At the Lock Gates of Surrealism: Bief Magazine (⁠1958⁠⁠⁠–⁠60⁠)

Macaella Gray

Advisors: Dr. Adele Nelson and Dr. Ann Reynolds

Abstract

Bief: Jonction Surréaliste was a French Surrealist magazine published in Paris from 1958 to 1960, nearly forty years after the foundation of Surrealism in 1924. Edited by Gérard Legrand and Jean-Claude Silbermann, Bief’s content was diverse, yet often addressed contemporary politics and current events such as the emergence of mass culture, the Algerian War of Independence, the Space Race, the decolonization of Africa and Asia, and the aftermath of World War II. Like Legrand and Silbermann, many of the contributors to Bief—Joyce Mansour, Mimi Parent, José Pierre, Nora Mitrani, Alain Joubert, Robert Benayoun, Jean Shuster—were born in the twenties and thirties. However, early figures of the Surrealist project were also active contributors to Bief, including André Breton, Octavio Paz, Toyen, Benjamin Péret, and Jean Arp. In some ways the intergenerational relationships which defined this later milieu are reflected in Legrand’s continuation of the tradition of the Surrealist little magazine in Bief. From its inception, little magazines were integral to the Surrealist project as sites for discourse, texts, news, relationships, correspondences, poetry, and art. Throughout my thesis I use an editorial text, in which the magazine’s editors state their intentions for the publication, as a critical tool for understanding the relationship among Bief, its contemporary moment, and a history of Surrealism. Taking an interest in the formal similarities between Bief and Surrealist magazines of the twenties, specifically La Révolution Surréaliste (1924–29), I also identify intellectual and conceptual throughlines such as reality, the image, and perception. While I take Bief as my material object of interest, these formal and conceptual throughlines and their relationship to both the past and present become the other primary object of study throughout my thesis. Using predominantly archival and primary materials, I argue that through the editors’ self conscious use of old aesthetic forms in Bief to successfully address the concerns of their contemporary moment, they reconstitute the vitality and continuity of Surrealism in a moment in which its relevance was being challenged by many.