Convulsive Beauty

3
Surrealism as Aesthetic Revolution

RAYMOND SPITERI

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Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or it will not be at all.
—André Breton, Nadja, 1928

In the 1934 lecture “Qu’est-­ce que le surréalisme,” André Breton reviewed

surrealism’s development since the 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism. “Surrealism
had been obliged to defend itself almost unceasingly against deviation to the
right and to the left,” he notes:

On the one hand we have had to struggle against the will of those who
would maintain Surrealism on a purely speculative level and treason-
ably transfer it onto an artistic and literary plane ([Antonin] Artaud,
[Robert] Desnos, [Georges] Ribemont-­Dessaignes, [Roger] Vitrac) at
the cost of all the hope for subversion we have placed in it; on the other,
 against the will of those who would place it on a purely practical basis,
susceptible at any moment to be sacrificed to an ill-­conceived political
militancy ([Pierre] Naville, [Louis] Aragon)—at the cost, this time, of
what constitutes the originality and reality of its researches; at the cost
of the autonomous risk that it has to run.1

Breton located surrealism in an ambivalent position, vacillating between “a

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purely speculative level” and “a purely practical basis,” framed by those who
abandoned surrealism’s revolutionary political objectives for culture, and by
those who sacrificed its cultural dimension in the name of politics. Surreal-
ism, in effect, existed in the contested space between culture and politics, and
the instability of this position largely accounted for the fugitive character of
the movement’s political influence.
This chapter is concerned with mapping this contested space as the ter-
rain of an aesthetic revolution. It focuses on the period between 1925 and
1932, when the surrealists attempted to develop an image-­space that would
facilitate active engagement with the Parti communiste français (pcf). Here,
the provisional status of this image-­space is distinctive: it exceeded the in-
stitutional confines of the cultural avant-­garde that was surrealism’s depar-
ture point, seeking an oppositional audience engaged in political action; it
simultaneously fell short of the degree of commitment expected of a radical
political movement. Yet to simply focus on the surrealists’ failure to establish
a functioning relation with the pcf overlooks the productive nature of this
encounter in the elaboration of surrealism. Indeed, surrealism thrived in the
contested terrain between culture and politics, employing the tension be-
tween these social fields as an integral element of its own stance. This position
can be regarded as an example of the heteronomous character of an aesthetic
revolution, the importation of concerns from life into the autonomous realm
of art; yet the important factor for surrealism is that heteronomy is not con-
ceived abstractly, as the desire to integrate art and life, but in terms of specific
political goals.2
Given the contested character of the terrain between culture and politics,
how is the political scope of surrealism to be understood? This question is at
the core of understanding surrealism as an aesthetic revolution. Surrealism
is now recognized as a significant artistic and literary movement; its mem-
bers are artists and writers who have produced a body of notable work now
incorporated into art and literary history. As a result, it is easy to assimilate
surrealism as a purely artistic or literary movement. However, this assessment
considers the reception of surrealism retrospectively, as part of an unfolding

Convulsive Beauty 81
history of which surrealism is only a fragment, and the oppositional charac-
ter of surrealism is regarded as yet another instance of épater le bourgeois. To
recognize surrealism as an aesthetic revolution, it is necessary to focus not
on the long duration, but rather the immediate reception of the movement,
the short-­term strategies and alliances surrealism employed to position itself
within the social space. In this context what distinguishes surrealism as an

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aesthetic revolution is its struggle to establish an image-­space in which the
cultural and political dimensions of the movement could enter into produc-
tive dialogue.
The term “image-­space” (Bildraum) comes from Walter Benjamin, who
used it in his 1929 essay “Surrealism: Last Snapshot of the European Intelli-
gentsia.”3 For Benjamin surrealism exceeded the bounds of a literary or artis-
tic movement, consuming all experience as part of its “profane illumination.”
The techniques of automatism and dream narrative effaced the distinction
between “art” and “life,” allowing a free exchange between cultural endeavor
and the everyday; yet what initially began as a cultural stance very soon as-
sumed a political character, and the surrealists now faced a choice between
the anarchic “experience of freedom” and the “constructive, dictatorial side of
revolution.” If surrealism was to be more than a “praxis oscillating between
fitness exercises and celebration in advance,” the surrealists had to bind “re-
volt to revolution” and “win the energies of intoxication for the revolution.”4
To develop this point Benjamin reconfigures the opposition between art
and life in terms of metaphor and image: “Nowhere do these two—­metaphor
and image—collide so dramatically and so irreconcilably as in politics. For
to organize pessimism means nothing other than to expel moral metaphor
from politics and to discover in the space of political action the one hundred
percent image space.”5 Whereas metaphor preserves the distance character-
istic of artistic autonomy, image short-­circuits the relation between heteroge-
neous elements to establish an immediate link. Cultural endeavor and politi-
cal action converge through the image, for as the artist or writer forsakes the
passive contemplative attitude characteristic of autonomous art, he or she
is drawn ever more closely into the sphere of action: “In all cases where an
action puts forth its own image and exists, absorbing and consuming it, where
nearness looks with its own eyes, the long sought image-­space is opened, . . .
in which political materialism and physical nature share the inner man, the
psyche, the individual, or whatever else we wish to throw to them, with dia-
lectical justice, so that no limb remains unrent.” The image-­space is opened
at a moment of political and cultural crisis when hegemonic articulations—
the traditional oppositions between action and contemplation, individual

82 Raymond Spiteri
and collective, mind and body, technology and nature, and so on—collapse
and the conceptual constellations of technological society are rearticulated
through a “space of images and, more concretely, of bodies.” Significantly, the
image-­space performs a double function: it not only constitutes the collective
as a political agent, but also furnishes the matrix through which the collective
articulates its political struggle to challenge the hegemony of established cul-

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ture: “The physis that is being organized for it in technology can, through all
its political and factual reality, only be produced in that image-­space to which
profane illumination initiates us.”6
Many strategies developed by surrealism would later be appropriated and
theorized by the Situationist International.7 However, the point here is less to
argue priority than to note the fugitive character of an aesthetic revolution
as an emergent phenomenon: what the surrealists first enacted in their situ-
ated practice would be theorized by the si in the practices of détournement,
dérive, and unitary urbanism. The lack of an explicit theoretical articulation
of these practices in surrealism was a crucial weakness that would facilitate
the rapid appropriation of surrealism as a literary and artistic movement.
Indeed, Debord and his colleagues identified this shortcoming as a specific
failing of surrealism.8

From Culture to Politics: The First Steps

There were several attempts to clarify the political position of surrealism dur-
ing the 1920s. In the 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism, Breton already defined sur-
realism as more than another artistic or literary movement: surrealism was
“psychic automatism in its pure state” that could “resolve all the principal
problems in life.”9 Similarly, the publication of the first issue of La Révolution
surréaliste in December 1924 appeared under the caption “We must arrive at
a new declaration of the rights of man” (Il faut aboutir à une nouvelle déclara-
tion des droits de l’homme) (figure 3.1).
Nonetheless, the initial reception of surrealism conformed to the estab-
lished pattern of an emergent avant-­garde movement. A skeptical public dis-
missed surrealism’s revolutionary claims as little more than the harmless pos-
turing of disenfranchised youth. To counter this reception the surrealists held
a meeting on January 23, 1925, to discuss the movement’s future direction and
examine the relation between surrealist activity, literature, and revolutionary
action.10 The immediate effect was the “Déclaration du 27 janvier 1925,” which
affirmed the revolutionary character of surrealism and distanced it from lit-
erature: “We have attached the word surrealism to the word revolution solely

Convulsive Beauty 83
Figure 3.1
La Révolution
surréaliste, no. 1
(December 1924).
Front cover of the
first issue. Three
photographs of the

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surrealist group above
the caption “We
must arrive at a new
declaration of the
rights of man.”

to show the uninterested, detached, and even entirely desperate character of

this revolution.”11
Although the surrealists welcomed the declaration, it did not diffuse ten-
sions between surrealism’s political and aesthetic dimensions.12 The questions
reemerged in April 1925, polarizing the movement between those members
content to pursue cultural endeavor and those who wanted surrealism to take
a clearly defined political stance, even to the point of forsaking aspects of
its strategy of cultural contestation. Could surrealism simultaneously pursue
cultural and political goals, or was it necessary to choose one over the other?
What weight should be given to revolutionary goals in relation to cultural en-
deavor? These questions plagued the movement, promoting dissent and ten-
sion between the central players—a tendency that increasingly characterized
Breton’s relation to Pierre Naville.
Naville was determined to distance surrealism from literature and art.
His suspicion of the tolerance of surrealism as a cultural movement led him
to question the existence of surrealist painting in the April 1925 issue of La

