialist. And their willingness to be informed from outside the orthodoxies of Marxism, and to bring that psychologically enriching content into their red politics attracted many to the unique vitality of that movement. It is no surprise that Surrealists were some of the very first to advance a Socialist criticism of Stalinism. In essence, pre World War II Surrealism was a cultural bridge between the politics of liberation and the new humanist psychology of the unconscious. It was in Surrealist circles that creative people could walk from one end of that bridge to the other.

PSYCHOLOGICAL POLITICS

The integration of the Marxist political outlook and the psychology of the unconscious comes to us in the brilliant insight of Surrealism’s most well known spokesman, Andre Breton; “bourgeois culture erects a fortress against the unconscious.” This point of view is at once Marxist and Jungian. Here Surrealism is offering us a psychological understanding of class struggle. Class conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat is a political metaphor for the collective relations between the ego and the contents of the unconscious. This is esoteric Marxism. The collective egoism of Western man crystallizes its antagonistic relationship with the collective unconscious in political form as bourgeois class war against the working masses. “Masses” being a mythic code word for the collective unconscious. Here is the cosmic axis around which the great conflicts of the 20th century orbit; the Euro-American ego’s reactive hostility to the planetary culture of wholeness which seeks to emerge from within the collective unconscious and supersede the world outlook of egoism.

Code words for bourgeois political reaction, directed against the working class, women and people of color, can be read, psychologically, as mythic projections of the western ego’s hostility towards the unconscious. Carl Jung specified exactly this. In his alchemical dream interpretations Jung wrote; “The political left stands for the unconscious and all that lurks within it.” Any competent Jungian knows that liberation from oppression requires turning away from the ego bound perspective and embracing the salvatory movement that is to be found in the unconscious. So the logic is clear. Right wing reactionary politics is the ego’s war against humanity’s living spirit. Conversely, it is the task of the political left to embrace the life giving vibrancy of the unconscious, and to embody the healing function of the Self as it emerges from the collective unconscious. Red culture must breach the bourgeois fortress on behalf of the insurgent unconscious. This was the perspective that was beginning to take form in the Surrealist school just prior to World War II.

ROMANTICISM OUTCAST

This approach offers us a clear psychological analysis of the terribly destructive political tensions and violence that have wracked Euro-American civilization for the better part of the last two centuries. It also explains the Capitalist establishment’s need to suppress, distort and control art and culture. It being the role of artists, and culture, to convey the life-giving creativity of the unconscious to the mass mind. Prior to 1850 the Romantic Movement was fashionable and received bourgeois patronage. But the revolutions of 1848 pushed the Romantic artists to openly side with the proletariat in their street battles with the bourgeoisie that broke out simultaneously in cities throughout Europe. From that time onwards Europe’s ruling bourgeoisie saw clearly that Romanticism, art and culture posed a potentially mortal threat to their class rule, and hence had to be carefully controlled and, if necessary, destroyed. The Bourgeoisie can only feel truly secure when they sit atop a cultural wasteland, which has been washed clean of any threatening vitality from the banished unconscious. Accordingly Romanticism quickly became “unfashionable” and was replaced by the 19th Century version of Fascism; i.e., Victorianism. Fascism simply being the naked face of ego driven, reactionary, bourgeois class power, exemplified by the Nazi Herman Goering’s infamous dictum; “whenever I hear the word culture I reach for my pistol.”

The Nazi occupation of Paris paid the Surrealists the ultimate compliment. By targeting that school for immediate annihilation the Nazi’s were fortifying bourgeois reaction in Europe against any possibility of progressive cultural insurgency on the part of the unconscious. In so doing they demonstrated the incisive accuracy of the Surrealist critique. But there is more. Germans are deservedly famous for combining depth of instinctive insight with highly focused intelligence. The Nazis were no exception. Recall that the Nazi’s hated Communism with an existential passion. The German bourgeois ego was terrified of being drowned in a tidal wave of Red feeling. It saw itself to be in a war to the death with its own worst nightmare, i.e., an overwhelming resurgence of the primitive feminine from the “subhuman” Slavic east.

