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Call for Papers
Surrealism and
the American West Conference
Arizona State
University
Tempe, Arizona
October 26-7,
2006
Recent
exhibitions of Max Ernst and Salvador Dali act as poignant reminders of the
significant presence of Surrealism in America. Major surveys of the topic
appeared in 1995, Martica SawinÕs Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of
the New York School, and Dickran
TashjianÕs A Boatload of Madmen, Surrealism and the American
Avant-Garde 1920-1950, as well as
a related book by W. Jackson Rushing, Native American Art and
the New York Avant-Garde, a History of Cultural Primitivism. While Sawin and Tashjian treat the theme
broadly, discussion of surrealist activity in American tends to center on New
York during the early 1940s. The purpose of this conference
is to shift focus from New York to the American West, and explore the
possibility that the West, literally and figuratively, formed as much a nexus
of European/American/Native cultural exchange as did New York. Both Ernst and
Dali made their way West, albeit for different reasons. Ernst and his wife
painter Dorothea Tanning lived and worked for seven years in Sedona, Arizona,
while Dali was drawn to Hollywood. Other Surrealists, such as Kurt Seligmann
and Wolfgang Paalen traveled or settled in the western U. S. and Mexico, and
like AndrŽ Breton and Max Ernst, they avidly collected Native American art. A
survey of Surrealist art and literature in America from the Ô40s and Ô50s
reveals an intense engagement with Native America art and myths. By chance,
the anthropologist Claude LŽvi-Strauss traveled to America on the same boat
as Breton. In Structural Anthropology,
LŽvi-Strauss defines myth as a language which serves to deny contradiction.
Possibly the Surrealists gravitated toward myth and Native culture as a means
to reconcile their own sense of cultural alienation. Tashjian and Sawin offer
insightful and possibly contradictory theories about why the SurrealistsÕ use
of myth may have backfired, or, why it was simply usurped by the Abstract
Expressionists. Some European Surrealists
brought with them powerful myths from their childhood. Max Ernst, like other
young German boys, had immersed himself in Karl MayÕs adventure stories about
the exploits of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand. These fictional storiesÑMay
never traveled to North AmericaÑcrafted a fantasy of the Òold WestÓ and of
relations between white and Native American men. How might MayÕs man-making,
quasi-spiritual image of the West linger in the surrealist sensibility? How
do these images compare to images of the West constructed in American film
and pop culture? We
invite papers exploring diverse aspects of the Surrealist sensibility,
presence, fascination, and interaction with the myth, landscape, and cultures
of the American West. How did women surrealists respond to the
hyper-masculinity of the American West? Did the Surrealist fascination with
Native culture spawn a new variety of modernist primitivism? Did the surrealistsÕ obsession with
ethnography impact the appreciation of Native American art, or the field of
anthropology? What was the legacy of the Surrealists in the West? We are
interested in papers that examine diverse aspects of cultural and
anthropological history and a wide range of cultural production including
film and photography; we encourage papers on American as well as European
artists. We envision an interdisciplinary conference that
will include scholars in art history, cultural history, anthropology, or film
studies. We will select eleven junior or senior scholars or other qualified
writers to present short papers of 20 minutes. These presentations will
comprise three panels that will meet throughout the day on Friday, October
27, 2006. We plan to invite a senior scholar who will present a keynote lecture
on the evening of Thursday, October 26. The conference is open to the
public. We will make information available to conference participants
regarding possible travel to Sedona to see the site of the Max Ernst/Dorothea
Tanning House on their own over the weekend. We will also distribute
information and a call for papers, unveiling our planned online journal, New
World Surrealism. Please email one page
abstracts of proposed papers and C.V. to: Prof. Samantha Kavky and Prof. Claudia Mesch Claudia.Mesch@asu.edu by February 1, 2006. |
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