84 Raymond Spiteri
Révolution surréaliste: “Everyone now knows that there’s no surrealist paint-
ing. Neither the strokes of the pencil given over to chance gestures, nor the
image retracing the figures of a dream, nor imaginative fantasies can, of
course, be so described.”13 Although Naville’s position has typically been seen
as a condemnation of surrealist art, his objections related less to the definition
of surrealism as “psychic automatism in its pure state” than the cultural and

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political significance of the fine arts. In fact, he refocused the argument onto
the surrealist potential latent in forms of urban mass culture, which he con-
sidered to harbor greater revolutionary potential than what was convention-
ally recognized as art. Immediately after denying the possibility of surrealist
painting, he added: “But there are spectacles” (Mais il y a des spectacles).14 In
this way Naville attempted to transpose the debate onto the plethora of visual
images that constitute the modern urban environment, suggesting that artists
actively engage with the broad compass of culture. The target of his criticism
was less the production of visual images per se than the autonomy tradition-
ally granted to painting as fine art.
Breton, not surprisingly, responded unfavorably to Naville’s article on
painting, regarding it as an attempt to undermine his own position.15 His re-
lationship to Naville deteriorated in early 1925, leading to the formation of a
Comité Idéologique to clarify the relation between surrealism and the revo-
lution. The goal of the committee was to “determine which of the two prin-
ciples, surrealist or revolutionary, was more capable of leading their action”;
although it failed to reach a consensus, the participants did agree “the mind
[Esprit] is an essentially irreducible principle which cannot be located in life
nor beyond” and which was dominated by “a certain state of furor.”16 The
Comité Idéologique indicated a turning point in the early development of
surrealism: although it exacerbated personal tensions in the movement, it
represented the first systematic attempt to articulate the relation between cul-
tural endeavor and political action. Breton, who had chosen not to participate
in the Comité Idéologique, now seized the initiative, assuming editorship of
La Révolution surréaliste and injecting new impetus to the movement.17
Breton explained his reason for assuming control of La Révolution surréa-
liste in the lead article of the fourth issue.18 Whereas the Comité Idéologique
attempted to unify the surrealists around “a certain state of furor,” Breton
demonstrated greater awareness of surrealism’s ambivalent position between
culture and politics. He affirmed his fundamental belief that what united the
surrealists was their common opposition to the “ancien régime of the mind,”
but now asked what form this opposition should take.19 His solution was one
of moderation and mediation: his goal was to create a space where the modes

Convulsive Beauty 85
of active opposition surrealism manifested could interact with the forces that
inspired rebellion. He sought to distance the review from purely aesthetic
concerns without forsaking the value of cultural endeavor as the means to ex-
pand the scope of human experience, and adopted an aggressive, rebarbative
editorial policy, where poetry and painting shared the page with articles on
politics, abusive replies to unwarranted criticism, or collective declarations

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on contemporary events. Breton’s strategy was to establish a forum in which
the otherwise autonomous fields of art and politics were forced to interact,
thereby transforming the marvelous into a portal between cultural endeavor
and political action.

Turning Points: The Saint-­Pol-­Roux Banquet

The publication of the fourth issue of La Révolution surréaliste occurred dur-
ing the period of intense controversy that followed the notorious Saint-­Pol-­
Roux banquet held on July 2, 1925.20 Although Saint-­Pol-­Roux was one of
the few living poets the surrealists held in high regard, their conduct at the
banquet caused a riot that provoked almost unanimous condemnation in the
press.21 This was an important event in reinforcing surrealism’s oppositional
position, coinciding with a decisive turn toward communism, and marking
“Surrealism’s final break with all the conformist elements of the time.”22
The day began with the publication in L’Humanité of a collective decla-
ration against the Moroccan War, written by Henri Barbusse and signed by
seventeen surrealists.23 Later that day the surrealists received back from the
printers copies of a collective declaration, “Lettre ouverte à M. Paul Claudel,
Ambassadeur de France au Japon,” which they decided to distribute at the
banquet, leaving a copy under each place setting to greet the guests.24
The pretext for the “Lettre ouverte” was an interview in Comœdia, in which
Claudel not only vaunted his patriotic activity during the war—he traveled to
South America to purchase wheat, preserved meat, and lard for the French
army—but also criticized surrealism as having “only one meaning: peder-
asty.”25 Claudel represented everything the surrealists despised: he was a
conservative poet who advanced a Catholic interpretation of Rimbaud’s life
and writings and was currently the French ambassador to Japan—roles in-
compatible with the surrealists’ own understanding of poetry. In response to
Claudel’s comments regarding surrealism, the “Lettre ouverte” simply replied:
“The only pederastic thing about our activity is the confusion it introduces
into the minds of those who do not take part in it.”26 The letter then attacked
Claudel’s understanding of poetry, stating categorically that “one cannot be

86 Raymond Spiteri
both French ambassador and a poet,” and the surrealists seized the opportu-
nity to “dissociate ourselves publicly from all that is French”: “We find treason
and all that can harm the security of the State one way or another much more
reconcilable with Poetry than the sale of ‘large quantities of lard’ on the be-
half of a nation of pigs and dogs.”27 This violently antipatriotic position was
guaranteed to alienate the surrealists from the other guests at the banquet:

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the surrealists not only distanced themselves from the tacit belief that poetry
was compatible with French civilization, but through their presence sought
to occupy an oppositional position and thereby enact an aesthetic revolution.
The “Lettre ouverte” set the evening’s tone. The majority of guests did not
know how to respond to the letter or the presence of its authors. To further
compound matters, the surrealists had other grievances with Madame Ra-
childe and Aurélien-­Marie Lungé-­Poe, who were seated at the table of honor.
Rachilde had recently stated that it was not possible for a French woman to
marry a German, an opinion repeated at the banquet. In response, Breton re-
minded Rachilde that his friend Max Ernst, a German national, was present
at the banquet, and then proceeded to insult her. Saint-­Pol-­Roux looked on
helplessly as the room erupted in uproar: the surrealists exchanged blows
with other guests amid shouts of “A bas la France!,” “Vive l’Allemagne!,” and
possibly “Vive Lénine”; Philippe Soupault knocked over plates on the tables
while swinging from the chandelier; and the passing crowd attempted to
lynch Michel Leiris after he began shouting seditious comments from a win-
dow overlooking boulevard Montparnasse.28
The Saint-­Pol-­Roux banquet coincided with the surrealists’ opposition to
the suppression of the Rif rebellion in Morocco. This was the first time the
surrealists had adopted an explicit position in direct response to a contem-
porary political event, collaborating with a group of radical intellectuals asso-
ciated with Clarté, a review closely affiliated with the pcf. Over the next few
weeks the surrealists would sign several declarations supporting the pcf’s
opposition to military intervention, culminating in the publication of the
tract La Révolution d’abord et toujours in September 1925.29 This support con-
firmed the belief of the extreme right that surrealism was part of a Soviet
conspiracy. Action française led the offensive, suggesting that the press greet
surrealist works with silence, and even campaigned for their expulsion from
France.30 The cultural establishment ostracized the surrealists, which only
impelled them to strengthen their link to communism. According to Breton,
“the bridges had been burned between surrealism and all the rest,” and hence-
forth “our shared revolt focused much more on the political sphere.”31 To be
associated with surrealism now entailed supporting the movement’s political

Convulsive Beauty 87
Figure 3.2
La Révolution
surréaliste, no. 5
(October 1925). Front
cover of the fifth
issue. The illustration
depicts various

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publications and
tracts by the Paris
surrealist and Dada
group between 1919
and 1925.

position; those artists who were not comfortable with this position soon dis-
tanced themselves from the movement.32
What influence did this position have on the image-­space of surrealism?
Although the surrealists now agreed with the goals of the communist revo-
lution, there was no immediate transformation in the modes of cultural en-
deavor they pursued; for example, the October 1925 issue of La Révolution
surréaliste included Breton’s “Lettre aux voyantes” and Antonin Artaud’s
“Nouvelle lettre sur moi-­même,” as well as “Textes surréalistes,” “Poèmes,”
and “Rêves.” However, politics did influence the presentation of cultural en-
deavor in La Révolution surréaliste, notably through the inclusion of more
polemical statements. On the cover, above the title “Le Passé,” appeared a
photograph of various Dada and surrealist publications, in effect contrasting
the movement’s past activities to its present position (figure 3.2).33 The move-
ment’s political intransigence was evident under the rubric of “Chroniques,”
which included Breton’s review of Trotsky’s Lénine, Louis Aragon’s review

88 Raymond Spiteri
of the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, and republished “La Révolution
d’abord et toujours!” The tension between the surrealist texts that opened the
issue and the political views expressed in the closing pages defined the move-
ment’s new political position.34
Yet the balance achieved in the issue between cultural endeavor and sur-
realism’s political position was difficult to maintain. By the time the next

