|
...Dotremont et Broodthaers Volume 3. This third volume aural document is devoted to the evolution of Belgian surrealist groups spanning the years 1939-1978, following in the surrealist footsteps that Dada, Pansaers et Correspondance Volume 1 (1917-1926) and Magritte, Le Groupe Surréaliste de Bruxelles, Rupture Volume 2 (1926-1938) established. This third volume gathers rare archival recordings and excerpts from The Groupe Surréaliste du Hainaut, 1939 (with Achille Chavée, Fernand Dumont, Pol Bury, André Simon, Marcel Lefrancq), The Groupe Surréalisme Révolutionnaire, 1948 (with Christian Dotremont, Marcel Broodthaers, Paul Colinet, Achille Chavée), the Revues : Temps Mêlés, 1952 (with André Blavier), Phantomas 1953 (with Marcel Havrenne, Théodore Koenig, Marcel Piqueray), Les Lèvres Nues, 1954 (with Marcel Mariën), Daily Bul 1957 (with André Balthazar, Pol Bury, Marcel Havrenne, Paul Colinet, Marcel Piqueray), and the two outsiders: Marcel Broodthaers and Jean-Pierre Verheggen. The Groupe Surréaliste du Hainaut, first incepted in 1934, was a slow blinding light in Belgium's culture of thought. Seen from the industrial landscapes, and so close to the French borders, it was more accepting of French theories than the surrealists in Brussels. These Walloon Surrealists remained rather faithful to the methods preached by Breton (automatic writing, against which Nougé became strongly opposed to early on). Hennuyer, Magritte, Scutenaire, and Souris all had a similar perspective, but eventually moved to Brussels where that identity clearly demarcated itself in a nationalist move towards establishing the differences in Belgian tradition and identity. This final volume of this compilation series, and the project as a whole, is an urgent attempt to document an important aspect of surrealism that most surely would have disappeared into dusty archives, if not released to the world.
|
|