The Nazi’s expected to be lauded for defending Europe against Red barbarism. For them this was a truly spiritual war. And they knew successful spiritual warfare requires winning cultural battles. In their spiritual battle against Communism the thing the Nazi’s most feared was a cultural movement that was in the process of placing Marxist Socialism upon sound spiritual and cultural foundations. This was the terrible danger they instinctively recognized if the Surrealists were to be left to continue their cultural experimentation. They knew they had to preempt it at all costs.

For by initiating a convergence of Marxism and the psychology of the unconscious the Parisian Surrealists were actually laying cultural foundations for a humanist, spiritual definition of Marxist Socialism. Recall that Marxism is a political/economic extension of the philosophy of Hegel. And that Marx wrote that the proletariat must find its spiritual and intellectual weapons in that philosophy. By exploring the psychology of the unconscious, from a socialist perspective, the French Surrealists were preparing the ground for a culturally viable interpretation of the Hegelian spiritual foundations of Marxism. They were building a Socialist culture animated by a numinous humanism. In the late 1930’s this was still inchoate, only partially formed, and more intuitive art than scientific theory. But enough of a beginning had been made to set alarm bells ringing within the instinctual intelligence of the Nazis.

NAZI VICTORY

When it comes to the all-important dimension of culture, it has to be admitted that the Nazis actually won World War II. The all consuming demands placed upon the Soviet Union by military confrontation with Nazism, from 1933 until 1945, precluded any possibility of the Soviet state developing authentic Socialist culture. This was the fascist goal all along. In Nazi occupied Europe, Socialist and Jewish cultural luminaries were annihilated in their hundreds of thousands. The general devastation of Nazi occupation, and the war itself, caused enormous destruction to the living fabric of European progressive culture. But the decisive Nazi victory lay in the complete destruction of the French Surrealist movement. Its heart was cut out, and what was left was scattered to the four winds. Individuals may have survived but the cultural integrity of the collective movement was effectively destroyed. After the war French culture never regained its former luster and progressive vitality. From 1945 on Europe was dominated by an aggressive American Capitalism that imposed its own brand of reactionary cultural suppression. The military defeat of Nazi Germany simply shifted the fascist responsibility from Berlin to the United States.

In destroying the Surrealist school, Fascism deprived Europe of any genuinely vibrant and authentic spirit capable of further enculturing the convergence of Socialist politics and the Humanist articulation of Marxism’s spiritual roots via the psychology of the unconscious. The destruction was simply too great to allow such delicate, plastic flowering. And that flowering was essential for the success of Socialism. For want of it Socialism was unable to enculture any understanding of its own psychological and spiritual dimensions. In surrendering its Humanist interiority to a vulgar mechanical materialism, Socialism lost its soul. From there Socialism (along with American civilization) devolved into a totalitarian Materialism of ego-based power. This is, in real cultural terms, Fascist victory.

EYES OF THE RAPTOR

Ever since the mid 19th century a hidden raptor force has guarded Capitalism. With focused predatory eyes it surveys the entire landscape of Euro-American civilization, always on the lookout for the emergence of any social movement that is free of distortion. Whenever numinous integral Humanism shows any signs of emerging the dark birds are given their moment. Blood flows, the threat is shredded and Humanism is once again fragmented into mutually alienated parts. The raptors have actually been released many times, the flight of the Nazis being simply the most demonic. In truth the Surrealists never stood a chance.

The cosmic meta-theme of the 20th century is the culture of emergent wholeness. This naturally inclines towards a convergence of external wholeness; i.e., Socialist political economy, with internal wholeness, articulated as the psychology of the unconscious. As Marx put it, the liberated wholeness of individual essence, is to harmonize with the liberated wholeness of external existence. We now call it the marriage of Heaven and Earth. This was the vision, encultured for a brief moment by the Surrealists, before it succumbed to the Nazi holocaust. And it has never been restored. Such a numinous Humanism is unbearable to the ego bound mind of the ruling bourgeois class. Consequently from 1940 until the present day, depth psychology and Socialist political consciousness have co-existed in a state of mutually hostile alienation. Psychology is held to be the exclusive property of the bourgeois mind, and for want of it, Socialist consciousness, denied a scientific vision of its own essence, flounders, trapped in a spiritual wasteland of one-sided Materialism, where it has steadily withered into impotence, for loss of its soul. The terrible fruits of the Fascist victory have lasted 80 years.

