The Magic Circle

“Surrealism – Inside the Magnetic Fields,” by Penelope Rosemont, 2019

The title is borrowed from the 'Magnetic Fields,' the first Surrealist manifesto by Andre Breton. This is an account of surrealism by Penelope, the partner of the most well-known U.S. surrealist, Franklin Rosemont. U.S. surrealism was a fellow traveler of 1960s radical politics – by way of the IWW, Marx, Marcuse, labor, anarchism and SDS anti-war activity. The French surrealists had worked on a manifesto denouncing the French occupation of Algeria, so they too were involved in politics. U.S. surrealism was also influenced by Freud, Dada, the Situationists and cinema. Rosemont calls it “the language of the Unconscious” involving automatic writing, visual juxtaposition, dreams, machines, theater, sexual ambiguity and shocking the bourgeoisie, among other things. It has influenced much culture that came afterwards, from psychedelia to, unfortunately, post-modernism.

In 1965 20-somethings Penelope and Rosemont travel from the dull confines of Chicago to Paris, the homeland of surrealism. They accidentally go to the international surrealist exhibition, meet Andre Breton at a local cafe and others in the Surrealist Group at a 'colorful' 1966 New Year's Eve Surrealist Party. They experience the bookshops, cafe and street life of Paris; meet various Marxists and even Guy Dubord of the Situationist International, who tells them the Surrealists were now just an archaic art object. As she puts it, in Paris the impact of history, literature and revolution is profound: “everywhere in the streets the spirits whispered.” The Rosemonts submit their surrealist plan for the U.S. to the French Surrealist Group, as they intend to form a circle in Chicago and keep up the ties they made in France. This was their 'magic circle.'

The book is written in kind of a personal, wide-eyed way. It is a taste of the times, though it goes up through 2018. It is also a hosanna to Paris and Chicago, including a bit on the blues players on Chicago's Maxwell Street market and various scenes around Chicago. Rosemont profiles mostly unknown surrealist and anarchist heroes, individualists all, who challenged capitalist culture in their own offbeat ways – the female Parisian artist Toyen; the magic boxes of Joseph Cornell; the roving anarchist George Train; the 'outrageous' feminist writer Mary MacLane; the African-American surrealist griot Ted Joans; the German anarchist revolutionist Gustav Landauer; the loyal Parisian surrealist Mimi Parent; the wealthy author of the historical and cultural book “Negro” Nancy Cunard; and Lee Godie, a local outside artist who used to sell her work on the steps of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Breton's Magnetic Fields 'manifesto'

Rosemont spends time trying to square the circle between the Situationist International and the Surrealists, who were estranged from each other. She was one of the writers on the long-running surrealist journal Arsenal, organized surrealist shows in Chicago twice and was a writer and painter in her own right. This is a cozy, heavily name-dropping group of stories ranging across cultural landmarks and personages which have slowly faded into history. It is clear that the Rosemonts' visit to Paris in 1965-1966 was the main event in their life, only 2 years before the 1968 French general strike and uprising. However history has not been kind to surrealism, as much of its oeuvre has been adopted by popular culture or made into curious objects d'art.  It was defanged.  If you are an artist or interested in culture or the ground-breaking efforts of surrealism, this book will be for you. I was a surrealist for about 6 months, but realized it's political limitations, but it nevertheless it can be an entry-way to radical politics. I lived in Chicago's Rogers' Park during some of the time that Rosemont writes about and where she also lived, and attended the same “No Blood for Oil” demonstrations in downtown Chicago in 1986 that she did. So it has a personal impact, perhaps for many in Chi Town.

Prior blog reviews on this topic, use the blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “One Way Street” (Benjamin); “9.5 Thesis on Art and Class,” “The Beach Beneath the Street,” “Society of the Spectacle” (Dubord); “Transatlantic,” “A Walk Through Paris,” “The Dill Pickle Club,” “The Marxist Theory of Art” or the word 'anarchism.'

Red Frog

July 14, 2023

Happy Bastille Day!