Book of the Week
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
Order online from 10 Corso Como Bookshop