FRIDA’S GARDEN

However it is only the twisted ego bound delusion of the bourgeois mind that denies that the living force of cosmic intention is anything but invincible. Knowing that nothing real can be truly lost, we shall, in closing, revisit an actual moment in Surrealist history for a poetic taste of the coming marriage of Heaven and Earth. Recalling that the Islamic vision of Heaven is a walled garden, i.e., paradise, who better for us to turn to than that icon of the new world, the widely loved avant-garde artistic exponent of the feminine inner self, the Communist painter who would walk about town, whilst hiding under her dress, strapped to her thigh, a loaded pistol, Frida Kahlo.

At the height of her popularity, Frida held painting classes for her young art students. These were conducted in a large walled garden behind her home in Mexico City. Feel your way into this wonderfully verdant garden, where you are sitting at your easel, alongside other painters. In this soft early morning Mexican air, surrounded by trees and shrubs, flowers overflow in a riot of colors and sweet aromas. Monkeys chatter and leap amongst the trees, along with wildly colorful birds, including parrots. Here inspiration comes easily. Just as fresh paint is being applied to the canvas a presence is felt from behind. The young artist turns and casts his eyes upon a woman who is smiling appreciatively over his shoulder. It is Andre Breton’s wife. She is completely naked.

Evolving Line IX

Please double click picture to enlarge
by Erik Kaye, copyright 2008
watercolor

Fallen Angel

Note: double click on pictures to see a larger image.
by Bea Garth, copyright 2008
scraffito-carved ceramic sculpture in progress, 2 views




This piece seems to reflect "A Fallen Angel"-- i.e., how one reacts to losing a relationship as well as reviewing some of one's memories of it.

Ryukoji View, Katase

Note: double click picture to enlarge
by Erik Kaye, copyright 2008
watercolor

"Its a famous nearby temple, Ryukoji, (ji means temple-Ryu means Dragon, Ko means mouth-- Dragon Mouth Temple) where the Saint Nichiren was being executed when a bolt of lightning hit the axe-blade as it was being swung to his neck. The superstitious fools of that time refused to believe it was completely coincidental!
Of course we today know differently, heh, heh. Ka-ta-se is the name of the town.

This is one of the first elaborate landscapes I did in Japan, in 1999. I sold it for ¥60,000 or about $600 to Ms. Kimiko Sano, a student of both Corinne and mine."
-----Erik Kaye, American Artist working with his wife Corinne as English Language teachers in Japan.

Eos Re-emerging

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by Bea Garth,copyright 2008
ceramic sculpture using carved engobe and colored terra sigillattas


Note: Eos refers to the Goddess of the Dawn. I created this piece years ago in the early nineties beginning on the Fourth of July. It refers to sensitive people and women in particular taking back their power.

Some Days

by Bea Garth, copyright 2008

There are some days the body knows
that it doesn’t matter what day it is.
Whatever it is you are doing is just too much:
you can be in the middle of the natural foods store
or shopping for a gift of Rumi’s poems
for your first nephew’s wedding
or buying lumber when suddenly you remember you forgot
to buy the concrete for the walk-way
but your body knows its too late
and anyway you are in no condition
to be lifting bags of concrete
out of the truck even if somehow you could
make yourself go back in to the check-out counter
and order them to be put into the truck.
You’ve already roped in the wooden two-by-fours
and you know you cannot get yourself to untie them
and move them over. It is too late and really not even
early enough since it was your body
that made you forget in the first place.
You know its mid June and a cool sea wind is blowing here
inland into San Jose and Campbell,
the weather is shining and beautiful
but your body is quaking,
undergoing the beginnings of the lunar cycle.
Today is the first day of the Solstice
and tonight there will be ceremonies
and your own blood is beginning to flow
in tune with the change
and it doesn’t care to be in any way efficient.

