Subjectivity incorporated: the surrealist vignette in the photography of Max Dupain

Notes

• André Breton's writings on the principles of Surrealism are voluminous. The following are representative primary source texts: Manifestoes of Surrealism, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974; Nadja, Paris: Gallimard, 1928; Arcane 17, New York: Brentano's, 1945; Young Cherry Trees Secured Against Hares, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969; Surrealism and Painting, London: Macdonald, 1972; Mad Love, Lincoln, New England: University of Nebraska Press, 1987; Communicating Vessels, Lincoln, New England: University of Nebraska Press, 1990; André Breton Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism, New York: Paragon House, 1993; Earthlight, Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1993; ‘Introduction to the discourse on the paucity of reality’, October, 69, Summer 1994, pp.132–44; Free Rein, Lincoln, New England: University of Nebraska Press, 1996; (ed.), This Quarter, vol. V, no.1, 1932.
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• Much has been written on these aspects of surrealist photography. See: D. Ades, ‘L'Amour fou’, Creative Camera, vol.7, 1986, pp.10–11; A. Bellony-Rewald, ‘Photography in surrealist reviews’, Art International, vol.5, Winter 1988, pp.35–40; A. Danto, ‘L'Amour fou: photography and Surrealism’, The Print Collector's Newsletter, vol.17, May/June 1986, pp.65–68; Els Cossos Perduts, fotographia i surréalistes, Centre Cultural de la Fundació ‘la Caixa’, Barcelona, 1996; H. Ennis, ‘An optic parable: Surrealism and photography’, Surrealism: Revolution by Night, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1993. pp.156–69; J. Gross, ‘Photography and Surrealism’, British Journal of Photography, vol.133, 22 August 1986, pp.970–71; N. Hall-Duncan, ‘L'Amour fou, photography and Surrealism’, Afterimage, vol.13, April 1986, pp.18–19; N. Hall-Duncan, Photographic Surrealism, Cleveland: New Gallery of Contemporary Art, 1979; R. Krauss; J. Livingston; D. Ades, L'Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism, New York: Abbeville Press, 1985; M. Power, ‘Surrealist photography at the Corcoran: a revisionist revival’, New Art Examiner, vol.13, February 1986, pp.34–37; K. Robinson, ‘Lee Miller and photographic Surrealism’, Creative Camera, vol.8, 1986, pp.10–11.
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• M. Dupain, ‘Man Ray: his place in modern photography’, The Home, 1 October 1935, pp.38–39 and 84.
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• A number of these photographs are reproduced in the following: M. Dupain, ‘Max Dupain's photographs for ‘surrealist party’, The Home, 1 April 1937, pp.52–53 and M. Dupain, ‘Surrealist portraits’, The Home, 1 June 1938, pp.39–46.
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• See: Anson Shadow, 1942; Ant Bed with Blackberry Shadow, 1938; Sunset at Tathra, c.1940s in M. Dupain, Max Dupain's Australian Landscapes, Ringwood: Viking, 1988, pp.44, 45, 206 respectively and Sydney Harbour Crepscule, 1937; Liner at Night, 1940; Mosman Bay at Dusk, 1937; Twilight, Peak Hour, Sydney Harbour Bridge, 1946; Nine Mile Store, Mona Vale, 1930s; Tram Abstraction, c.1930s in Dupain, Max Dupain's Australia, pp.35, 44, 70, 71, 80 respectively.
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• S. Sontag, On Photography, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977, passim.
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• Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism.
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• Breton, Nadja; Breton, Mad Love.
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• Comte de Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror, (1864), New York: New Directions, 1946, p.263.
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• Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, p. 14.
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• S. Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols., James Strachey (ed.), vols. 4 and 5, London: Hogarth Press, 1953. pp.157–529.
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• Breton, Mad Love. The photograph is reproduced in Minotaur, no.10, Winter 1937.
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• Dupain, Max Dupain's Australian Landscapes, p.5.
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• R. Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, New York: Hill and Wang, 1981, passim.
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• Dupain, Max Dupain's Australian Landscapes.
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• Breton, Mad Love, pp.13–19.
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• Anonymous photograph, Benjamin Péret insulting a Priest, 1926, 8.3 × 5.7 cm., Bibliothàque Littéraire Jacques Doucet, Paris.