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issue of La Révolution surréaliste appeared in March 1926, the tension be-
tween the political and cultural orientations of surrealism was evident. On
the inside cover appeared an advertisement for two new initiatives: the open-
ing of the Galerie surréaliste and the launch in April of a new review, La
Guerre civile. While the Galerie surréaliste would provide an important outlet
for the work of artists associated with the surrealist movement, organizing a
series of exhibitions until its closure in December 1928, La Guerre civile would
never progress beyond the planning stage, its publication vetoed by the pcf.
Indeed, La Guerre civile was an initiative designed to establish a common
platform between an avant-­garde cultural movement and a radical political
group affiliated with the pcf. As such it reveals not only the proximity of the
cultural and political ambitions of surrealism, but also the tension that would
repeatedly frustrate the surrealists in their political endeavors.
The precarious relation between cultural endeavor and political action was
also evident in the second installment of “Le surréalisme et la peinture.” In
this series of articles Breton discussed the relation between surrealism and
the visual arts; the first installment celebrated the work of Picasso, and Breton
devoted this installment to Picasso’s contemporaries in the prewar genera-
tion—principally Georges Braque. Less conciliatory in tone than the previ-
ous installment, Breton began by criticizing the failings of Picasso’s contem-
poraries, as well as the “utter bankruptcy” of art criticism and the “usury” of
dealers.35 Yet despite his recent involvement with radical politics, Breton only
explicitly broached the question of artists’ relation to revolutionary action in
one paragraph:

The Revolution is the only cause on behalf of which I deem it worth

while to summons the best men I know. Painters share responsibility
with all others to whose formidable lot it has fallen to make full use
of their particular means of expression to prevent the domination of
the symbol by the thing signified: a heavy responsibility, at the present
hour, which seems to have been largely evaded. Yet that is the price of
eternity. The mind, as on a piece of orange-­peel, slips on this apparently
fortuitous circumstance. [L’esprit, comme sur une pelure d’orange, glisse

Convulsive Beauty 89
 sur cette circonstance qui a l’air fortuite.] Those who prefer to ignore this
fact, at the moment when they are least prepared, deprive themselves of
a mysterious aid which is the only aid of any value. The revolutionary
significance of a work, or quite simply its significance, should never be
subordinated to the choice of elements that the work brings into play.
Whence the difficulty in setting up a rigorous and objective scale of

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plastic values at a time when the radical overhaul of all values is about
to be undertaken, and when perspicacity obliges us to recognize only
those values likely to hasten this overhaul.36

This passage articulates the impasse at the center of surrealism’s cultural and
political ambitions. Breton mobilized the rhetoric of an opposition between
an avant-­garde “art of conception” and a conventional “art of imitation” to
locate the crux of the problem in the relation of the process of symboliza-
tion to conventional knowledge, and called on artists to use “their particular
means of expression to prevent the domination of the symbol by the thing
signified.”37 However, he was unable to articulate clearly the relation between
cultural endeavor and political action—other than as a possibility. He located
the artwork’s revolutionary significance in the slippage (glissement) between
symbol and thing signified, only to proclaim its fortuitous character: “The
mind, as on a piece of orange-­peel, slips on this apparently fortuitous cir-
cumstance.” The agent of revolutionary emancipation appeared in the figure
of chance, who transformed the possibility of revolution into actuality. In
effect, Breton hypostatized the contingency of the historical process. This rep-
resented a significant departure from Marxist belief: the revolution is not the
ineluctable result of history, but a possibility to be actualized.38

Protestation
The relation of cultural endeavor to surrealism’s political position became in-
creasingly problematical during 1926, as can be seen in May when Max Ernst
and Joan Miró agreed to collaborate with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes
on the costumes and sets for Roméo et Juliette.39 The commission, however,
would come at a high price; despite Picasso’s previous work for the ballet,
Breton and Aragon signed a declaration entitled “Protestation” to condemn
Ernst and Miró for giving “weapons to the worst supporters of moral equivo-
cation.”40 Like the Saint-­Pol-­Roux banquet, “Protestation” demonstrates the
situated nature of surrealism.
What Breton and Aragon described as “moral equivocation” was the aes-

90 Raymond Spiteri
theticism of the Ballet Russes, its assimilation of an avant-­garde attitude to a
conservative political position. Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes were refugees
from the Russian Revolution, and as such opponents of the Soviet regime;
similarly, the audience of the Ballets Russes was predominantly bourgeois in
character, and while it tolerated the innovation of the modernist avant-­garde,
it held little sympathy for surrealism’s political position. In this context, any-

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one who collaborated with the Ballets Russes committed a counterrevolu-
tionary act; thus it was necessary to assert the revolutionary dimension of
surrealism against aesthetic assimilation:

It is unacceptable for money to regulate thought. This is not the year,

however, for a man—whom one believed incorruptible—to capitulate
to powers he previously opposed. Those who concede, citing their cur-
rent circumstances, do not compromise the ideas they previously held,
which continue irrespectively. In this sense, the participation of the
painters Max Ernst and Joan Miró at the upcoming performance of the
Ballets Russes does not compromise the idea of surrealism. An essen-
tially subversive idea, not to be confused with similar endeavors, which,
for the benefit of the international aristocracy, seek to tame the dreams
and revolts caused by physical and intellectual famine.41

Significantly, Aragon and Breton distinguished between the actions of indi-

viduals associated with surrealism and surrealism as an idea; Ernst and Miró’s
collaboration with the Ballets Russes did not compromise the subversive as-
pect of surrealism as an idea, only their moral integrity as individuals. On
May 18, 1926, a group of surrealists and communist sympathizers disrupted
the Paris première of Roméo et Juliette by whistling, showering the audience
with copies of “Protestation” and shouts of “Vive les Soviets, Vive la Révolu-
tion Russe.” This was the first collective action undertaken by the surrealist
and Clarté groups since the failure of La Guerre civile in March. An article on
the front page of the communist daily L’Humanité the following day recog-
nized the political character of the action:

Once the curtain rose, a broadside of whistles sounded in the room.

The Surrealists were keen to prove they were not all “bought” by the
vilest form of artistic commercialism. A shower of leaflets (a protest
signed Breton and Aragon) came down on the orchestra. The perfor-
mance stopped.
Before long, most of the room had turned on a handful of brave
young men, calling the police—natural protectors of snobs and privi-

Convulsive Beauty 91
 lege. A squad of cops invaded the hall, unceremoniously expelling the
Surrealists, who were joined by some Communists. They shout: “Long
Live the Soviets, Long live the Russian Revolution.”
Fight, brawls, blows rained down. One by one the Communist and
Surrealists are expelled. We fight back. One of our staff, Jean Bernier
[an editor of Clarté], fiercely defends himself. Ten cowards throw them-

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selves on him and the officers take him to the police station.
This vigorous protest will, hopefully, succeed. At least it proves there
are a few intellectuals in France brave enough to resist the abject degra-
dation of all forms of this bourgeois art destined to perish with the
whole regime, swept out by the great breath of proletarian revolution.42

At first glance, “Protestation” appeared to be a resounding success. It not only

demonstrated the surrealists’ opposition to the Ballets Russes and bourgeois
culture, but a communist newspaper had recognized this opposition. The re-
port in L’Humanité not only conferred a degree of communist legitimization
on “Protestation,” but transformed it from a symbolic act limited to the cul-
tural arena into an intervention in the political arena.
Although “Protestation” helped establish a closer relationship between the
surrealists and communists, it also exposed the gulf between surrealism’s cul-
tural goals and its political orientation. The June 1926 issue of La Révolution
surréaliste reprinted “Protestation,” and Ernst and Miró found themselves
temporarily estranged from the movement.43 However, “Protestation” dem-
onstrated the fragility of surrealism’s aesthetic revolution: rather than consoli-
dating the movement, Ernst’s and Miró’s exclusion polarized the movement
between their supporters, and those who agreed with Aragon and Breton.
Although the movement soon surmounted these divisions—by December
Ernst and Miró were reintegrated into the movement—it remained as a salu-
tary reminder of the risk of dissent within the movement.44 In future Breton
and Aragon would proceed with greater caution, seeking a mandate from
the movement before attempting to limit an individual’s actions, a strategy
adopted to expel Artaud and Soupault in November 1926, and again in 1929
with Leiris and André Masson.45

The Naville Crisis

The scandal at the première of Roméo et Juliette signaled a period of renewed
cooperation between the surrealists and the editors of Clarté. Clarté would
reappear in June 1926, and although individual surrealists contributed to the

92 Raymond Spiteri
new series, collectively they felt frustrated that the pcf viewed their efforts to
establish common ground between surrealism and communism with skepti-
cism, merely offering to let them contribute to the literary column of L’Huma-
nité.46 Events finally came to a head in June when Pierre Naville—now an edi-
tor of Clarté—published La Révolution et les intellectuels: Que peuvent faire
les surréalistes? Breton responded in September with Légitime défense to de-

