“No mediocre interest can oppose me to Brauner […] What opposes me to him today is of another order and is due to the work of disintegration to which I reproach him for indulging at the expense of the ideas which reunite. »
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André Breton (1896.1966)
Autograph letter (draft) to Pierre Demarne.
Three pages in-4° on letterhead from Solution Surrealiste and Cause.
Paris. November 10, 1948.
“No mediocre interest can oppose me to Brauner […] What opposes me to him today is of another order and is due to the work of disintegration to which I reproach him for indulging at the expense of the ideas which reunite. »
Brauner and Matta excluded – the surrealist purge.
Important document by Breton attempting to justify the recent exclusion of Victor Brauner from the surrealist group. Detailing the dissensions between him and the Romanian painter and returning to the ousting of the Chilean artist Roberto Matta, the surrealist leader denounces the clans and considers that his movement is in mortal danger.
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"My dear friend, I am all the more willing to provide you with these personal clarifications since you were the only one in Paris to ask me for them. By sending "Surrealist Solution" last Wednesday a copy of the letter I addressed to Brauner, it seems to me that I sufficiently demonstrated my desire not to take anyone by surprise . If this letter had the effect of rushing certain members of our group to Brauner in order to dissuade him from justifying himself and if none of them even took the trouble to notify me of this step or to discuss with me their own sensitive reactions to my letter, this unfortunately only confirmed my worst apprehensions (not only had the incriminated "fractional work" been undertaken a long time ago but it was also well and truly accomplished ). It was almost enough for me to enter this café on Monday to measure the extent of the "conspiracy" from the seats occupied and the attitudes adopted. Explain to me otherwise that none of those who were to leave this room a few moments later had done anything beforehand with me to try to limit the damage: I am saying that the hostility towards what Péret and I were going to say was at its height from the outset and the means already concerted to bring everything to the worst. I do not hide from you the surprise or even the agitation that I felt: several of those whose side I saw so clearly taken were very dear to me and I had counted on them for much more , certainly, than the affirmation of "surrealism" as a group still alive and even filled with new lifeblood (something in which I am relatively uninterested due to certain fatalistic considerations, but let us leave that for today). In any case, from the movements that were taking place, I understood very quickly that the damage was done and that it was irreparable.
You will grant me – and I hope others will grant me more generally – that no mediocre interest can oppose me to Brauner, whose work I have so long striven to have given to those around me the prominent place it deserved and in whose favor I have so long "fought" both in France and in America. What opposes me to him today is of another order and is due to the work of disintegration that I accuse him of engaging in at the expense of the ideas that unite us. Whether this activity is fully conscious, whether it cannot benefit from any mitigating circumstances due to Brauner's very particular psyche, that is not the question: the question is to know whether it does not put in mortal danger what we undertake together.
I say that it puts it in mortal danger and I refer essentially to the fact that, from the old inter-group constituted by the current zealots of Brauner, any communication of a nature to interest the whole of our activity has ceased to reach me for months, that the initiatives of a nature to take surrealism further ( Cause , Salut . surr .) have been either passively endorsed, or disapproved in a more or less open manner. This attests to the formation of a clan acting among us on its own account, whether or not this is deliberate on its part. Refusal, repeatedly expressed with arrogance, to consider any action on the social level, generalized indifferentism in all areas other than the "poetic" domain, total instability of judgment exposing the signatories of a text to more or less disown their signature by regretting having given it or by expressing very strong reservations later, parasitic creation of links of "friendship" of a so-called elective (necessarily restrictive) nature between such and such, leading those concerned to no longer pay any attention to the various other assistance that may be offered to us (I will give as examples the stifling of André Libérati's message, one of the most remarkable poetically, by those to whom it was first addressed, the reception reserved for Gaston Puel - despite being a collaborator of Néon , moreover one of the most active and stimulating of our friends during his recent trip to Paris - a reception which affected him and complained about to me, etc.: such are some of the symptoms that characterize the deviation that I am reporting. In the background, but as circumstances have just shown very active, is Brauner's attitude which tends essentially and increasingly towards the megalomaniacal exaltation of the personality at the expense of everything that can unite us and uses to impose itself, whether on his part or not it is intentional, means of division.
That Brauner rejects (or allows to be rejected before him) the accusation brought against Matta as dictated by "bourgeois morality" does not seem as incomprehensible to me as it does to you; I think there is a reflex of self-defense on his part which I cannot explain. It is also understood, as you say, that no one was obliged to sign the Matta exclusion and the best proof of this is that Alexandrian and Mabille abstained from doing so without this raising the slightest incident. Once again, it is the grounds which accompanied Brauner's abstention which, by Péret and myself, were judged unacceptable .
I hope, my dear friend, that I have succeeded in giving you the general "climate" of this affair. I do not believe that the concessions you advocate are possible, nor that the lack of availability comes from me. I remain absolutely committed to the desire for expansion and spiritual enrichment of our circle and to the ideal of ever greater understanding that you invoke. It is precisely what tends among us to corrupt them at the base that I ask that we address, even if it would be painful. At your disposal, of course, to discuss it face to face and with all my friendship .
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On October 25, 1948 André Breton quickly voted to exclude the Chilean painter Roberto Matta for “moral ignominy and intellectual disqualification.” » Opposed to this decision which he refused to sign, Victor Brauner was in turn excluded.