Your body is wondering what Rumi would have to say
if he were a woman and you think of your nephew
and what it was like as a girl
being his aunt all of nine years
baby-sitting him and later
how he used to worry about his diabetes
and how he felt he should never marry
and you told him none of us are immortal,
you might as well be happy,
there is no knowing when we’ll die
--and there it is, your old mortality
hitting you in the abdomen once again,
your lower back aching
from its old injury
swollen from this time of the month
and you praying for menopause
(that’s got to begin arriving soon!)
and you will take your gift
of poems and essays home
to read and then wrap for your nephew
and his outrageous second marriage.

You notice how he always
seems to like exotic Jupiterian* women
and you wonder what is the reason why,
then you remember your recent walk with his mother
when you reminisced and praised her
for leaving home so young,
since your home life was so bad
and this way she was less affected
and you remember that during the walk
a lone white horse came cantering down the path
and your sister grabbed the horse
by a belt dangling from its rope harness
and you recall that it was while your sister
was taking care of horses
the summer before your nephew was born,
he simply being an embryo gestating,
that that big white horse
you had tried to ride as a child
wouldn’t move the way you wanted it to
since you were so little and it was so big
and you think this is what your body is trying to say
refusing to move since today is no day for concrete
but it is a day to think of horses and love
and imagining your sister and her son and Rumi’s poems
in the fading afternoon light.

*Astrologically the planet Jupiter rules the sign Sagittarius which is often depicted as an archer riding a horse. Jupiter is known as a planet of optimism, expansiveness, faith and religion. Jupiter is always like an archer, willing to take risks aiming at something he or she believes in and galloping off towards that elusive quarry.

Devil Girl

Note: double click picture to see the enlarged version
by Erik Kaye, copyright 2008
watercolor
80 cm wide x 110 cm high (roughly 31 3/4" x 43 1/2")



Note: Eric says this is a composite picture inspired by a rave celebrating the viewing of cherry blossoms at Yoyogi Park in Tokyo. Eric says the whole country goes crazy for roughly two weeks in the spring when the cherry blossoms come out.

A SHY LITTLE BOY

by Joan Dobbie, copyright 2008

standing beside an
old red pickup
scratching his
belly button
looks up to see
a (not really so
wise)
old woman
ride by
on her mud
yellow bicycle
flashing a smile
& waves to her
shyly

Really?

Note: please double click on picture to get a larger view
Carved and painted ceramic wall plaque using engobe and terra sigillatas as colorants
by Bea Garth, copyright 2008

Animus

by Bea Garth, copyright 2008

Speak and I will run,
come softly.
‘Though it draws me
I am afraid of the fire.
Like a puma
I must think I am unseen,
a few yards behind your reach
in the darkness, amongst the trees.
I must know that you are as I
when I hold you wholly
paws turned into hands,
fur into smooth skin
despite any owls
that may hoot
their screams.


Note: This is an old poem of mine written when I was a young woman years ago. However I believe it is still universal. Spring makes one think of such things even at age 58. Hope others here can relate. I welcome comments on this or any other post here.--Bea

Reading

(Double click on the picture and you will get a larger version)
By Erik Kaye, copyright 2008
watercolor



(If interested in purchasing some of Erik's work, please send a query by clicking on the envelope icon after it says comments below.)

Odakyu Line

Note: Just double click on the picture and you will get the enlarged version.
by Erik Kaye, copyright 2008
watercolor painting



My friend Erik Kaye, now living in Japan with his wife Corinne, sent this and a series of other paintings to us.

This particular painting is a beginning of his series on life in Japan. He has others of a trip to India as well as several abstracts. Really beautiful.

Thank you so much Erik!

--Bea

Spotlight

by Janet Crawford Trenchard, copyright 2008

You know this place very well
and it is lit, isn’t it?
candlelight or searchlight
police flashlight
It’s your soliloquy
a room on a stage
in which everybody leaves you
standing amongst
odd moments of your life
-they’re your history, but
still, you think: why drag them along?
and so
you step outside the room
into the rain
with only a thin jacket, now wet
and it is that leaving
disguised as everybody
always leaving you
isn’t it?