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fend surrealism and condemn the editorial policy of L’Humanité.47 The cen-
tral issue in the polemic was how best to realize the revolutionary aspirations
of surrealism—how, in other words, to translate cultural endeavor into direct
political action.
According to Naville, surrealism had derived its original impetus from a
particular type of anarchistic revolt inspired by their profound dissatisfaction
with established forms of intellectual expression.48 Surrealism transformed
Dada’s nihilism into a constructive effort, engendering “a positive current
initially translated into literary and artistic works, and various anarchic pub-
lic protests.”49 Yet surrealism’s sphere of action was limited by their inade-
quate conception of cultural endeavor, which was dependent on the forms
of bourgeois art as “autonomous creations of the mind.”50 This argument
recalled Naville’s earlier critique of surrealist painting, yet Naville now advo-
cated membership of the pcf, rather than the spectacle of mass culture.51
Although the surrealists had begun to acknowledge the political limita-
tions of their activity, they still manifested a profound confusion between a
metaphysical and a dialectical attitude.52 The idea of freedom advanced in
the Manifesto of Surrealism remained on an abstract, metaphysical level with
little social basis. They thus faced a choice between two possible courses of
action. Philosophically they could choose between metaphysics or material-
ism; politically, between anarchism or Marxism:

1) either persevere in a negative attitude of an anarchic order, an atti-

tude false a priori because it does not justify the idea of revolution it
claims to champion, an attitude dictated by a refusal to compromise its
own existence and the sacred character of the individual in a struggle
that would lead to the disciplined action of the class struggle;
2) or resolutely take the revolutionary path, the only revolutionary
path, the Marxist path, which would mean realizing that spiritual force,
a substance which derives from the individual, is intimately linked to a
social reality which it in fact supposes. This reality appears for us with
class organization. In this case, the fight is directly engaged against the
bourgeoisie, the proletarian struggle in all its profundity, controlled by

Convulsive Beauty 93
 the mass movements, with the help of intellectuals who decisively re-
solve to recognize the land of liberty only where the bourgeoisie will
perish.53

The surrealists could either maintain a metaphysical stance, which would

limit their efficacy to the ideological sphere, or they could embrace Naville’s
position, join the pcf, and direct their efforts toward political militancy.

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Breton responded to La Révolution et les intellectuels in Légitime défense.
Whereas Naville posed a stark choice between two options—metaphysics or
materialism, anarchism or Marxism—Breton questioned the validity of the
categories Naville used. The opposition between the “interior reality” of the
mind and the “factual world” was for Breton a “wholly artificial opposition
that does not bear up under scrutiny”:

In the realm of facts, as far as we’re concerned there can be no doubt:

there is not one of us who does not hope for the passage of power from
the hands of the bourgeoisie to those of the proletariat. In the mean-
time, we deem it absolutely necessary that inner life should pursue its
experiments, and this, of course, without external control, not even
Marxist. Doesn’t Surrealism, moreover, tend to posit these two states
as essentially one and the same, refuting their so-­supposed irreconcil-
ability by every means possible—beginning with the most primitive
means of all, the use of which we would be hard put to defend: I mean
the appeal to the marvelous.54

Breton attempted to defuse this antinomy through a subtle dialectical turn.

The reality of the mind was no less valid than that of facts; moreover, cultural
endeavor resolved in this antinomy, since the imagination mediated between
the subjective reality of the mind and material facts, a condition realized in
the experience of the marvelous. The “appeal to the marvelous” was an appeal
to the revolutionary dimension of surrealist experience.
Although Breton and Naville agreed that surrealism needed to adopt a
definite position vis-­à-­vis the pcf, they differed over the role cultural en-
deavor would play in the sphere of revolutionary action. Whereas Naville
wanted to subordinate cultural endeavor to the discipline of political mili-
tancy, Breton considered revolutionary action an extension of cultural en-
deavor. The image-­space uncovered by surrealism played a double role: it
provided an intimation of revolutionary transformation—thus political mili-
tancy represented a logical development of surrealism—and it embodied an
experience of freedom. In this context cultural endeavor was a necessary sup-

94 Raymond Spiteri
plement to the discipline of political militancy; indeed, by manifesting the
freedom the revolution was to realize, it constituted the ethical core of sur-
realism’s political position.55 And it was precisely the vision of the comple-
mentary character of cultural endeavor and political action that constituted
surrealism as an aesthetic revolution.
Despite the reservations expressed in Légitime défense, the surrealists ac-

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knowledged the wisdom of joining the pcf, and after a series of meetings in
November 1926, they concluded that membership was desirable but a matter
of individual conscience. Five surrealists decided that they were ready to join,
and in January 1927 Aragon, Breton, Paul Éluard, Benjamin Péret, and Pierre
Unik applied for membership. Breton’s application was carefully scrutinized,
and he was questioned on surrealism’s relation to revolution. Although his
explanations were accepted, he faced ongoing hostility from his comrades,
and soon withdrew from active participation in the pcf.56
The problem Breton faced with regard to the pcf was the political legiti-
macy of the modes of cultural endeavor pursued by surrealism. Up to this
point the politicization of surrealism had largely been seen as a negative re-
action of more conservative factions of French culture: for the extreme Right,
for instance, surrealism was a manifestation of the degeneration of French
culture associated with the threat of Bolshevism; for more moderate factions,
the relation between culture and politics in surrealism was less straightfor-
ward, since the political polemic was neutralized by the value of surrealism
as an avant-­garde cultural movement. Here, surrealism was received through
the prism of modernist culture, which valued the transgression of established
cultural conventions in the name of cultural renewal; the innovations of sur-
realism would assume their place within a history of literary and artistic prac-
tice. Whereas the surrealists considered their political position the logical
outcome of the experience of freedom harbored in cultural endeavor—an
appeal of the marvelous—the pcf associated the cultural modes of surreal-
ism with the decadence of bourgeois society, as evidence of the individual
surrealists’ class origin.

Images in Nadja
Given this context, how can the political physiognomy of surrealism be de-
lineated? Here due weight should be given to Benjamin’s exploration of the
image-­space of surrealism. According to Benjamin, surrealist profane illu-
mination opens an image-­space in which technology, body, and image all
interpenetrate. One example of this image-­space is in the labyrinthine struc-

Convulsive Beauty 95
ture of Breton’s Nadja, where elements of the quotidian enter into a charged
constellation through the confluence of chance and desire, so that the tension
between politics and culture animate its construction. On one level the book
is an attempt to work through the impasse in surrealism’s political position.
Nadja describes Breton’s brief liaison with a mysterious woman he met
on the streets of Paris, the Nadja of the book’s title. But this liaison is framed

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in such a way to highlight its enigmatic quality, the sense that Breton does
not know what had in fact occurred in his encounter with Nadja. When pub-
lished in 1928 Nadja also included forty-­four photographic illustrations of
places or objects mentioned in the narrative. In contrast to photography em-
ployed as a surrealist technique, where distortion and manipulation of the
image estranged it from conventional appearances, the illustrations in Nadja
were remarkably faithful to appearances.57 Their function was to ground the
verisimilitude of the text in the quotidian, simply recording people, objects,
or places mentioned. Breton’s encounter with Nadja did occur in Paris, and
the reader can visit the various sites where the narrative unfolded, or may
already be familiar with them. It is this proximity to the quotidian that con-
stitutes the image-­space of the narrative, since the banality of the everyday
resists embellishment as literature, while the surrealist themes of the narra-
tive disclose the marvelous in the ordinary.
As an example of image-­space, I want to focus on the illustration of the
Boulevard Bonne-­Nouvelle that appears toward the end of the Nadja, titled
The Illuminated Mazda Billboard. This billboard is first mentioned in the nar-
rative in relation to Nadja associating herself with the mythological figure of
Melusina: “Nadja has also represented herself many times with the features of
Melusina, who of all mythological personalities is the one she seems to have
felt closest to herself. . . . She enjoyed imagining herself as a butterfly whose
body consisted of a Mazda (Nadja) bulb towards which rose a charmed snake
(and now I am invariably disturbed when I pass the luminous Mazda sign on
the main boulevards, covering almost the entire façade of the former Théâtre
du Vaudeville where, in fact, two rams do confront one another in a rainbow
light).”58 The description of the billboard acts as a symbolic portrait of Nadja,
echoing her own self-­image. Breton also included a photograph of the Mazda
billboard, but it does not appear facing this description; rather, it appears
forty pages later, in the final section of the book, after Nadja and Breton had
ceased seeing each other (figure 3.3).59 However, the placement of the illus-
tration makes sense in relation to the text on the facing page, in which Breton
comments on the illustrations for Nadja, which in retrospect he found “quite

96 Raymond Spiteri
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Figure 3.3 Two pages from Nadja by André Breton (Paris: Gallimard, 1928). The
illustration juxtaposes Jacques-­André Boiffard’s photograph The Illuminated Mazda
Billboard on the Grands Boulevards with Breton’s description of the Sacco-­Vanzetti
riots. Digital image courtesy Special Collections Research Center, University of
Chicago Library.

