The Subjectivity of Women, Representation of Woman and Surrealist Art

THE FATE OF FRANCE, ITS EXISTENCE, DEPENDS ON THE FAMILY.

-French Government Slogan, 1919.1

Barely Disfigured:

Bodies fall to the ground. Bloodstained dirt is kicked about, the stench of burning flesh overwhelming. Men are left armless, footless, and even headless; those that survive scarred permanently with gross disfiguration. The disastrous events of World War I left thousands mutilated, profoundly wounded in body and mind, with phantom-limbs a constant reminder of their agony; wishing they had perished with the one and a half million2 fellow soldiers of France. The curse of survival; instead of a military funeral, they could look forward to horrible ongoing physical and psychological trauma, their disfigurement stirring fear and disgust in their loved ones. The grisly events of the war remains a distant memory in todays society; its difficult to grasp how deeply the conflict affected the men, and women, who survived it, and the impact it had on their war-ravaged society. France suffered the worst casualties of the war, damage evident in nearly every aspect of postwar social and economic life; while only a memory to us, these far-reaching consequences were all too familiar to the Surrealist artists living in Paris during the first decades of the twentieth century.

Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art and Society (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 310. I have only slightly exaggerated for effect. Actual published military deaths (France): 1,397,800; See Michel Hubers Les Presses Universitaires de France and study published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, both published 1931.
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As astutely questioned by Amy Lyford, How did the damage inflicted by war affect mens lives?3 And womens, for that matter. Lyford explains how the social order came under intense pressure after the war, and the relationship between these advancing ideas and Surrealism. In a society such as Frances that relied on well-defined ideas about sexual difference and gender roles, Lyford states, changes in the understanding of masculinity and femininity had the potential to alter the entire social order.4 Indeed these ideas about postwar gender roles, culture and society had a profound influence on the Surrealists, exploring aspects of gender and sexuality as means not only to critique artistic tradition, but also the established values of a bourgeois republic, one who sacrificed an entire generation of young men. While Lyford suggests the shifting ideas and transitional society had an insightful influence on the conception of masculinity, (What did it mean to be a man in post-World War I France?5) and the struggle with personal identity and representation in male Surrealist art, I intend to discuss the impact on the subjectivity of women within Surrealism and the conception of woman6 as a product of such; how did the war and its aftermath in society, augmented by the artists personal experience and beliefs, result in this movement? Given that the texts, images and manifestos produced by the mostly male members of Surrealist groups usually depict women, Lyford notes, might [their] disturbing images of them have

Amy Lyford, Surrealist Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 2. Ibid., 2. 5 Ibid., 2. 6 The singular woman within this text represents the idea and social construct of women within the period of Surrealism, the ideology of the artists and the movements major subject. As referenced in my subtitle, the citation of woman does not indicate a particular person, rather a demonstrative symbol for gender and its cultural associations.
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a connection to the literally deformed bodies of the men who inhabited Parisafter the war?7 Absolutely. From the Venus of Willendorf to the Virgin Mary, the history of art has shown Western cultures fascination with the female form; the tradition of representation is peppered with goddesses, odalisques, nymphs and brides: ample testimony to our attraction to the female form and its exertion on our individual and collective consciousness. And simultaneous with that attraction, we find images of women evidence to the anxiety and outrage she has inspired: whore, witch, Medusa and Eve. This great variety of female stereotypes, as proposed by Thalia Gouma-Peterson and Patricia Mathews, [has] been shown to be signifiers for a male-dominated culture8, signifying what is desirable and what needs to be repressed. The concept of woman as the original cause of all evil, the original sinner, as Bernard de Clairvaux has demonstrated, has been firmly rooted in Western culture since before the Middle Ages; ever since books have been illuminated and images of women have been represented, we are reminded of the normative hierarchy of male domination.9 The art of Surrealism is no exception to this tradition: the language of painting is accepted and utilized, and the male Surrealists understood its capability of expression through a certain static materiality. Although their images of women differ dramatically in both aesthetics and tangibility, the essential assumptions

