“The
man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.”
A
man most associated with surrealism, Breton was also a Dadaist in his early
years (whatever a Dadaist really means). The French writer was a champion of a
shared Dada/Surrealist method called automatism where creative works are mostly
produced spontaneously without constraints, planning, and overly conscious
thoughts.
After
a brief medical career, where he took a major interest in mental illness,
Breton moved to Paris where he would soon join the Dada movement and play a
major part in its beginnings in France. Breton appeared in the first Dada
performance in Paris in early 1920 which was the start of many provocations and
controversies during that same year and in the years directly after. One of these
performances included Breton appearing with a revolver tied to each of his
temples.
“I
do not think that the nature of the finished product is more important than the
choice between cake and cherries for dessert”
in
1924 he wrote the Manifeste du surréalisme and around this time officially
broke from Dada to throw himself wholeheartedly into surrealism. Some would argue
this was a technicality (even unnecessary), resulting more from a breakdown in
his relationship with Tristan Tzara than Breton ceasing to embrace many of
Dada’s tenets which are not, in many ways, all that dissimilar to surrealism.
Time
Magazine would later dub him the founder of surrealism "who frequently
dresses entirely in green, smokes a green pipe, drinks a green liqueur and has
a sound of knowledge of Freudian psychology."
Later
in the 1920s Breton would join the French Communist Party while continuing his
literary output and promotion of surrealism. This included his novel Nadja,
considered one of the key texts of the French surrealist movement.
In
the early 1940s Breton would leave France with Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst to
live in the US for several years before returning after the Second World War to
Paris where he would continue to publish poetry and essays until his death in 1966 at
the age of 70. During his life Breton would marry three times and have one daughter, Aube,
who is still alive today.
Sources
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