inadequate.” A digression on the Sacco-­Vanzetti riots then interrupts his de-

scription of the Boulevard Bonne-­Nouvelle:

While the Boulevard Bonne-­Nouvelle, after having, unfortunately dur-

ing my absence from Paris, in the course of the magnificent days of riot
called “Sacco-­Vanzetti” seemed to come up to my expectations, after
even revealing itself as one of the major strategic points I am looking
for in matters of chaos, points which I persist in believing obscurely
provided for me, as for anyone who chooses to yield to inexplicable en-
treaties, provided the most absolute sense of love or revolution are at
stake and that this, naturally, involved the negation of everything else;
while the Boulevard Bonne-­Nouvelle, the façades of its movie-­theaters
repainted, has subsequently become immobilized for me, as if the Porte
Saint-­Denis had just closed.60

Convulsive Beauty 97
What is significant here is the way a contingent political event—the Sacco-­
Vanzetti riots—interrupts Breton’s discussion of the illustrations in Nadja.
Viewed in isolation, or in the context of Nadja’s earlier portrayal of herself
as Melusina, the billboard is not forthcoming as a political image; however,
juxtaposed with the riots, the image assumed a greater political value. The
image suddenly creates a space where the cultural and political dimensions of

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surrealism briefly resonate in sympathy. Whereas the illustrations were osten-
sibly nonpolitical, and thus Breton was addressing the cultural significance
of the book, this significance was poised on the threshold of the political. The
mere mention of the Boulevard Bonne-­Nouvelle opened a convoluted paren-
thesis on the revolution; Breton’s measured prose returned only after he had
emphatically stated his political philosophy.61
The Sacco-­Vanzetti riots erupted after the execution of Nicolas Sacco and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the United States. The case became a symbol of inter-
national proletarian opposition to capitalism after Sacco and Vanzetti were
convicted of murdering a guard during a shoe factory robbery, since the court
appeared unduly prejudiced by the anarchist political beliefs of the accused.
After a series of appeals, the fate of Sacco and Vanzetti was in the hands of
the Massachusetts governor, Alvin T. Fuller, who dismissed their final appeal
and sent them to the electric chair on August 23, 1927. News of the execution
triggered a series of riots by workers in major cities across the world, indi-
cating the political charge assumed by the case. In Paris the execution pro-
voked a major demonstration. The headline for the August 24, 1927, edition of
L’Humanité celebrated the heroism of the Paris workers, proclaiming: “Paris
workers master the street!”62 L’Humanité provided detailed coverage of the
evening’s events and underlined Communist Party’s role in the unfolding of
the demonstration.63
Breton accepted the Sacco-­Vanzetti riots as an article of revolutionary
faith, yet these riots also indicate his distance from direct political action.
The reason for his absence from Paris was his preoccupation with writing
Nadja. He had retreated to the Normandy coast, where he slowly wrote the
book’s first two parts.64 Although the riots represented a contingent event,
Breton’s response to them in Nadja is telling: the juxtaposition of The Illumi-
nated Mazda Billboard with his description of the Boulevard Bonne-­Nouvelle
and the Sacco-­Vanzetti riots opens a place for the appearance of another poli-
tics—the convulsive politics of the marvelous—that operates in the interval
between event, image, and text.65 Breton does not attempt to articulate an
explicit political strategy in Nadja, since his efforts to align surrealism with

98 Raymond Spiteri
communism have already resulted in an impasse; rather, he incorporates the
encounter with politics as one coordinate in the construction of Nadja.
The Illuminated Mazda Billboard also illustrates the distinction between
metaphor and image. As a symbolic portrait of Nadja the illustration was
based on a metaphoric of displacement, in which the brand “Mazda” sub-
stitutes for the name “Nadja.” As an image, however, it is based on the prox-

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imity between culture and politics, cultural endeavor and revolution. Breton
attempted to collapse the distance between surrealism and revolution by
juxtaposing the illustration with the description of the Boulevard Bonne-­
Nouvelle. Yet here we encounter an impasse in the politics of surrealism. For
surrealism to succeed culturally, it had to dress politics in metaphor; yet for
it to succeed politically, it had to strip culture of its metaphoric veils. Surreal-
ism never overcame this impasse, which inscribed its political position as an
overdetermined subtext in surrealist productions.66
This paradox is characteristic of surrealism as an aesthetic revolution.
To overcome the impasse in its political position required an audience who
would recognize their own condition mirrored in surrealism; surrealism
would in effect constitute a political agent’s cultural identity. The problem
Breton faced in Nadja was that his initial attempt to wed surrealism to politics
had failed. When he joined the pcf in January 1927, he was greeted with sus-
picion and hostility, and was soon forced to withdraw; but he did not aban-
don his belief that surrealism contributed to the revolution. Writing Nadja
was an attempt to “work through” this impasse, hence the proximity of poli-
tics to the narrative.
The success of this strategy in Nadja was limited. Despite Breton’s efforts
to situate the book in the image-­space of surrealism, its reception was largely
determined by the existing values and standards of the cultural field. A po-
litical reading was not forthcoming in France. (Benjamin does provide such
a reading in the German context, but this did not influence the immediate
French reception of the book.)

L’Age d’Or
Nadja helps identify the provisional and fugitive character of surrealism as
an aesthetic revolution. Although images can actualize the convergence of
political and cultural interests, as in the Mazda billboard / Sacco-­Vanzetti riot
example in Nadja, the fact that the significance of this convergence has rarely
been recognized is testimony to its provisional character. In the final section

Convulsive Beauty 99
of this chapter I look at another instance that exemplifies the tension between
cultural endeavor and political action in surrealism: the public controversy
generated by the film L’Age d’Or and its subsequent suppression by the French
state in December 1930.
L’Age d’Or demonstrates the complex interplay of forces involved in any
aesthetic revolution: first in terms of the emergence of a conflict between cul-

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tural and political values, and second in terms of the neutralization of this
conflict within a democratic society. Whereas the political impact of avant-­
garde culture was limited by its specialized audience—it is difficult for a work
that reaches a small audience to assume political value—cinema was by its
nature a powerful mass medium, with potential access to a broad audience.
For this reason cinema was subject to censorship at the local and national
level: before any film (apart from newsreels) could be publicly exhibited, it
had to receive a visa from the National Censorship Board (Commission de
contrôle des films), which included representatives from the Ministries of
Interior, Public Instruction, and Fine Arts, and the film industry. Indeed,
the Ministry of the Interior exercised a powerful influence on film censor-
ship during the interwar years; during the late 1920s and early 1930s, the con-
servative government ensured close scrutiny of any socially disruptive films.
L’Age d’Or exemplifies the way surrealism’s image-­space operated at the
interstices of culture and politics. It was initially able to gain the censor’s visa
because it did not originally appear as a political statement; indeed, its politics
were disguised by its unconventional narrative structure and imagery. How-
ever, when the film was released, it was accompanied by a “revue-­programme”
that sought to make explicit links between the cultural and political dimen-
sions of the film. After a screening was disrupted by a group from the extreme
Right who denounced the film as an attack on the institutions of the French
state, the film became the focus of a press campaign that resulted in the sup-
pression of the film. Initially this image-­space operated below the thresh-
old that marked a politically contentious manifestation, exploiting the liberty
given to artistic expression in France; however, once the film became the tar-
get of a campaign to suppress it, it exposed not only the limits of artistic free-
dom, but also the imbrications of cultural and political interests that acted in
concert to proscribe certain manifestations of freedom.
L’Age d’Or was written and directed by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, the
team responsible for the short film Un Chien andalou in 1929. Whereas Un
Chien andalou had been a critical and commercial success, L’Age d’Or was
part of a carefully calibrated campaign to produce a film that more closely
exemplified the surrealists’ current political position.67 It assumed a more in-

100 Raymond Spiteri

transigent political position, using the conflict between the film’s protagonists
and the conventions of bourgeois society to subject that society to a relentless
and devastating critique. Although the film succeeded in eliciting a strong
response from the Right, who condemned the film as an example of Bolshe-
vik culture, this response was not reciprocated from the Left, particularly the
pcf, who did not see proletarian values reflected in the film.