Ibid., 2. Thalia Gouma-Peterson and Patricia Mathews, The Feminist Critique of Art History, The Art Bulletin 69, no. 3 (1987): 338. 9 Ibid., 338. An apt summary of Linda C. Hults research, see Weather Witches in Frankfurt, Pantheon, XL (1982): 124-130.
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remain unchanged,10 according to John Berger. The capability of this expression, as mastered by Jan Van Eyck over five hundred years ago, assumes the truth is to be found in appearances and, therefore, worth being preserved through representation. Berger continues by observing this language and its significant transformation over five centuries, but concludes that the essential assumptions remain unchanged, and still form the expectations from visual art.11 The Surrealists spoke this language fluently, and they did so with woman, rich in tradition and assumption, as their ultimate subject. Hal Foster agrees; the patriarchal subject of woman is transformed yet the terrain of [the Surrealist] sublime is not much changed from that of traditional beauty: it remains the female body.12 The high mortality rate of French soldiers during the war greatly disrupted the countrys societal structure; the ratio of women to men increased exponentially, upsetting numerical equilibrium between the sexes. The state made every effort in their power to stabilize these central components of society in the early 1920s, instituting a wealth of campaigns aimed at regenerating the population. Women of this decade were confronted by a barrage of literature urging them to stay home where, as mothers and homemakers, they became perfect marketing targets for an increasingly sophisticated advertising industry, for a new peace-time economy based on household consumption.13 These social programs promoted a zealous return to traditional family values and placed a heavy emphasis on childbearing

