2024-04-02 16:14:31
1924. André Breton publishes his famous Manifesto of surrealism, which inducts this revolutionary artistic movement into France. It is about transcending reality through a “pure psychic automatism”. A few hundred kilometers away, in Belgium, another homeland of surrealism, the poet Paul Nougé and two friends founded a magazine, Correspondence, to publish 26 surrealist tracts. On this same side of the border, Magritte will soon illustrate the absurdity of the world through his paintings. But what about women? Their important contribution to this movement has long been invisible. In light of the exhibition ” Just not to laugh. Surrealism in Belgium“, visible at the Bozar museum in Brussels until June 16, we offer you a foray into feminine surrealism, with such a late rehabilitation.
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Where is the woman “hidden in the forest”?
This montage, published in the journal The Surrealist Revolution in 1929, is eloquent. It is titled Portrait of the surrealists. We see sixteen photo booths of men with closed eyes: Aragon, Breton, Éluard, Magritte, Paul Nougé, Max Ernst, and even Dali. In the center, the work The Hidden Womanby Magritte, depicts a naked woman with this comment: “I don’t see the woman hidden in the forest”.
Who today is capable of citing the name of a surrealist hidden behind those of these giants? Apart from specialists or insiders? However, women took part in this movement in France and Belgium, as far as the United States and Mexico, including Eastern countries. But they became famous later, and had an ambivalent position, as curator Anne Geeraerts, deputy curator of the exhibition at the Bozar museum in Brussels, explains: “It’s just after the World War, women are starting to work and emancipate themselves, and the surrealists support this. But at the same time, they find a lot of their inspiration in 19th century literature, in Mallarmé, Baudelaire or Edgar Allan Poe, who had a rather idealized and very ephemeral vision of women. It was very difficult to link these two visions: the realistic one of women in a changing world on one side, and on the other, as in André Breton’s ‘L’amour fou’, this vision of a woman without any real identity, which is a kind of fantasy.”
Doctor in French language and literature, Cocteau specialist, Eléonore Antzenberger, who was interested in surrealist women, drives the point home. For her, the depreciation of the latter is nothing new: “I refer to Dada because surrealism is in his direct lineage: we do not remember Emmy Hennings, Hugo Ball’s companion; she died in oblivion. Same thing for Sophie Taeuber. I think all these women suffered both in their lives as women and in their lives as artists. Kay Sage, Yves Tanguy’s partner, said that he never looked at the paintings she painted, while in return she was interested in his work. Breton said: ‘In surrealism, the woman will have been loved and celebrated as the great promise, the one which remains after having been kept.’ Beloved, it is not for us to judge. Celebrated, without a doubt, but on condition that it remains in its place, like an object, like a body!“
In the light of this movement, an emancipation despite everything
But women artists do not allow themselves to be confined to this role of mute muses. They cultivate their independence far from masculine circles, while emancipating their palettes. In the light of this movement, the Belgian Jane Graverol, for example, who asserted that she was not a surrealist painter but a surrealist who painted, freed herself from the genre of floral art in the 1940s, and even diverts it, to convey feminist messages. Just like Rachel Baes, her fellow citizen, who also takes up the subject of salary inequalities. Xavier Canonne is curator of the exhibition at Bozar:
“Rachel Baes’ painting is quite violent. She painted with a knife with very contrasting colors. We feel his rage to paint! As for the woman often represented in Jane Graverol’s paintings, she is also a woman who frees herself, who considers her condition. Both could have led worldly careers as painters. Rachel Baes sold very, very well before the war. After that [après qu’elle se soit accomplie dans sa nouvelle esthétique, NDR], it was more difficult to sell and even complicated. It is to their credit to have broken away from this way of painting which was undoubtedly more seductive and more gendered.”
Rachel Baes, The philosophy lesson, 1963 – Private collection © Sabam Belgium 2024
In the shadow of the all-powerful Breton
In France, the rigor of theorizing and the fact that everything revolves around the figure of André Breton does not promote the visibility of women. Moreover, with a few exceptions, such as the couple of photographers and authors Claude Cahun and Suzanne Malherbe, France has mainly retained the names of artists who shared, at a given moment, the life of Breton; Léona Delcourt, who is none other than the famous Nadja whose real name few know, Jacqueline Lamba, or even Valentine Hugo. Despite a marriage and years of living together, Breton will not even cite Jacqueline Lamba in his work Surrealism and painting (1928).
