FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN,

 

Les Automatistes, and Responses to Surrealism

 

in World War II–era Montreal

 

A CONVERSATION WITH ABIGAIL SUSIK

Presentation

 

The year 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of the “Manifeste du surréalisme” written by André Breton. We are highlighting this anniversary because it is worth remembering the importance of surrealism in the training and discourse of young artists from all disciplines in Montreal during the 1940s and until the mid-1950s.

 

In his manifesto, Breton defines surrealism as a “pure psychic automatism by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or in any other way, the actual process of thought. It is the dictation of thought, free from any control exercised by reason and, outside of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.” (André Breton, OEuvres complètes, vol. I, Éditions Gallimard, coll. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1988, p. 328 [our translation])

 

This is how young artists from all disciplines, later called Les Automatistes, gathered around Paul-Émile Borduas, shared their effervescence to transform art, offer new visions of life and defend new values for society. These artists were aware of the fresh ideas that were making headlines in the European art world. Paul-Émile Borduas and Fernand Leduc tried to establish ties with André Breton, but he kept his distance from the Montreal artists. Even though the meeting never took take place, the ideas debated around surrealism were retained and the Montreal artists interpreted them in their own way, thus moving away from Breton’s vision.

 

We present here an interview that Françoise Sullivan gave to Abigail Susik, professor of Art History at Willamette University in Portland, US, on this pivotal moment in the history of art in Québec and Canada. We warmly thank Abigail Susik for her keen interest in Françoise Sullivan’s work and her effectiveness in spreading our story on the international scene.

 

 

Claude Gosselin, C.M.
General and Artistic Director
Centre international d’art
contemporain de Montréal
ciac.ca
claude.gosselin@ciac.ca

 

 

 

 

This initiative is made possible thanks to the support of the Fonds
Fondation Stéfane Foumy at the Foundation of Greater Montreal.

 

Proofreading Colette Tougas
Translation Anne Viau
Graphic design folio&garetti
Web Jean-Michel Thellen

 

 

 

Françoise Sullivan,
a Conversation With Abigail Susik

 

In October 2021, I had the good fortune of making the acquaintance of the Canadian visual artist and dancer/choreographer, Françoise Sullivan (born Montreal, 1923). We happened to be seated next to one another at the opening of the Surrealism Beyond Borders exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Sullivan had travelled to the opening with her friend Claude Gosselin, the Director of the Centre international d’art contemporain de Montréal (CIAC MTL), to view the installation of photographs from her 1948 improvisational dance performance, Danse dans la neige [Dance in the snow], which had taken place seventy-three years earlier.

 

Danse dans la neige was part of a series of dance solos corresponding to the seasons. In her mid-twenties at the time of this performance, Sullivan engaged an ephemeral automatism-in-motion in homage to the winter season and the northern landscape of Quebec. As a member of Montreal’s Les Automatistes group (active between 1941–53), Sullivan’s singular event Danse dans la neige was documented that day by two group members, the only people who witnessed the performance: Maurice Perron, who took photographs, and the painter Jean-Paul Riopelle (who filmed the event; the footage has since been lost). The installation of Perron’s photographs of the dance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art revealed Sullivan moving in the snow with an alert and calm expression, wearing gloves, a hat, and winter clothes, as her body interacted spontaneously with the surrounding natural elements.

 

Over the course of our conversation at the museum that night, Sullivan explained to me that her performance of bodily automatism during Danse dans la neige was in fact the experience of a trance state. I had so many questions about this corporeal form of automatism, its connection to the Automatistes group, and its relationship to international surrealism, that we agreed to conduct a conversation on these topics the following month. This interview, recorded in November 2021, is the result of our discussion.

 

 

Dedicated to Françoise Sullivan
on the occasion of her 100th birthday,
in June 2023

ABIGAIL SUSIK: Did your discovery of surrealism coincide with your involvement in the Les Automatistes group and your exploration of the medium of dance? Can you tell me more about your milieu at this time in Montreal, in the midst of World War II?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN: At the beginning, I doubt if I knew much about surrealism, because the teachers at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal (The Academy of Fine Arts) never spoke about it, and there was nothing in the library of the school. The best we could find were books about Van Gogh, the Impressionists, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso, and maybe even a book on Dalí, but he did not speak to us really.

 

At the École des beaux-arts we were a small group in a large class who were complaining about the boring state of the teaching. At home, we would do small paintings, often influenced by Bonnard, Cézanne, or Matisse. And then one day, Pierre Gauvreau, a young artist of our little group, showed a painting in an exhibition of student works.