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L’Age d’Or was commissioned by the Vicomte Charles de Noaille, an impor-
tant patron of surrealism and the Parisian avant-­garde.68 It was considerably
longer than Un Chien andalou—sixty-­three minutes to the former’s seven-
teen—and included a mix of silent and sound sequences filmed in March
and April 1930.69 The film received its “visa” from the Censorship Board in
October, and its commercial release commenced on November 28 at an art-­
house cinema in Montmartre, Studio 28, the feature film supported by two
shorts, Paris-­Bestiaux, a documentary on the La Villette abattoir by D. Abric
and M. Gorel, and Au Village, a Russian film by Leonid Moguy.70
Like Un Chien andalou before, L’Age d’Or did not have a conventional plot:
the film begins as a nature documentary on scorpions before shifting to a se-
quence of bandits (which included several members of the surrealist move-
ment); the main character, played by Gaston Modot, is introduced disrupting
an official ceremony. The central episode in the film concerns Modot’s liaison
with a young woman (Lya Lys), the daughter of an aristocratic family that
hosts an elegant evening party at their suburban mansion. The young lovers’
attempts to evade scrutiny and consummate their passion are repeatedly frus-
trated by the obstacles of family, religion, and society. The film concludes
with a sequence based on the protagonists of de Sade’s 120 Journées de Sodom
leaving the Chateau de Selligny, with one of the protagonists in the orgies, the
Comte de Blangis, appearing dressed as Jesus Christ.
If L’Age d’Or lacked the disconcerting concision of Un Chien andalou, it
did assume a more political position, replacing the “popular” address of Un
Chien andalou with a greater awareness of the class structure of bourgeois
society. Although the obstacles to the lovers’ passion are the conventions of
bourgeois society, the film still falls short of a Marxist analysis. The prole-
tariat is not identified as the agent of revolutionary change. Rather, it is un-
conditional love that becomes the catalyst for change: the lovers’ passion is to
vanquish all obstacles. Its surrealism consists in the way it deploys imagery
to contravene the mores and values of bourgeois society, yet without articu-
lating a clear alternative to that society. As such it differed from Soviet films,
which presented the workers as the hero of the revolution. The hero of L’Age
d’Or was the male protagonist, who in no way represented a collective class;

Convulsive Beauty 101

rather, he doubled the ambiguous position of individual surrealists (and the
avant-­garde writer or artist in general) as an individual who did not identify
with the bourgeoisie, but who did not assume a role within the proletariat. It
was this ambiguity that would produce the political ambivalence evident in
the film’s reception.
To accompany the public release of L’Age d’Or, the surrealists also issued

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a “revue-­programme” containing a collectively written manifesto signed by
thirteen members of the surrealist group.71 Like the film, the manifesto does
not establish a clearly defined political position, apart from acknowledg-
ing surrealism’s opposition to the values of bourgeois society. Indeed, it ac-
knowledged the socially disparate character of the audience, but claimed that
the film could act as a catalyst for change: the audience of “several hundred
people” of “very different, not to say contradictory, aspiration covering the
widest spectrum,” had been brought together to measure “the wing span of
this bird of prey so utterly unexpected today in the darkening sky, in the dark-
ening western sky: L’Age d’Or.”72
The “revue-­programme” locates the film in the orbit of surrealist concerns,
making the case for the film as an expression of the movement’s political
position. It specifies the relation between artistic endeavor and the broader
social and political context, distancing the film from conventional artistic
concerns and placing surrealism at the forefront of the attempts at aesthetic
revolutions in the twentieth century:

The problem of the bankruptcy of feelings intimately linked with the

problem of capitalism has not yet been resolved. One sees everywhere a
search for new conventions that would help in living up to the moment
of an as yet illusory liberation. . . . Buñuel has formulated a theory of
revolution and love that goes to the very core of human nature, by the
most moving of debates, and determined by an excess of well-­meaning
cruelty, that unique moment when you obey the wholly distant, present,
slow, most-­pressing voice that yells through pursed lips so loudly it can
hardly be heard: love . . . love . . . Love . . . love.73

However, the film’s position was exposed: in asserting a convergence of

artistic and political elements the film was vulnerable to social sanction. The
disruption of the screening inscribed the film in a field of contested political
values, ranging from the “apolitical” defenders of avant-­garde culture to the
political condemnation of the film’s Bolshevik inspiration.
Ironically, the program for L’Age d’Or also celebrated “the gift of violence”:
“He smashes, he sets to, he terrifies, he ransacks. The doors of love and hatred

102 Raymond Spiteri

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Figure 3.4 L’Age d’Or, directed by Luis Buñuel in 1930. Film still showing a
monstrance (used to hold the Eucharist during the Catholic mass) placed in a
street gutter as guests arrive for an elegant soirée.

are open, letting violence in. Inhuman, it sets man on his feet, snatches from
him the possibility of putting an end to his stay on earth.”74 Although this
passage apparently referred to the unpredictable behavior of the male pro-
tagonist, who vents his frustration by kicking a pet dog, knocking over a blind
man, and slapping his lover’s mother, this “gift” would be realized from an
unexpected quarter on December 3, when members of two extreme-­Right
groups associated with Action française, the Ligue des Patriots and Camelots
du Roi, disrupted the film. The protest erupted after a scene where elegantly
dressed guests arrive for a party at a mansion: as the passengers alight from
their limousine, a monstrance containing the Eucharist is placed in the gut-
ter (figure 3.4). Amid shouts of “We will show you there are still Christians
in France” and “Death to Jews,” the protesters set off smoke and stink bombs,
forcing the audience to leave the screening hall; the protesters then destroyed
a display of surrealist publications and paintings in the cinema foyer, slash-
ing pictures by Dalí, Ernst, Miró, Man Ray, and Yves Tanguy, and threatened
members of the audience.
It is interesting to compare the reporting of the incident the next day in

Convulsive Beauty 103

L’Action française and L’Humanité. Both papers included a brief report of the
incident on December 4. L’Action française did not identify the protesters,
merely noting “about fifty spectators protested against a pornographic film,”
causing a hundred thousand francs’ worth of damage to the cinema, and lead-
ing to the arrest of eleven protesters.75 L’Humanité clearly identified the pro-
testers as members of the Camelots du Roi and noted the target of the protest

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as “a surrealist film, L’Age d’Or.” However, the emphasis in the article was less
on the film itself than on the continued activity of the extreme Right, who used
this “ridiculous protest” to remind the public that they are not dead, and noted
that Action française was holding its congress in Paris.76 It did not comment
on the film, nor promote any identification with the film; the political signifi-
cance was not the film’s surrealism, but the action of extreme-­Right groups.
L’Humanité only had limited coverage of the controversy until the banning
of the film on December 11, although it did publish an opinion piece by Léon
Moussinac in the “Cinéma-­Radio” column on December 7. His goal was not
to open a debate on surrealism’s merits, but to provide an “information sheet”
on the scandal. Although he credits the film with giving the institution of
bourgeois society a “vigorous kick in the backside,” he carefully distinguished
between the film as an expression of surrealism, which he considered a mani-
festation of bourgeois decadence, and the sensibility of the proletariat; for the
latter the film held little positive significance.77 In other words L’Humanité did
not consider the controversy over the film as an issue of great relevance for
its readers, a response typical of the pcf’s cautious reception of surrealism.
By contrast, the right-­wing press avidly engaged with the controversy.
L’Action française published a press release issued by the Ligue des Patriots
under the title “La censure d’un film bolcheviste”:

For several days a cinema . . . has projected a Bolshevik film that attacks
religion, the fatherland and the family.
Wednesday evening, the majority of the crowd, which included sev-
eral members of the Ligue des Patriots, protested loudly against these
insults, resulting in a violent brawl.
Several spectators were arrested. Remarkably, almost all the people
held at the police station were detained after they had come to lodge
complaints against the film’s immorality; they were not released until
five o’clock in the morning.
Several municipal councillors, notably M. de Fontenay, have pro-
tested against this odious film: the members of the Ligue des Patriots
intervened only to prevent a scandal.78

104 Raymond Spiteri

Le Figaro also took up the scandal. On December 7 the film critic Richard
Pierre-­Bodin addressed an open letter to the president of the Censorship
Board, Paul Ginisty. He attacked the film for publicly showing “the most ob-
scene, the most repugnant and the most impoverished episodes”: “Country,
Family, Religion are dragged through the sewer: a monstrance is placed in a
gutter, rubbed by the legs of a scantly-­dressed woman. Christ is presented,

