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Breton the Collector: a Surrealist Poetics of the Object Written by Christina Helena Rudosky Has Been Approved for the Department of French and Italian

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Breton the Collector: a Surrealist Poetics of the Object Written by Christina Helena Rudosky Has Been Approved for the Department of French and Italian BRETON THE COLLECTOR: A SURREALIST POETICS OF THE OBJECT by CHRISTINA HELENA RUDOSKY B.A., University of Oregon, 2003 M.A., Université de Paris-IV, 2006 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of French and Italian 2015 This thesis entitled: André Breton the Collector: A Surrealist Poetics of the Object written by Christina Helena Rudosky has been approved for the Department of French and Italian Professor Elisabeth Arnould-Bloomfield Professor Patrick Greaney Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline iii Rudosky, Christina Helena (Ph.D., French Literature [Department of French and Italian]) André Breton the Collector: A Surrealist Poetics of the Object Thesis directed by Professor Elisabeth Arnould-Bloomfield In 1937 André Breton declared in his surrealist novel L’Amour fou, “what I write is my life, my house,” suggesting a direct relationship between his writing and his home which was uniquely curated, wall to wall with collected objects. Breton’s statement, no doubt made in affirmation of the Surrealist project to revolutionize everyday life offers reflection on the complex experience of writing as a practice inspired by daily encounters with our material surroundings. The fact that Breton chose to live among a myriad of objects in his atelier, at 42 rue Fontaine, suggests the construction of an intimate relationship between his work, his house, and the material collection he inhabited. By the end of his life, Breton possessed more than 15,000 items in his home: man- made and natural objects, books, manuscripts and other miscellaneous curiosities and ephemera. “Andre Breton the Collector: A Surrealist Poetics of the Object” explores this facet of Breton’s life and work which has been largely overlooked in scholarship. By situating the surrealist interest in the object as a vehicle for artistic experimentation the 1930s, I argue that Breton’s collecting can be viewed as a revolutionary and poetic practice within everyday life. In four chapters I draw from an investigation of archival art-objects and documents. Chapter one contextualizes the history and theory of Breton’s collecting practice. Chapter two discusses iv Breton’s acquisition and writing about oceanic ethnographic objects—such as the “Uli” effigy— as an anti-colonial gesture during early twentieth century Primitivism. Chapter three explores Breton’s layout practice within different albums and presents a detailed reading of his Scrapbook as a collection of newspaper articles, photographs and ephemera compiled during WWII while exiled in North America. Chapter four shows how Breton used the Scrapbook collection for the writing of his novel, Arcane 17 during his trip to the Gaspésie in 1944. This dissertation explores how Breton’s collecting practice directly influenced his literary and artistic production in Surrealism, ultimately defining a poetic of collecting in his work. v DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to Filippo, my family, and Joann. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to the members of my committee for their dedication and time to my project, to Constance Krebs for her enthusiastic mentorship and to Aube Breton Elléouët for her generous support. vii CONTENTS FIGURES ...................................................................................................................................... xii INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 Historical Contextualization of the Collection ..........................................................................................2 Literature and Scholarship on Collecting ..................................................................................................7 Literature on Breton’s Collection and Surrealism .....................................................................................9 Chapter Summaries of the Dissertation ...................................................................................................15 CHAPTER 1: HISTORY AND THEORIES OF SURREALISM AND COLLECTING ............ 19 Introduction .............................................................................................................................................19 I. Historical Background to Breton and his Collection ......................................................................20 1- André Breton and the Surrealist Movement ..................................................................................20 2- André Breton and 42 Rue Fontaine ...............................................................................................26 3- Advising Acquisitions for Jacques Doucet ....................................................................................29 4- André Breton’s Collection Today ..................................................................................................33 5- The “Gold of Time” and “Solidified Desires” ...............................................................................35 II. Theoretical Background to the Collected Object in Surrealism .....................................................37 1- Anti-Rationalism and its Philosophical Origins in Surrealism ......................................................37 2- Surrationalism and the “Object” ....................................................................................................42 3- Destabilization of the Rational Subject .........................................................................................46 4- Object as Praxis .............................................................................................................................48 5- The Theory of “Objective Chance” ...............................................................................................52 III. Collecting as a Surrealist Practice ..............................................................................................55 1- Desire in Objective Chance, The Experience of Dialectical Relationality ....................................55 2- Traditional Collecting vs. Breton’s Surrealist Practice of Collecting ...........................................58 3- Détournement, Negation and the Practice of Collecting ...............................................................60 viii 4- Collecting and Recollecting Objects of “Convulsive Beauty” ......................................................62 5- The Collection as Allegorical ........................................................................................................64 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................................67 CHAPTER 2: OCEANIC OBJECTS ........................................................................................... 69 Introduction .............................................................................................................................................69 I- The Importance of Oceania in Surrealism ......................................................................................70 1- Primitivism, Ethnography and Surrealism .....................................................................................70 2- Against Colonialism .......................................................................................................................72 3- A Surrealist Geography ..................................................................................................................73 4- Against Africanism ........................................................................................................................74 5- “Océanie,” the Exhibition ..............................................................................................................76 II. Breton’s Preface to the Exhibition Catalogue for “Océanie” .........................................................78 1- Poetic and artistic ancestors ...........................................................................................................78 2- Surrealist Desire for the Oceanic object ........................................................................................79 3- Living Objects ................................................................................................................................81 4- A Reversal of Hierarchy ................................................................................................................82 5- The Agency of Things ...................................................................................................................83 III. Xenophiles: The Surrealist Reversal of “Things” to “Persons” .................................................86 1- The Xénophile poems .....................................................................................................................86 2- Recasting the Physical Object into Words: Tiki, Korwar and Uli ..................................................88 3- The Animating Power of Apostrophe ............................................................................................90 4- Tension between the inanimate and the animate ............................................................................92
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