 

His painting was noticed by Paul-Émile Borduas, a painter and a drawing teacher at the École du meuble de Montréal (a school for furniture and cabinet making). Fascinated, he said that he had discovered a born painter. So, he invited him to his studio. Gauvreau then asked if he could bring a few friends.

 

On a Tuesday evening in late November 1941, four teenage students and one slightly older one, who were all studying at the École des beaux-arts but were not satisfied with its teaching program, arrived at Borduas’ studio on Mentana street.

 

Strangely, it was at the École du meuble de Montréal, where he was teaching, that Borduas was introduced to surrealism by colleagues already up to date and well versed in this art movement. It was at what was technically a trade school and not the recognized art school that advanced ideas had taken hold, because it was a deeply conservative era in Quebec society and official contexts reflected that absolutely. We were the first people to publicly rebel against this conservatism and conformity.

 

Borduas had read André Breton’s 1924 Manifeste du surréalisme [Manifesto of surrealism] as well as Le Château étoile [Starry castle] (1936). He spoke enthusiastically about Breton’s group of artists and poets, and said that many were fleeing Paris now, which was in the grip of the Nazi occupation and the Second World War.

 

Borduas was a born teacher. He had recently painted a series of gouaches, explaining the efforts he made to arrive at abstract forms, and his approach towards the exploration of the unconscious through Freudian theories, as well as of automatist writing. This indicated that a surrealist poet or painter has submitted to imperious internal voices rather than to cold reason.

 

In a state of absolute receptivity, the painter abandons himself to his internal voices, no longer looking for inspiration in nature, but of a response to interior rhythms, to dark poetic powers, to objective chance, desire, as well as convulsive beauty.

 

The evening went on, and no one showed signs of fatigue, no one wanted this night to end.

 

Such as it was, that November evening signaled the beginning of a new group, a group with a purpose, what was to become Les Automatistes movement. It would last for seven years, the seven magic years! From November 1941 to the publication of Refus global [Total refusal] in August 1948, the movement was in full cry.

 

The names of these young students were Fernand Leduc, Pierre Gauvreau, Louise Renaud, Madeleine Desroches, and me. Bruno Cormier would have been there, but his academic studies often kept him away. Another group of young intellectuals started to join us occasionally, two years later They will be: Marcel Barbeau, Jean Paul Riopelle, Jean-Paul Mousseau and Maurice Perron.

ABIGAIL SUSIK: Why do you think surrealism became important in Canada and Quebec in this era of the Second World War?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN: I think there was a long-needed awakening. That is evident now by looking at the results we got, just as it was evident then for us, within it. There had been intellectual and artistic groups in Montreal, and at that time in the early forties it was just a beginning, we were just becoming aware of this new direction in art. Before long, it all came together in a powerful way.

 

Two years later, Borduas invited to our meetings five students from his drawing class at the École du meuble, Marcel Barbeau, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Maurice Perron, Jean-Paul Mousseau, and Guy Viau. All but Guy Viau would become active participants in our group, and I must add Claude Gauvreau, Pierre’s brother, to complete this list of Automatistes. Eventually, other artists, poets and writers, came around, many of whom were tired of the academicism of the cultural establishment in Montreal, and many who were beginning to look to surrealism as a model.

 

Quartier Latin, a student newspaper, was to become a major vehicle for this polemic. It had a reputation for high-quality cultural reporting among thoughtful people, it was much more than a student publication effectively. They published articles which show a clear development of consciousness and purpose. However, many of those articles did move beyond the descriptions of works or trends beyond objectives, and into polemics. Behind some of them was the assumption of a struggle, virtually, a life and death struggle against the forces of darkness.

 

Taken out of context they may now seem overstated, but we must remember that these same painters tended to be ignored or ridiculed by the popular press. And that the culture was stultifying—and that a world war was raging.

 

In truth Borduas was mainly interested in surrealist writing and surrealist theory, more than in its best-known painters such as Dalí and Matta, whose works he had seen in New York. Certain notions explored by surrealism, including especially that of automatism, had obviously caught Borduas’ imagination. Later, we would talk fruitfully about the connections and distinctions between automatism and surrealism, as we began to distinguish them, at least for us.