John Berger, Magritte and the Impossible, Selected Essays, ed. Geoff Dyer (New York: Pantheon Books, 2001), 345. 11 Ibid., 345. 12 Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1993), 29. 13 Chadwick, op cit., 306.
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during a decade of declining birthrates. The French government laid the burden of national regeneration directly onto women of the time, calling to duty their biological facility. Familial productivity became womens priority, their roles in society taken hostage by the state and any semblance of national progress the collateral damage. Economic incentives were given to those families who bore multiple children, charging procreation with a civic function within the context of a nation focused on relations between the sexes.14 The social reorganization supported an ideology of sexual difference built on the emotional distinctions of male versus female. Men were considered to be rational beings while women were emotional creatures dominated by their feelings and biological roles. The postwar society in which the Surrealists lived was rife with images promoting traditional social roles for men and women: images of robust manhood and female maternity cropped up everywhere as if they were antidotes to terrible memories evoked by the sight of veterans wounded bodies.15 Carol Duncan similarly ascribes the proliferation of art and literature promoting motherhood and marital bliss within the complex social and political parameters of early twentieth century France to convince women that motherhood was their natural and joyful role, concluding that both art and literature fell subject to the political period of transition, aiming to assure women of their proper roles within the emerging bourgeois state.16 Government propaganda relied heavily upon these neatly defined gender roles, justifying the prospect of women as exclusively responsible for domestic work and
Lyford, op cit., 4. Ibid., 4. 16 Gouma-Peterson and Mathews, op cit., 340. See Carol Duncans article on 18 th century French art, Happy Mothers and Other New Ideas in French Art, The Art Bulletin, 1973.
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child care17 as to be the assumed nature of women. As per Griselda Pollock, these social roles are historically produced, represented in bourgeois ideologies as timeless and biologically determined.18 The focus of maternity and childbearing became powerful themes in patriarchal French mentality between the World Wars; for example, new legislation made it illegal for women to use contraceptives or obtain an abortion,19 both of which would be counter-productive to the repopulation of a decimated country. French pro-natalist policy posed a Catch-22: one of the principle reasons that women did not get the right to vote for another half-decade20 was consequence to a policy implemented by the very government in which they sought equality. The French government made quixotic claims regarding the crucial role of women in the success of national reconstruction, serving mainly as the catalyst for womens suffrage in the years to come and in straining the publics belief in social and economic progress; the scarred faces and missing limbs of war veterans in contrast to the idealized notions and broad claims rampant in political propaganda created a palpable disconnect. The detachment of official discourse and lived reality proved that national regeneration was still an ideal goal rather than a fact of life.21 This gap prompted the Surrealists insurrection in the early 1920s. As Lyford explains, their approach to cultural criticism was taken from their witness of contradiction within the societal framework:
Patricia Allmer, Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism (New York: Prestel, 2009), 20. Quoting Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and Theories of Art, 1988. 18 Ibid., 20. 19 Robert J. Belton, Speaking with Forked Tongues: Male Discourse in Female Surrealism? Surrealism and Women, ed. Whitney Chadwick (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991), 52. 20 Ibid., 52. 21 Lyford, op cit., 4.
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Taking advantage of this disparity, the Surrealists created imageswith two primary goals in mind: first they sought to dramatize the physical and psychological trauma of a war that everyone wanted to forget so that it would not be swept away too quickly. Secondly, they sought to destabilize the gender roles that had cemented traditional ideas about the family, one of the key institutional building blocks of French national identity.22 The works created in reaction to their surroundings carried an implicit critique of the bourgeois sex-gender system in France, which they despised as an oppressive system of social and economic convention. The states continual emphasis on sexual difference made it a vulnerable target: Surrealism engaged the dominant discourse of national reconstruction by attacking the conventional ideas critical to collective identity. The method was simple: if society pledges traditional values and familial institution, then Surrealism would advocate untraditional values and antiinstitutions. In a rejection of the bourgeois society that effaced the distress of war, the Surrealists sought to highlight the failure of national reconstruction. Along with its values, the surrealists rejected traditional images of women, instead embracing those of physical dismemberment, fetishization and sexual deviance, erotic objectification, bodily mutation and gender ambiguity (or inversion), among others. The Surrealists welcomed in a new vocabulary for social and cultural identity, one that would counter the rationalist logic of the return to order.23 The mothers in Surrealism wore thigh-high stiletto boots and sprouted horns. Their idea of purity came with whips and chains; the beautiful maidens mistaken as anti-Christ, drinking blood and seminal fluid from martini glasses.

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Ibid., 4-5. Ibid., 6.

The image of woman became the Surreal emblem of destruction: a microcosm of society, she represented the traditional and bourgeois; with the French upper crust in their crosshairs, the annihilation of social decorum and aesthetics ensued. Lyford quotes writer and principal theorist Andr Breton regarding his opinion of society and postwar sentiment: We particularly hated every concept that by convention had been granted a sacred value, first and foremost those of family, country, and religion.24 Scandalized by society, Breton continues by insisting upon a reinforcement of taboos within an outmoded reality rushing to its doom. To Breton, the insatiable government served as a metaphorical god who had demanded, and [was] still demanding the human sacrifice of postwar society. If the ritual of Surrealism demanded the sacrifice of the traditional woman, the artists would provide in gluttonous quantities, humble servants to the cause. While the political model resided the foremost foundation for the movement, the writings of several nineteenth century French writers who formed their Panthon provide insight to their enigmatic subject matter; Charles Pierre Baudelaire, Jean Arthur Rimbaud, and Comte de Lautmontto name a few of Surrealisms designated icons. However, the Marquis de Sade was appointed their patron saint; his erotic novels tinged with violence, criminality paired with sexual fantasy and blasphemy against the Catholic Church. All unified within the same cause, many lived experiences of each of the male artists also portray an insightful backdrop to their destructive and deviant imagery.

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Ibid., 6. See Andr Breton, Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism (1993). My emphasis.

The untimely death of Salvador Dalis older brother and Rene Magrittes mothers suicide both reflect traumatic events that may have manifested itself in several themes of their art. (expand)