andre breton is a douchebag\/\/visualizing beauty
Have you ever read Nadja by André Breton? I have. And sorry, but that book sums up everything wrong with being French. The entire story is one long, convoluted, name-dropping turdboiler. “OHHH, I’M SO IMPRESSED that you’re friends with Max Ernst and Picasso!?” Fuck off.
Anyone but Breton (with his magna-douche-sized ego) would find the premise offensive: it’s based on a torrid affair with some hot arty chick he met in Paris in the 1920s. Bear in mind that he’s married at the time (asshole), but still flaunts about this girl, describing how sensitive they are together, and how they recite poetry and draw for each other. Great. Prick. Just because you founded surrealism and subsequently have an easier time meeting a lot of hot women doesn’t mean you’ve gotta make me sit through 150 pages of stream-of-consciousness drivel about how in tune to art and reality you are.
The Lovers' Flower by Nadja
And if that’s not enough the book ends with a flurry of annoying reasoning from the author where he tries to make you recognize the genius of this young woman Nadja. Just look at the drawing above, he PLEADS, it’s genius. Yeah Andre, we saw it. It’s CRAP. In my absolute least favorite moment he tells us offhand that before they met Nadja “had never drawn at all” (p. 130). From this we can infer that it is Breton’s magic dick that has brought Nadja’s supposed genius to the surface. What unbelievable nerve and self indulgent ego fellating. He then rounds out the tome by telling us she went insane. Cozy. Are you to blame for that Andre? No. Oh no. That’s the psychiatrists of course. They took her away. Of course they were also stunting her genius and he doesn’t agree with psychiatry. Great. What do you suggest for the insane Dre? Let them run free eating babies and wearing human skin-suits because you think the doctors are throttling some bullshit idea of “genius” you created? Ugh. Go home to your wife and get bored you pretentious French asshole.
Enlighten me if you have a better take on the novel.
The book is illustrated with 44 photos and thats the one positive thing I did take from Nadja. Breton’s merging of text and image throughout makes an interesting play at visualizing a novel. It allows the reader to follow the couple through 1920s Paris, and get a better overall feel of what he was striving for (surreal unbearability?). Even still. This is not a new technique. The Illuminated Manuscript, Books of Hours, Asian calligraphy, adding text with image is not a groundbreaking concept. Some of those artistic forms are literally thousands of years old. Score another one for Breton’s originality. Let’s examing a time where adding images actually is groundbreaking. And then we fast forward to 1940. Fantasia. It really is one of the most experimental films ever made. Walt Disney called his crew together and told them they were going to draw music. Hot damn that is a sexy idea. Even from anti-Semitic-subliminal-message-sending-pervert.
These movies achieve one of the untouchable things I want from art. Visualizing a piece of music is something that only happens in thoughts and is very difficult to materialize in any medium. Taking a piece of music and interpreting it for reuse. This is THE precursor to MTV. I don’t even mind the complete lack of video hoes. Fantasia, Fantasia 2000, and a fascinating Italian film Allegro non Troppo (1974) are a few well done projects that attempt to dictate how we react to music and suggest a way to see it. Allegro non Troppo actually self referentially mocks the process of visualization by talking mock-seriously about how important and groundbreaking the film is. The announcer then gets a call from a “Prisney or Grisney” who claims the Italians are a little behind the times. But more importantly the announcer then suggests we go ahead and “see the music and hear the art”. Fantastic advice.
Indeed the surrealists, Breton (go figure) and Giorgio de Chirico regularly denounced music as the lowest form of art. de Chirico actually wrote a tract called “No Music” (1913) which apparently says music is unnecessary but I’ve never read it so what the hell do I know. Can’t find a copy of it. But this quote opens the essay and says it all: “Music cannot express the essence of sensation. One never knows what music is about . . .” C’mon. Really? This just makes me angry. You’re just being an insufferable know-it-all when you say things like that.
I know what music is about. I’ve spent the better part of my life listening to it, loving it, and hope to visualize it. And so have you. So fuck the surrealists.
Enough of that. Since I care and I share, here is an early Chicken Flava attempt at visualizing music. While listening to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. An original homage to Fantasia. My god a pink hippo walking down a city street. There’s some terrible composition there. Shaky control of craft and material. Check out that crap smear of a painting.
"The Walk" by chicken flava. Oil on Horrendous.
Are those balls? Even I don’t know.
See B flat.
Tune in next week for some swarm mentality. While you’re at it, become fan of Chicken Flava on Facebook.
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Oil on, horrendous.