 

Writing for the periodical Amérique française [French America], Maurice Gagnon, the librarian at the École du meuble, indulged in lyrical phrases like “Dark Poetic Power”, and a few terms such as “Le hasard objectif”. He also invoked “convulsive beauty” and referred to Freudian theory: “to bring to light the repressive instinct which lies under successive and oppressive layers of civilization . . . The mystery, the secret truth, the instinctive life of our innermost being that was once hidden from conscious intelligence and its dangerous truth. Beneath it lies the sur-reality which dreams, and automatist writing can reach.” [1]

 

From this time on, the word “surrealist” would be used often in the Montreal press with reference to Borduas and ourselves.

 

In the Spring of 1942, both Borduas and Leduc had been to New York on separate visits and tried unsuccessfully to see Breton, who was there. Borduas did however receive an invitation to join Breton’s group, which he actually politely declined.

 

In those early years, Leduc was our most active spokesman in Quebec, but we all worked intensely, hoping to create the absolute automatist artwork. I was a painter as well, but had turned at that time primarily to dance, and my approach was of the same order. The problem was the same: to create an immediate impact through movement, simple and strong. It was a question of finding one’s own reality, our own reality. Venturing into the unknown, keeping a hold of a sense of formal and imaginative challenge. There was a kind of magnet for a group that did not yet have a clear sense of identity but was obviously united by a common purpose.

 

This group was developing an almost messianic zeal for “living art” as we called it, as opposed to the academicism of the cultural establishment in Montreal, which was stuck in European salon academicism.

 

Here are a few notes from that time by Pierre Gauvreau on automatism: “Automatism as a means of investigating human thought was introduced to us by the surrealists through their theoretical writings. Surrealist painting, which is generally anecdotal, has not influenced us much.” [2] The forms we painted, as Automatists “did not come from rational calculations but from the free play of the unconscious.”[3] As Gauvreau said: “the criterion for authenticity in a work of art is the sensitivity which is inscribed in painted matter.” [4]

 

Meanwhile, after January of 1945, I went to New York, looking for the most interesting dance schools at which to train.

 

Some of the discussions in Saint-Hilaire that Summer must have been about Leduc, who had been looking forward to discussing painting and theory, as well as the relative merits of Matta and Gorky in the surrealist movement. We were having a very lively time of it in Quebec as well.

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK : How did Canadians like yourself, and Les Automatistes, transform surrealism? In other words, how did you change surrealist ideas and elements and make them your own? Or, said another way, what are some of the distinctive traits of surrealism, or adaptations of surrealism, in Canada?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN: To us it was something that opened up a new world for us to begin to explore. The idea of “magic” and the magical in what we could find through art, a new world and new ways of approaching art came out of our immersion in surrealism. It came with a new vocabulary, such as “the unknown”, “the ecstatic”, etc. This can be seen for example in Thérèse Renaud’s poems, published in her book Les Sables du rêve [The Sand of dreams] in 1946, illustrated by Jean-Paul Mousseau in Les Cahiers de la file indienne [The Indian file notebooks] a small publishing venture began by the poets Gilles Hénault and Eloi de Grandmont. The poems are mainly in the tradition of what might be called “oneiric surrealist poetry” and were akin to the recitations published in surrealist magazines.

 

Mousseau illustrated them within the legacy of surrealism’s imagery, but the year 1945 seems to have been pivotal as most of the Automatiste artists began to move away from its more cubist construction. Soon, there would be no sign of figuration and no sign of volume, reading space, or of a horizon line.

 

Surrealism gave us clues for how to achieve what we called “Automatism”, really a comprehensive art movement from the avant-garde of what was then possible. We fused the irrational with the rational in our work, as foreground and background were deliberately confused across the board.

 

The development of Mousseau’s drawing style over time clearly illustrates the avant-gardist change, year after year, of the development toward abstraction. We can see the transformation of what was first surrealism, to what then became Automatism—something very like the process that led to what was called abstract expressionism in the United States.

 

As Fernande Saint-Martin pointed out, Quebec Automatism and American abstract expressionism developed during the same period in an independent and parallel manner, beginning with reflections on cubism and surrealism and then investigating in depth the notion of pictorial automatism. [5]I think this point has to be stressed outside of Quebec more.

 

The consciousness of being on the frontier, of being ahead rather than behind, of having absolutely no models however immediate or illustrious, of being entirely and completely on one’s own, was indeed stimulating to us; to be on the forefront of an artistic development we sensed was of the highest importance, even if very few people knew about it then. We didn’t know anyone else was doing the same. It is interesting to know what an artist’s goals are and why he or she has chosen to work in a certain way.