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• The following studies are representative of scholarship on the influence of mythology on Surrealism: D. Birmingham, ‘Masson's “Pasiphae”: Eros and the unity of the Cosmos’, Art Bulletin, vol. 69, June 1987, pp.279–94; M.S. Brobst, ‘Picasso's Minotaur images: 1927–28 and 1933–34’, PhD thesis, California State University, Fullerton, 1987; W. Chadwick (ed.), Mirror Images: Women Surrealism and Self-Representation, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998; W. Chadwick, ‘René Magritte and the liberation of the image’ Art International, 23, no.1, 1976, pp.11–17; W. Chadwick, ‘The muse as artist: women in the surrealist movement’, Art in America, vol.73, July 1985, pp.120–29; W. Chadwick, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, London: Thames and Hudson, 1985; W. Chadwick, ‘Leonora Carrington: evolution of a feminist consciousness’, Woman's Art Journal, vol.7, Spring/Summer 1986, pp.37–42; W. Chadwick, ‘The Great War and the anxious vision’, Art History, vol.15, no.4, December, 1992, pp.553–55; W. Chadwick, ‘Carrington, Mexico and Surrealism: art forum on Leonora Carrington’, Women's Art Magazine, 45, March-April 1992, pp.8–14; K. Conley, Automatic Woman: The Representation of Woman in Surrealism, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1996; S. Gaggi, ‘Leonor Fini: a mythology of the feminine’ Art International, 23, no.5-6, 1979, pp.34–39; S. Nessen, ‘Yves Tanguy's otherworld: reflections on a celtic past and a surrealist sensibility’, Arts Magazine, vol.62, January 1988, pp.22–29; S. Stich, Anxious Vision: Surrealist Art, Berkeley/New York: University of California Press and Abbeville Press, 1990.
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• S. Dalí, ‘The stinking ass’, This Quarter, vol.5, no.1, 1932, p.49.
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• For a fuller discussion of these points see: E. Legge, ‘Zeuxis's grapes, Novalis's fossils, Freud's flowers: Max Ernst's natural history’, Art History, vol.16, no.1, 1993, pp.147–72.
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• See: Breton, Young Cherry Trees…. The point is taken further in the following publications: M. Benedikt, The Poetry of Surrealism: An Anthology, Boston: Little Brown, 1974; E.B. Germain (ed.), Surrealist Poetry in English, London: Penguin, 1978; J. H. Matthews, Surrealist Poetry in France, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1969; R. Stamelman, ‘Surrealist poetry: the revolt against mimesis’, Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 22, 1975, pp.561–71.
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• This point is the subject of much theoretical writing; see: F. Cioffi, ‘Wollheim on Freud’, Inquiry, vol.15,1972, pp.171–86; W. Ellenwood, ‘André Breton and Freud’, PhD thesis, Rutgers University, New Jersey, 1972; F. Fraiberg, ‘Freud's writing in art’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 37, 1956, pp.82–96; J. Gibson, ‘Surrealism before Freud: dynamic psychiatry's “simple recording instrument’”, Art Journal, Spring, 1987, pp.5660; E. Henning, ‘Surrealism: in the footsteps of Freud’, Art News, May 1980, pp.122–24; V.R. Hopkins (ed.), Philosophical Essays on Freud, London: Cambridge University Press, 1982; S. Marcus, Freud and the Culture of Psychoanalysis, London: Allen & Unwin, 1984; L. Marcuse, ‘Freud's aesthetics’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. XVll, no.1, 1958, pp.1–21; W.C. McGrath, Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1986; P. Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1970; R. Samuels, Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Lacan s Reconstruction of Freud, New York: Routledge, 1993; K. Wach, ‘The pearl divers of the unconscious: Freud, Surrealism and psychology’, Surrealism: Revolution by Night, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1993, pp.170–89; L.L. Whyte, The Unconscious Before Freud, New York: St Martin's Press, 1978; R. Wollheim, ‘Freud and the understanding of art’, British Journal of Aesthetics, vol.X, 1970, pp.214.
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• The point is taken further in the following publications: E. Adamowicz, ‘Monsters in Surrealism: hunting the human-headed bombyx’, Modernism and the European Unconscious, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge Polity Press, 1990, pp.283–302; E. Adamowicz, Surrealist Collage in Text and Image, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998; M. A. Caws, The Surrealist Look, An Erotics of Encounter, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1997; K. Grossman, ‘Playing surrealist games: parataxis and creativity’, French Review, 58, 5 April 1979, pp.700–07; C.V. Poling, Surrealist Vision and Technique: Drawings and Collages from the Pompidou Center and the Picasso Museum, Paris, Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, 1996.
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• G. Batchen, ‘Creative actuality: the photography of Max Dupain’, Art Monthly, no.45, November 1991, p.2.
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