Xavier Canonne explains that the Belgian surrealist movement practiced “exclusions” less. Not to mention that while Magritte took up a lot of space, the poet Paul Nougé, the founding figure of the movement, insisted on remaining in the shadows:
“There is no surrealist manifesto in Belgium, for example. The absence of effective theorization of surrealism in Belgium undoubtedly allowed many more entries, fewer passing exams with the great chef. So I would tend to go in the direction of saying that it was perhaps more natural and simpler. Basically, Belgium is at a crossroads. If we consider, for example, abstraction, a movement which has nothing to do with surrealism: Belgium has been very, very powerful in abstract movements since the 1920s, thanks to the proximity of Holland, de Staël and others. We are also crossed by a very important expressionist movement which comes from Germany. This porosity between borders is fairly constant and I observe that there is a permanent sort of readjustment to the Belgian filter. It’s very visible in surrealism, in this way of being undoubtedly much freer and more detached than what we saw in Paris.”
As for the concerns of the French surrealists, according to Eléonore Antzenberger, they are more oriented towards a search, a claim for their identity beyond genres: “I think they worked more on androgynate, on metamorphosis, hybridization. In the works of Leonor Fini for example, we find many characters represented as animal-women, or half-man-half-woman creatures. Especially since this theme is related to nature. It’s interesting because for the surrealists, woman is par excellence the emblem of nature, a kind of magical key, a link with a kind of occultism linked to nature.“
Jane Graverol, The drop of water, 1964. Among the assembly of surrealists, the painter represented herself at the very top. In the center, the poet Irène Hamoir – Property of the Belgian State, collection of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation © Sabam Belgium 2024. Photo: Luc Schrobiltgen
The refusal of the label, of “gringos” and other “old cockroaches”
Like Jane Graverol, many surrealist artists considered the movement too narrow and sought to emancipate themselves from it, which many did, explains Eléonore Antzenberger: “Jacqueline Lamba will eventually divorce. Valentine, Hugo refused to participate in surrealist exhibitions, saying afterwards that she wanted to feel free to do and love what she wanted. So the observation is quite clear. We also see it with the Swiss artist Meret Oppenheim, who refused to appear in the work that Whitney Chadwick will devote to surrealist women: according to her, a study exclusively dedicated to women was still a form of exile. Not to mention Frida Kahlo who did not hide her contempt for those she nicknamed gringos and other old cockroaches! But were they given a choice? It was truly a way of saving their skins as artists. Even more: slamming the door in that way was paradoxically an act of pure surrealist rebellion. Surrealism is first of all freedom. However, to free oneself from it is also to recognize the existence of a framework which, moreover, is reserved for men. it demonstrates that despite its crazy modernity, surrealism is on the one hand based on dogmas and is, on the other hand, not devoid of obstacles.“
The eternal problem of inscription in posterity
Generally speaking, women artists, in addition to having had to struggle during their lifetime, struggle to enter posterity. After their death, they disappear from cultural institutions, the art market and university productions, as Anne Geeraerts, who examines Bozar’s conscience, laments:
” In Belgium, women artists, especially Rachel Baes, were rather valued by their male colleagues, but even on the side of our own institution, we see the difference in treatment: we produced exhibition catalogs for men, whereas There is little trace of exhibitions by women artists in the archives. When we look a little further than Belgium, at the major surrealist exhibitions, in London in 1936, or in Paris, we can only see that women had the minor places: sometimes their works did not even have cartels.”
Today, the galleries and museums that exhibit them therefore have a major role in the rehabilitation of surrealist women, because the highlighting of the works is directly linked to their value on the art market.
Besides, things are changing. Last year, a painting by Jeanne Gravel, The Trait de Lumière, estimated at 55,000 euros, was finally sold for 600,000 euros.
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