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L‘arte magica

by André Breton

 

The arte magica book was written by André Breton

and published in Paris in 1957 for “the Amis du Club Francais du Livre”,

discovered in 1991 with the exposition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris

and reprinted in 2010 in Italian by Adelphi edizioni.

Written with the precious help of his friend Gérard Legrand,

with the Art magique Breton discussed his long-held view of art

as the vehicle of magic in archaic societies,

and the crisis of magic transmitted in a more or less

occult fashion by Leonardo Bosch, Dürer and Grünewald,

up to the visionary world of Goya, Fuseli, Blake, Charles Méryon and Victor Hugo,

to culminate in the works of Moreau and Gauguin;

and finally the rediscovery of magic in Surrealism with Yves Tanguy and Max Ernst.

The book reviews rare images that combines subconscious memories

and hidden aspects of the past to evoke fantastic-realistic visions.

The last section of the book is accompanied – as in a typical surrealistic tradition –

with ‘the answers to some author’ questions about magic and art.

These answers are of utmost interest as they reflect the direct thought

of Heidegger, Magritte, Augè, Klossowski, Paz, amongst other, on magic and art.

L’arte magica

André Breton

published by Adelphy, 2010

24 x 30 cm, 360 pp, 50 euro

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