Breton, Surrealism, + Le Merveilleux

Considering the marvellous in Surrealism through a visual analysis of André Breton's Poème-Objets.

In André Breton’s 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism, he calls for an end to the ‘reign of logic’, a tradition that takes rationality to be man’s optimal state. Instead, says Breton, we should pursue le merveilleux, the marvellous, in both art and life. The marvellous is something of a metaphysical state, connected to dreams, imagination, and the unconscious – all elements of the psyche that Enlightenment tradition disregarded in favour of rational thought. Artworks like Breton’s Poem-Object (1941) exemplify the Surrealist project to seek the marvellous and impart that experience to the audience.

Like the Dadaists, Surrealism identified an overemphasis on rationality as the core reason for an alienating modern world. To these artists and thinkers, this rationality led to war, capitalism, colonialism, and a society of cleanliness, order, and logic, which separates us from the natural world – and from human nature. Where Dadaists mainly blamed the Enlightenment for this, Breton points back as far as Aquinas in his Manifesto; and where Dada rejected rationality, the Surrealists sought to use it alongside an exploration of the imagination and the unconscious. There are historical precursors to the this concept of the marvellous, especially in Romantic art and philosophy, which struggled against similar issues and came up with the Sublime. Even more key is Freud’s articulation of ‘The Uncanny’, which deeply influenced the Surrealists in its concept of the everyday creating an unexpected, unsettling, or even shocking experience. This, in essence, is what the marvellous is about: something absurd and surprising emerging from the quotidian.

Breton and his Surrealist contemporaries sought the marvellous in order to make – and in the process of making – their art, as well as provoke that experience in their audience. The various genres and media the Surrealists made use of, from film to automatic poetry to the cadavre exquis, were vehicles for (and partners in) the artists’ search for the marvellous. By tapping into their own unconscious, through altered mental states induced by methods such as sleep deprivation, dehydration, and drugs, the Surrealists created dreamscapes and hallucinations that demonstrate a greater breadth of human experience – and potential – than mere rational creation. But some works aim to activate the subconscious of the audience as well, such as in Breton’s Poème Objets (Poem-Objects), where an assortment of items are attached to a board alongside words and fragments of poetry. Like in a cabinet of curiosities – another influential concept for the Surrealists – Breton’s assemblages juxtapose seemingly unrelated elements in order to provoke the audience to create subconscious connections and narratives.

André Breton, Poème-Objet, December 1941. Museum of Modern Art, New York. 45.8 x 53.2 x 10.9 cm.

Breton created many of these Poem-Objects, inventing the process in the 1930s, but his 1941 assemblage perhaps best exemplifies his genre. This piece brings together elements of collage, sculpture, poetry, and curation, by mounting a wooden carving of a faceless bust, a small framed photograph, an oil lantern, and tiny boxing gloves onto a background of inscribed wood and paper. The poetry fragments Breton includes are in a very typical French poetic tradition, echoing writers such as Baudelaire: ‘These vague landscapes … and the moon … where I wander … vanquished by the shadow … hung from the house of my heart’ (rough translation). But while a narrative seems to flow through these fragments, it is unclear if it is intentional or subconsciously created by the viewer; indeed, one can’t be sure if these pieces are even in the right order. This is the technique of the entire piece: to use juxtaposition to inspire a state of the marvellous. 

Rationally, these elements do not hold much, if anything, in common. But the human brain is naturally pattern-seeking and desires to find meaning in everything; and it is this subconscious analysis that Breton and his contemporaries found exciting. For example, the placement of the small photograph just above the carved, faceless bust seems to suggest that perhaps they are the same person; maybe this man is the narrator of the fragmented poem. Even the way the text seems to echo a Baudelaire poem is already an example of this; nowhere is this connection explicit. Instead, it is the subconscious working to derive meaning and set Breton’s work in a historical context. Similarly, the placement of each poem fragment also seems to suggest deeper meaning, such as the words ‘et la lune’ (‘and the moon’) occupying a moon-like place in the dark sky above the hilly wooden landscape. But it is impossible to know how much of that was intended – even the visual interpretation of the wood and paper as land and sky is almost certainly influenced by the lines of poetry. Perhaps it does not matter at all; the subconscious can work its marvellous magic better if the rational, analytic brain does not get too much in the way.

André Breton, Poème-Objet, 1935. Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One), Edinburgh. 16.30 x 20.70 cm.

In a post-war world, where over-reliance on logic led to sterility and chaos, the Surrealists turned to the marvellous in an endeavour to explore the full breadth of human sensation and experience. Works like Breton’s Poem-Object explore the power of the unconscious mind if stimulated in the right way. Marvellously, the modern-day viewer can still, to this day, experience the subconscious engagement that Breton intended, which audiences eighty years ago might also have felt.