 

As an artist, one recognizes when one arrives at a complex of qualities that are exciting. It is a feeling you get when things set into place. It is a shock of recognition, to encounter felt images that have to be intuitively felt.

 

As an artist, one tries to delve in the unconscious, and that is to invent from one’s personal experience and being, to create from an inner world. The work then contains part of the artist’s self.

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK : Were any of your early dance performances, such as Le Spectre de la rose [The rose’s ghost] (c. early 1940s) and the choreographies Moi je suis de cette race rouge et épaisse qui frôle les éruptions volcaniques et les cratères en mouvement [I am of that thick red race that skims past volcanic eruptions and moving craters] (1948) and Dualité [Duality] (1948) influenced by surrealism at all? Or were they mostly influenced by the Les Automatistes group that you were a part of?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN :

Le Spectre de la rose and Moi je suis de cette race rouge et épaisse . . . are not surrealist.

 

The choreography Moi je suis de cette race rouge et épaisse . . . was danced and choreographed by Jeanne Renaud and me as a conclusion to the dance recital presented at the Ross House. It was danced to a poem by Thérèse Renaud, Jeanne’s sister, who had published a book of poetry in 1946—the aforementioned Les Sables du rêve. The poem was read by Claude Gauvreau during the performance.

 

Actually, this choreography is vaguely surrealist and  automatist, but not ultimately successful.

 

Dualité, however, was definitely surrealist. It was created after a dream I had. It was about a beautiful girl on a horse, but beside her was another girl who was quite miserable. Yet, they somehow resembled each other. In the dance, two dancers enter the stage back-to-back, turning and turning towards the other end of the stage until they stop and bend and bend until they break apart. Then, they make mirror-like movements, similar but different in character. There were moments of anger and then moments where they saw their affinities, which they could not deny. At the end, the attraction brings them together and ends up as in the beginning.

 

Inspired by the myth of the goddess Janis, it symbolizes the two faces of one person, both mean and good. There are multiple readings of this choreography. So, the subject of this piece was evidently surrealist, as well as how it came to me, in a dream. Franziska Boas was very interested in this creation. She could see the inspiration in the Freudian theory of the unconscious.

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK: When you were in New York between 1945–1947, was surrealism in the air at all in your artistic circles at the time (with Boas, Graham, etc.)?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN: I don’t really remember that surrealism was overtly in the air in my artistic circles in New York while I was there at Boas’ studio. However, I think that it was implied, as we had improvisation classes every day. At that time, in my dance practice in New York, I had to liberate myself from the ballet technique so ingrained in me since childhood. In New York, I first registered at the new dance group, where the upcoming dancers were teaching. I also took a few courses on Indian Dance from La Meri and African Dance from Pearl Primus, recently back from Africa. I also took courses with Hanya Holm and Martha Graham. At Franziska Boas’, we also had music improvisations on the instruments in her immense collection, instruments from all over the world, with musiciens like Norton Feldman

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK: In her book on the period in which you were in New York, Allana Lindgren says that you were interested in Jung and Freud in the late 40s? [6] Was this apparent in your work at the time at all? How so?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN: In New York in the late 40s, I can remember that everybody was interested in Jung and Freud at the time. Everyone was talking about dreams, everyone wanted to see a psychoanalyst. The only way these theories were apparent in my work was through dreams and poetry.

 

I remember one night, after the improvisation class, I wanted to continue to dance all night long, but they stopped me at 10:30. That time, I was actually in a trance. The choreography for Dualité, as well as Danse dans la neige (1948), were surely close to Freudian theory.

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK: When did you study with Alfred Pellan at the École des beaux-arts in Montreal? He started working there in 1943. What was that like, since Pellan’s approach to surrealism was quite different from Borduas’? Finally, did you know [Mimi] Parent and [Jean] Benoît?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN : Pellan had arrived in Montreal. He had lived in Paris for some time where he mixed with the brilliant art community there. He came back to Montreal in 1941, with all the glow of his Parisian period.

 

I cannot remember in what year I took Pellan’s painting course though, but it must have been around 1944. I had to take this course to graduate from the Beaux-arts school, just as Leduc had done before me. Only I know that it was the year that Fernand Léger came to Montreal to show his film Ballet mécanique [Mechanical ballet] (1924).

 

Also, I don’t recollect hearing Pellan talking about surrealism. In class, there was a modèle vivant [live model] but we were free to paint as we wished, and he would give each one of us feedback on whatever direction we were taking. I don’t remember having to follow a specific direction.