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accompanied by a pasodoble, as ‘the principal organizer of the most bes-
tial orgies, with eight marvelous girls, eight splendid adolescent boys, etc.’”
Pierre-­Bodin asked how such a film could receive the censor’s visa, and he
called on Ginisty to revoke its classification.
The pressure on the government to intervene increased over the next few
days. M. Le Provost de Launay, a Paris municipal councillor, issued a pub-
lic statement on December 10 demanding that the Paris préfet de police, Jean
Chiappe, suppress the film. This campaign soon bore fruit: the Censorship
Board arranged a special viewing of the film to reconsider its classification,
and Chiappe banned the film on the grounds that it disrupted public order.
It is evident that for the conservative, right-­wing press L’Age d’Or was a
political issue. It recognized the way that the film opposed the ruling ideol-
ogy by attacking the social institutions considered fundamental to an ordered
society. It was thus able to mobilize the repressive mechanism of the state to
suppress the film and limit its audience. By contrast, the radical, left-­wing
press did not rise to the film’s defense, thereby preventing the scandal from
assuming a pronounced political character. The pcf failed to perceive the
potential of the scandal to advance its own interests: by isolating it as a con-
cern of the bourgeoisie, it failed to capitalize on the way the film exposed the
vulnerable underbelly of bourgeois society. Consequently, the film was un-
able to mobilize an oppositional audience who could read its imagery as a
critique of bourgeois society, nor could it promote identification between a
proletarian audience and the film.
The surrealists responded to the film’s suppression by issuing “L’Affaire de
‘L’Age d’Or’” in January 1931.79 This tract contained an account of the events
of December 3, the subsequent press coverage and official response, and a
series of excerpts from the program, then posed several questions regarding
the suppression of the film. It also included excerpts from the press commen-
tary, and two pages of illustrations (figures 3.5 and 3.6). One page recorded
the damage caused by the protest: the ink stain on the cinema screen, de-
stroyed paintings and furnishing in the cinema foyer, and a before-­and-­after
image of Dalí’s Lion, Horse, Invisible Woman. The other page showed film
stills from L’Age d’Or: a group of archbishops on the rocks, and an image of a

Convulsive Beauty 105

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Figures 3.5–3.6 Tract issued by the surrealist group in January 1931 to protest
the suppression of the film L’Age d’Or. Digital images courtesy Charles Deering
McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Library.

man and woman, which provoked protest from the Italian ambassador, who
recognized the king and queen of Italy in the scene, with the comment “The
Italian King and Queen, who massacre the revolutionary workers.” This tract
was an effort to mobilize a political response to the suppression of the film,
claiming it was evidence of the incursion of fascist tactics in France, and sug-
gested the collusion of the extreme-­Right groups with factions of the gov-
ernment.
Unfortunately, “L’Affaire de ‘L’Age d’Or’” did not generate much response,
and the controversy over the film rapidly declined once it was banned. Buñuel
attempted to issue a re-­edited version of the film under another title, but was
not able to negotiate the censorship process, and the ban against the public
screening of L’Age d’Or remained in force until 1981.80 All in all, the L’Age d’Or
scandal demonstrated the impasse reached in surrealism. While it could pro-
voke a response from the bourgeoisie, this did not in itself constitute evidence
of its commitment to a Marxist political position. The political character of

106 Raymond Spiteri

surrealism as an aesthetic revolution was located precisely in its repeated
efforts to escape the orbit of culture and enter politics, without ever attain-
ing sufficient momentum to escape the gravitational pull of culture. This lack
of momentum accounts for the provisional character of surrealism’s politics
and its inability to enact a full-­fledged aesthetic revolution. For the surrealist
revolution to assume a real social dimension would require the emergence of

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a contemporary revolutionary current in French society. In the absence of the
latter the political character of surrealism would remain implicit, the subject
of speculation and disappointment.

Conclusion
In 1952 Breton responded to André Parinaud’s observation that “the diffi-
culties involved in trying simultaneously to pursue internal (surrealist) ac-
tivities and external (political) ones” did not “end up paralyzing your means
of expression” by noting: “No—perhaps just the opposite. The period that
ran from 1926 to 1929 saw a flowering of Surrealist works that is often con-
sidered to be the most dazzling.” Breton then lists publications by Aragon,
Artaud, Éluard, Ernst, Péret, René Crevel, Robert Desnos, and himself, and
adds, “It was also one of the most outstanding periods visually, being one of
extraordinary inventiveness for [Jean] Arp, Ernst, Masson, Miró, Man Ray
and Tanguy.”81 Clearly, the vicissitudes of surrealism’s political position did
not impede the creativity of the artists and writers associated with the move-
ment. On the contrary, its political position appeared to act as a spur to a
series of “dazzling” works that have now secured surrealism’s reputation as
a significant avant-­garde cultural movement. Although surrealism’s success
as a cultural movement has eclipsed its importance as an aesthetic revolu-
tion, the latter was not negligible. That the moment of aesthetic revolution
in surrealism was provisional simply illustrates the movement’s ambivalent
position in the social space, suspended in the unstable region between cul-
ture and politics; equally, the tension between creative endeavor and political
action animates surrealism’s image-­space. Whereas the avant-­garde typically
respects the contours of the political field, preserving a minimal distance be-
tween art and politics, the surrealists attempted to use the image to collapse
the distance between these two modes of social practice.
The legacy of surrealism’s attempt to effect an aesthetic revolution would
pass to the Situationist International, which recognized both the achieve-
ments and shortcoming of the surrealist enterprise. Although Guy Debord
noted “the sovereignty of desire and surprise” in surrealism “is much richer

Convulsive Beauty 107

in constructive possibilities than is generally thought,” he was critical of the
way that surrealism had been co-­opted by the art market so that its politi-
cal convictions had been “moderated by commercial considerations.”82 He
would rightly identify the inadequate understanding of the image-­space—
now renamed spectacle—for the shortcoming of the surrealist revolution.83
The Situationist International would now define its own project as a reaction

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against surrealism, and sought to enact the Situationist aesthetic revolution
beyond the confines of the artworld in the fabric of everyday life.

Notes
For Don LaCoss (1964–2011), friend and collaborator. “Existence is elsewhere.”
­Research for this chapter funded by an FHSS Research Grant.
1. Breton, “What Is Surrealism,” in What Is Surrealism?, 127.
2. This analysis draws on the work of Bourdieu, Field of Cultural Production.
3. Benjamin, “Surrealism,” 2:207–21. Edmund Jephcott is listed as translator.
4. Benjamin, “Surrealism,” 215–16. Benjamin reiterates the alternative posed by
Pierre Naville in La Révolution et les intellectuels, discussed below.
5. Benjamin, “Surrealism,” 217.
6. The image plays a central role in the development of Benjamin’s writings dur-
ing the 1930s. The image-­space of the surrealism essay is eclipsed by his notion of the
“dialectical image” in the mid-­1930s, which in turn is eclipsed by the “Messianic ces-
sation of happening” in the “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” For a discussion of
this aspect of Benjamin’s writings, see Weigel, Body- and Image-­Space.
7. On the si, see Ford, The Situationist International.
8. Guy Debord, “Report on the Construction of Situations and on the Terms of
Organization and Action of the International Situationist Tendency,” in McDonough,
Guy Debord and the Situationist International, 32–34; Debord, The Society of the Spec-
tacle, 136.
9. Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, 26.
10. “Réunion de 23 janvier 1925 au bar Certà,” in Thévenin, Bureau de recherches
surréalistes, 111.
11. Collective, “Déclaration du 27 janvier 1925,” in Pierre, Tracts surréalistes, 34–35.
12. “Déclaration du 27 janvier 1925,” 35.
13. Naville, “Beaux-­Arts”; trans., “Beaux-­Arts,” in Matheson, The Sources of Surreal-
ism, 328.
14. Naville, “Beaux-­Arts,” 328.
15. Apart from the ideological stance of surrealism, Breton had a pecuniary interest
in art; since the war he had accumulated a substantial collection of increasingly valu-
able artworks (which he would sell when required) and from December 1920 until
December 1924 was employed as an artistic adviser by the couturier Jacques Dou-
cet. Breton acquired Les Demoiselles d’Avignon from Picasso on Doucet’s behalf. On
Breton’s relation to Doucet, see Chapon, “‘Une série de malentendus acceptables . . . ,’”

108 Raymond Spiteri

116–20. In 1929 Desnos would accuse Breton of hypocrisy precisely in relation to his
activities as an art dealer; see “Troisième manifeste du surréalisme,” 472–73.
16. The committee consisted of Aragon, Artaud, Masson, Max Morise, and Naville;
Breton, although not an active member, was invited to attend. The resolution was
signed by Artaud, Jacques-­André Boiffard, Leiris, Masson, and Naville. Thévenin,
Bureau de recherches surréalistes, 99–101, 128.
17. Naville soon ceased his active participation in the movement. He converted to

