File spoon-archives/surrealist.archive/surrealist_1997/surrealist.9707, message 13


From: INMAN J S <S.Inman-AT-greenwich.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 1997 14:39:07 GMT
Subject: Re: this is the colour of my ...


There's two sides to one of Lukes comments,  "...what I think 
surrealism is surrealism.."

The trouble is that, as Luke admits, it leaves the situation open to 
abuse. I have come across so many people who have said this without 
having bothered to read anything or trying to undersatnd anything. It 
becomes a very random label, they might as well say bricklayer, 
catholic, chimpanzee. maximum irrelevance is maintained.

Without undersatnding where surrealism comes from it is daft to call 
oneself a surrealist. On the other hand, it aint necessary to be a 
scholar of the subject, that can even get in the way. I have a need 
to try and know and understand everything about the movement, which i 
think is just my neurosis at one level, but quite a fruitful one for 
all that.

My conclusion about "surrealism studies" is that a lot of academic 
writers on the subject, although the have gathered a lot of facts, 
are wankers. Some, on the other hand, are pretty good. One needs 
writers from outside the movement to mirror surrealism back to you. 
It is essential to read the surrealists themselves to understand what 
they were getting at, but to get some kind of feedback you need to go 
outside.

Someone like hal foster, author of Compulsive Beauty, misrepresents 
surrealism to a ridiculous degree. J.H. Matthews was able to give 
very accurate accounts of surrealist thinking and practices, but 
seemed incapable of taking them beyond a certain level. Conroy Maddox 
once said to me that he wrote the same book a dozen times.

My own unease about academic discourse (in which I have been involved 
to some extent) is that it attempts to turn surrealism into something 
it is not. For me it remains a way of experiencing the world and 
consequently a way of life.

I am a bit distressed to hear of your mental state Luke, (I don't 
know what else to call it at the moment). I found myself in the same 
state every time I tried to paint a few years back, but when I didn't 
paint i remained "normal". The problem was bound up with painting 
itself and how that adventure affected my mental state. 
Interestingly, it was resolved to a great extent through automatism, 
drawing rather than painting. The thing about these states is that if 
they are not part of a manic/depressive, schizoid or whatever 
personality, but seem more like an infection ( I mean that you had 
not been like this before) it is likely to resolve itself in time. 
meanwhile, life is uncomfortable. Studying psychology, which i have 
only done as an autodidact, seems to help surprisingly little most of 
the time. But do you find your fluctuating state has any connerctions 
with your creativity?

I am off now, will look in next week when I am printing off bits of 
my dissertation. If I don't get it done something worse than madness 
beckons...

Stuart
 

   

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