Toward the end of 1941, and in the midst of World War II, a group of art school students from the École des beaux-arts in Montréal and the École du meuble de Montréal gathered in the studio of painter and drawing teacher Paul-Émile Borduas. The students wanted to meet with Borduas to discuss the fine arts scene in Quebec and hear his news about the international Surrealist Movement and the exile of many surrealists from Vichy France. Among the students was the artist and dancer Françoise Sullivan, who went on to become one of the key members of the group that formed that night in Borduas’s studio, a network of artists that eventually came to be known as the Automatist movement (1941-54).

Although ‘Les Automatistes’ were profoundly influenced by surrealism, they also sought to distinguish themselves from the Surrealist Movement and “go further,” according to Sullivan, than any of the prior avant-garde experiments. This lecture will consider Françoise Sullivan’s decades-spanning artistic production in light of the history of the Surrealist Movement, focusing on the relationship of her dance works to surrealist psychic automatism, the surrealist interest in trance states, and the surrealist sabotage of the productivist mindset of capitalism. Exploring research discoveries made during her recent extended interview with Sullivan, art historian Abigail Susik will consider Sullivan’s work in relation to relevant examples of surrealist dance and performance by Hélène Vanel, Alice Farley, and Meret Oppenheim. How did Sullivan build on the lessons of Borduas and her interest in surrealism, all the while forging new pathways that diverge away from the history of surrealist dance and performance toward a unique medium of expression?