Tue, 19 Sep 2006
From
www.library.jhu.edu/researchhelp/surreal/surrealismlist.pdf:
Free Unions - Unions Libres. Published July 1946 (1 issue). Dir. Simon Watson Taylor. London.
Planned as a series of texts which would summarize the surrealist position at the end of the war, Free Unions was published 2 years after its conception, due to the arrest of the editors and the seizure of the proofs - thought to be coded messages of anarchists. With its publication, English surrealism became aware of the need for unity following the dissentions of the pre-war period, in order to establish a firm basis for the future. Artistic contributors included Lucien Freud and E.L.T. Mesens.
From the Introduction:
The concept of unity has today come to imply an antithesis to that of freedom. It is this antithesis in politics, morality, art and society that denies life...
It is in our search for liberty that we, in the dark jungle of torpor, destruction and imbecility that has dug its roots into the world today, have discovered for ourselves the path cleared by surrealism in the tangled undergrowth.
(Thanks to AB for recently mentioning this story.)