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Marxism during his military service and played an active role in the discussions re-
garding surrealism’s orientation toward communism during 1926.
18. Breton, “Pourquoi je prends la direction de la Révolution surréaliste,” 1–3.
19. Breton, “Pourquoi je prends la direction de la Révolution surréaliste,” 2.
20. The Mercure de France organized this banquet to honor the aging symbolist
poet Saint-­Pol-­Roux on the evening of July 2, 1925, at the Closerie des Lilas in Mont-
parnasse.
21. The surrealists had published their “Hommage à Saint-­Pol-­Roux” in May 1925.
See Pierre, Tracts surréalistes, 41–49.
22. Breton, Conversations, 89.
23. “Les travailleurs intellectuels aux côté du prolétariat contre la guerre du Maroc,”
L’Humanité, July 2, 1925. The declaration was signed by fifty-­seven individuals asso-
ciated with the reviews Clarté, Philosophies, L’Humanité, and La Révolution surréaliste.
Pierre, Tracts surréalistes, 51–53.
24. “Lettre ouverte à M. Paul Claudel, Ambassadeur de France au Japon,” in Pierre,
Tracts surréalistes, 49–50; trans., “Open Letter to M. Paul Claudel,” in Matheson, The
Sources of Surrealism, 348–49.
25. “Open Letter to M. Paul Claudel,” 348.
26. “Open Letter to M. Paul Claudel,” 348.
27. “Open Letter to M. Paul Claudel,” 349.
28. This account is based on a number of sources: Nadeau, History of Surreal-
ism, 122–25; Breton, Conversations, 87–89; “Déclaration des surréalistes à propos du
banquet Saint-­Pol-­Roux,” Pierre, Tracts surréalistes, 53–54, 396–97. Pierre Drieu la
Rochelle attributed the comment “Vive Lénine!” to one of the surrealists in “La véri-
table erreur des surréalistes,” Nouvelle Revue française, no. 143 (August 1925): 166–71.
29. See Pierre, Tracts surréalistes, 51–64. The campaign continued into November.
30. Breton, Conversations, 88–89. For a detailed analysis of the press reaction to the
Saint-­Pol-­Roux banquet, see Elyette Guiol-­Benassaya, La Presse face au Surréalisme de
1925 à 1938.
31. Breton, Conversations, 89.
32. Georges Malkine and Pierre Roy participated less in the movement during the
second half of 1925, while Miró distanced himself from the political position of the
movement.
33. The photograph included Littérature, Dada, Proverbe, La Vie moderne, and the
current issue of La Révolution surréaliste, along with a number of surrealist tracts, in-
cluding the “Lettre ouverte à M. Paul Claudel,” “Un Cadavre,” “Déclaration du 27 jan-
vier 1925,” and “La Révolution d’abord et toujours!”

Convulsive Beauty 109

 34. Masson expressed his satisfaction with the issue in a letter to Breton, describing
the cover as a “good omen.” Masson to Breton, October 21, 1925, Correspondance, 107.
35. Breton, Surrealism and Painting, 7–9.
36. Breton, Surrealism and Painting, 8. Translation modified.
37. This recalled Breton’s argument in the Manifesto of Surrealism, which linked the
epistemological and ethical significance of automatism. Breton, Manifestoes of Surreal-
ism, 26; Chénieux-­Gendron, Surrealism, 116.

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38. There are distinct parallels with Benjamin’s late writings, particularly “On the
Concept of History,” in Selected Writings, 4:389–400.
39. Ernst and Miró collaborated on the stage sets; Miró produced the costumes, and
Ernst the curtain. See Schouvaloff, The Art of Ballets Russes, 194–99, 262–65. Ernst’s
studies for the sets are reproduced in Ernst, Œuvre-­Katalog, vol. 2, figs. 994–1000.
40. “Protestation,” in Pierre, Tracts surréalistes, 64.
41. “Protestation,” 64. I thank John Finlay for his help in translating this passage.
42. L’Humanité, May 19, 1926, 1, cited in Pierre, Tracts surréalistes, 407.
43. La Révolution surréaliste, no. 7 (June 15, 1926): 31.
44. The December 1926 issue of La Révolution surréaliste included reproductions
of two works by Ernst and one by Miró. Éluard also published a note defending Ernst
beneath the reproduction of La Belle Saison.
45. In November 1926 Aragon claimed that “Protestation” was not a collective ini-
tiative, but an initiative he and Breton undertook as individuals. Bonnet, Adhérer au
Parti communiste?, 73.
46. Breton leveled this criticism in Légitime défense. See below.
47. For a detailed discussion of the issues involved in the Naville-­Breton polemic,
see Alan Rose, Surrealism and Communism, 209–65.
48. Naville, La Révolution et les intellectuels, 65.
49. Naville, La Révolution et les intellectuels, 67–68.
50. Naville, La Révolution et les intellectuels, 68.
51. Naville, “Beaux-­Arts,” 328–29.
52. Naville, La Révolution et les intellectuels, 69.
53. Naville, La Révolution et les intellectuels, 76–77; trans. Nadeau, The History of
Surrealism, 128.
54. Breton, “In Self-­Defense,” in Break of Day, 34.
55. See Benjamin: “[The surrealists] are the first to liquidate the sclerotic liberal-­
moral-­humanistic ideal of freedom. . . . But are they successful in welding this experi-
ence of freedom to the other revolutionary experience that we have to acknowledge
because it has been ours, the constructive, dictatorial side of revolution? In short, have
they bound revolt to revolution?” “Surrealism,” 236.
56. On this point, see my “Surrealism and the Political Physiognomy of the Marvel-
lous,” in Spiteri and LaCoss, Surrealism, Politics and Culture, 52–72, esp. 59–62.
57. On the role of distortion and framing in surrealist photography, see Krauss, “The
Photographic Conditions of Surrealism,” 87–118; on the documentary character of the
photographs in Nadja, see Walker, City Gorged with Dreams, 48–67.
58. Breton, Nadja, 129–30.

110 Raymond Spiteri

 59. The illustration appears in the third section of Nadja, which was written some
months after the first two sections of the narrative, after Breton had met Suzanne Mu-
zard in October 1927.
60. Breton, Nadja, 152–54. Translation modified.
61. Note the repeated use of subordinate clauses in the passage.
62. “Paris ouvrier maître du pavé!” L’Humanité, August 24, 1927, 1.
63. The Sacco-­Vanzetti riots coincided with the appointment of Jean Chiappe as

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the préfet de police of Paris and prompted him to suppress the pcf. This atmosphere
of police repression effectively transformed the pcf into an illegal organization, with
little time to accommodate avant-­garde intellectuals like the surrealists. On Chiappe,
see Zimmer, Un Septennant policier, 24–33.
64. On the progress of Breton’s writing of Nadja, see Polizzotti, Revolution of the
Mind, 281–91.
65. This strategy goes to the heart of the constitutive role of silence, interval, and
failure in the construction of Nadja, in which silence acts as an unsurpassable limit
against which the narrative unfolds. See Stone-­Richards, “Encirclements.” Maurice
Blanchot has a fascinating discussion of the encounter in “Tomorrow at Stake,” 407–
21.
66. This is not to say that surrealist productions were necessarily nonpolitical, only
that their political content resided in the way the formal construction of surrealist
works occasionally refracted the latent political anxieties in French society.
67. Buñuel had described the audience of Un Chien andalou as “this imbecilic
crowd that has found beautiful or poetic that which, at heart, is nothing other than a
desperate, impassioned call for murder.” Buñuel, “Un Chien andalou,” in An Unspeak-
able Betrayal, 162.
68. Charles de Noaille commissioned the film as a birthday gift for his wife, Marie-­
Laure. He also commissioned Le Sang d’un poète by Jean Cocteau.
69. A private screening of the film was held on June 30, 1930, followed by a public
screening for an invited audience in October.
70. The program misleadingly presented Paris-­Bestiaux as “Un film comique,” and
Au Village as “Un dessin animé sonore.”
71. “L’Age d’Or,” in Pierre, Tracts surréalistes, 155–84. English trans., “Manifesto of
the Surrealists Concerning L’Age d’Or,” in Hammond, The Shadow and Its Shadow,
195–203. A facsimile of the original program appeared as a supplement to special issue
of Les Cahiers du musée national d’art moderne, “L’Age d’Or: Correspondence Luis
Buñuel-­Charles de Noaille, lettres et documents (1929–1976).”
72. “Manifesto of the Surrealists Concerning L’Age d’Or,” 195.
73. “Manifesto of the Surrealists Concerning L’Age d’Or,” 199–200.
74. “Manifesto of the Surrealists Concerning L’Age d’Or,” 199.
75. “Petites nouvelles de la nuit,” L’Action française, December 4, 1930, 2. The inci-
dent was also reported as “Une Violente manifestation dans une cinéma” in Le Figaro,
December 4, 1930, 3.
76. “Les ‘camelots’ chahutent le spectacle du Studio 28,” L’Humanité, December 4,
1930, 2.

Convulsive Beauty 111

 77. Léon Moussinac, “Notre point de vue: ‘L’Age d’or,’” L’Humanité, December 7,
1930, 4.
78. “La censure d’un film bolcheviste,” L’Action française, December 5, 1930, 2. A
different version of this letter appeared in Figaro, December 6, 1930, 2. Maurice de
Fontenay (1872–1957) was the municipal councillor for the 16th arrondissement in
Paris.
79. Pierre, Tracts surréalistes, 188–93.

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80. It was possible to screen the film before invited audiences, such as cinema clubs
and organizations.
81. Breton, Conversations, 105.
82. Debord, “Report on the Construction of Situations,” 33.
83. Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 136.

112 Raymond Spiteri