#CACTUS MUSIC SURREALISM MANUAL#

Moreover, the Spanish filmmaker Luis BuГ±uel, a collaborator of Salvador DalГ, resided in Mexico from 1946-1961, and he, too, befriended many Mexican photographers, including HГ©ctor GarcГa. Foreign artists attracting attention in Mexico included Pablo Picasso, Hans Arp, Giorgio de Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray. Mexican artists in the 1930s and the 1940s were familiar with what European artists were pursuing. While Manuel ГЃlvarez Bravo, like other artists in Mexico, resisted being identified as a вЂњSurrealist,вЂќ the impact of Surrealism on him and his contemporaries, even before the arrival of Breton, is significant. The image offered, of a woman nude except for bandages, lying on a blanket next to star cacti, is surely the most iconic image in Latin American photography.

#CACTUS MUSIC SURREALISM MANUAL#

The great French poet, AndrГ© Breton, came to Mexico in 1938, met with artists, and proclaimed, вЂњMexico tends to be a Surrealist place par excellence.вЂќ In 1939, Breton asked MexicoвЂ™s greatest photographer, Manual ГЃlvarez Bravo, to provide a cover photograph for the catalogue of the International Surrealist Exhibition. Surrealism was not an art movement of protest, but instead one that explored the irrational, the unexpected in life. At a time when European artists and intellectuals, especially poets, turned against the вЂњhigh cultureвЂќ of the Europe that had spawned the horrors of the senseless war in which millions lost their lives, some artists viewed Surrealism as a mechanism for celebrating the mysteries of the subconscious, of dreams, of sexual desire and fantasy, and of strange juxtapositions (of the kind so common in dreams). Surrealism emerged as a style from the ashes of World War I, Mexican artists sometimes resisted being labeled Surrealists. Each expressed a distinctive point of view dealing with often irrational and unexpected life experiences. The photographers whose work we will show include Rosa Covarrubias, Tina Modotti, Manuel ГЃlvarez Bravo, Lola ГЃlvarez Bravo, Kati Horna, HГ©ctor GarcГa, Graciela Iturbide, and Flor GarduГ±o. Small moments collide into endless possibilities, whether the poet is riffing on city life or checking out museums or galleries.Surrealismo, Ojos de MГ©xico/Surrealism, Eyes of MexicoВ at Throckmorton Fine Art in NYC features forty photographs by celebrated artists-foreign and national-which demonstrate the enduring influence of Surrealism on photography in Mexico. Characters as diverse as Jackson Pollack, Taylor Meade, Sari Dienes, and Louise Bourgeois populate these pages, as well as an abiding Surrealistic sensibility that is filtered through contemporary aesthetics.

A longtime Dada proponent, OisteanuвЂ™s work as an art critic echoes in his inspirations. This cultural cross-pollination is richly evident throughout Anarchy for a Rainy Day, a collection of poetry and collage that transports the reader to Europe, India, Bali, South America, and urban American streets.

For the past forty-three years, he has written in English. Soon after his debut poetry collection, Prosthesis (1970), was published in Bucharest, Oisteanu came to New York City and began a lifetime of travel. Like his predecessor, Tristan Tzara (whose pseudonym translates to вЂњsad in the countryвЂќ), Oisteanu, as a Jew, was doubly persecuted for his heritage and creative activities. Long an important breeding ground for international Dada/Surrealistic activity, Romania was home to pioneering artists, sculptor Constantin Brancusi, playwright Eugene Ionesco, and numerous poets who emigrated to Zurich, Paris, and America. Russian-born and Romanian-educated Valery OisteanuвЂ™s 1970 literary debut in Bucharest was labeled вЂњsurrealisticвЂќ and blacklisted by the Communist regime.

WeвЂ™re all getting tired without dada at heart.вЂќ Tristan Tzara, 1923

Cactus music surrealism