A New Old Spring

by Bea Garth, copyright 2008

Here it is spring at long last. The beginning of May; the reminder of promise. So many things seem more possible now despite it having been muggy and over-caste with no shadows earlier today (or should I say yesterday?).

The weather has been yo yo-ing around. Hot/cold, hot/cold. This after a very warm day on Thursday helping to clear excess live and scrub oak and elderberry branches from around my mother's rustic pool here in the woods above Los Gatos, CA. My body spoke today; do nothing! I was so tired. Despite the fact there were at least two events I really wanted to go to with friends I wanted to see. Am hoping tomorrow on Saturday I will be on "go" again and still have time to apologize to a couple of friends as well as focus on my sculpture.

As it was today (Friday) and tonight instead of going out I vegged and poked around and made myself an interesting new dish -- a pizza using "sotta" as a base -- a bread made from chickpea flour. Worked out pretty well actually. But then I ate too much of course since it was so good and I just had me, the computer and some sci fi on TV to entertain myself with. I was not energetic enough to do the dishes not to mention be creative. Now hours later I just had some papaya with nonfat yogurt and feel better--especially after a talk with an old poet friend late tonight.

He was telling me how he is going to quit poetry and start skateboarding again at age sixty one. Ha! I say. No way is he quitting; he is just reinventing himself, allowing himself to breathe without attachment. Its great though that finally he wants to be more active. Just hope he doesn't hurt himself. He has made his little house into a kind of prison it seems at times. Mind you a prison filled with beautiful poetry and music but still a prison since he rarely gets out except to go to work. This is never good for great lengths of time and plain dangerous as one ages.

For myself I am hopeful this spring. Life is getting better overall despite having been ill February and March. Despite it also taking a while to gather my energy in April, I now have three new sculptures I am working on -- a large diptych plaque wall piece and a couple of paintings in the works--as well as a slab sculptural piece I am perfecting and will dry out slowly very shortly.

I think of my friend and see what he is doing. Perhaps for me it is somewhat similar. I am not ready to commit to anything or anyone right now but my art plus finishing a remodel of a cottage I am in charge of. This is new for me since in the past it seems I was always WITH some guy. And now I realize it may be causing some chagrin with my friend since I am pretty certain he'd like me to commit to him. But that really isn't possible. I do love him but not as a partner--just as a friend and comrade. Our personal habits are just too dissimilar. It would take about a week (if that) and we'd be through.

In some ways I too feel like a young adult rather than someone approaching sixty. I am trying out my individuality after all. Part of it is rough since I really am used to being with someone. The loneliness can be daunting and sometimes rather mind numbing. But now I am learning that is what friends are for--to reach out to. But then with friends I am not bound to them by some unwindable thread as I was with my Special Someone I always had even if that someone changed from time to time through the years. I am now tired of the drama and the judgments and the coddling of temperments getting in the way of my creative time. Life is difficult enough after all.

Meanwhile too by dating and visiting or chatting on the phone rather than committing it seems I am learning more about people as well as about myself than I did in the past. It really is very interesting actually. I have no idea how long this will last but here it is for now--a breath of fresh air to explore this new springtime of my life where soon I will be fifty-nine.

Note: image above is called "Girl Under the Tree" by Bea Garth, copyright 2005

How Your Paleness Explodes Inside A Very Silent Joy

by Greg Hall, copyright 2008

So many hearts broken
All along the watchtowers
Inside every step
Along the way
So many mouths
Never really
Been kissed
So multitudinous
The weary virgins
Feet in the air
And a loneliness
Howling
An untouched coyote
Under a pristine
New moon
That immaculate
Sliver
Tuned
To the curve
That never found
Your
Secret
Throatskin
And
Other
Lost
Magicks
As in
So
Many
Hearts
Broken
Because
They
Never
Got
To
Beat
So many
Hearts
Broken
All
Along
The
Watchtower
So many
Mouths
Never really
Been
Kissed