 

Mimi Parent and Jean Benoît were also taking this class. Jean Benoît was working on a large, horizontal work depicting Hell. Mimi Parent was also in the same class, but Jacques de Tonnancour, who was older, was the star of the school. Everyone was pleasant with me, perhaps hoping to win me over to their camp. My friends were not happy at the time.

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK: What is the difference between Pellan’s interpretation of surrealism from a Canadian or Québécois point of view, and that of Refus global, which you were a part of starting that summer of 1948?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN: In both camps, our efforts towards surrealism in painting were very different. By 1945, our surrealist experimental works were beginning to evolve towards abstraction. In retrospect, I think this was at an impressively early date. Leduc’s studio, then Barbeau and Riopelle’s, and then Mousseau’s in turn, became in the evenings places of meeting and heated discussions that attracted intellectuals, poets and other artists, and sometimes even journalists and communists.

 

The Prisme d’Yeux manifesto [Prism of sight manifesto] (1948) was never intended to be a coherent movement in the sense that Automatism was. It announced that it sought “a painting free from all contingencies of time and place or from restrictive ideologies, conceived apart from any literary, political, philosophical or other interference which might adulterate its expression and compromise its purity.” [7] It never led to any action beyond one public statement and exhibition of paintings. The difference between the interpretations of the two camps was that one could see that Pellan’s group was cool, and Les Automatistes were passionate and deeply involved in the act of creation and painting.

 

There was a difference in intensity. Indeed, our group was seeking clarification about what painting is, which brought it eventually to Automatism. It included a series of steps from figuration to abstraction.

 

That Pellan and Borduas did not get along seems to have been common knowledge. Some of the other signatories of Prisme d’Yeux, such as Jean Benoît and Mimi Parent, simply regarded Les Automatistes as too intellectual for their taste and too much concerned with the “problems” of painting, in their opinion. We disagreed of course. Borduas never took the whole issue seriously.

 

On January 30, 1948, Leduc reviewed a letter he had written in 1946 to André Breton that announced a severing of relations. At the time, he was hoping to publish this letter in a Parisian surrealist periodical in 1947 under the title “Rhythms of Passing and Surpassing on the Road to becoming a Painter,” but this never happened. He attempted to publish it again in 1948 without success, which proves that the tension was still there.

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK : Did you ever get to know Alan Glass? And what was your life like when you returned to Montreal from New York, and in the era in which Danse dans la neige took place?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN: I cannot remember meeting Alan Glass at all.

 

I was certainly in Montreal though, when Alan Glass was there, in 1949, since my return from New York in late June 1947, where I was preparing another dance performance. I had come back, indeed, because I became aware that things were about to happen here.

 

In our group, we defined our production in art as part of the avant-garde and so, by definition, it was an act of rebellion. Rebellious we have been and confronted the people in high places: governments, archbishops, religious communities and so forth. Their vision in general and toward art was oppressive, old-fashioned and moralizing. We felt our cause was urgent and noble. Something was in the air without being yet defined. And they had official powers to repress us, which at times they used.

 

For my part, in the Summer of 1947, I got a studio and began to give classes in modern dance as well as working on newartworks. I had been working on Black and Tan (based on Duke Ellington’s Black and Tan Fantasy), and then on Dédale [Daedalus], Dualité [Duality], Gothique [Gothic], and others. The group met occasionally, and many things were discussed, but I was not always at those discussions as I was very busy.

 

During the Christmas holiday, I worked on my text La danse et l’espoir [Dance and hope]. I was surprised to be asked to present it publicly on monday, 16th 1948 as I thought it needed a little polishing.

 

On February 26th, I saw Riopelle at a lecture, who had just come back from Paris with his wife, and he asked me what I had done since our last meeting. I told him of a dance on the sea I had done the previous Summer. It had been created on a vacation with my parents, when I made sure to bring our Bolex 16mm hoping to record something I had in mind, without knowing what. That dance took place in a lost village—called Les Escoumins—on the North shore of the Saint Laurence River, where there was a small island of pink granite boulders that stood not far from the shore.

 

So, one day, I put on a red leotard and started to dance on this island in the bright sunlight where whales spurt water and jump and dance. I danced with the whales and my hair was in flames under the sun. I had asked my mother to film this extravagance, and she did, loving participating with her daughter in an event so . . . surrealist.

 

So, then when I met Jean Paul Riopelle at the lecture that night, I told him I would like to do one in the snow. Spontaneously he said: “Come tomorrow!” Indeed, he had rented a little house with his wife in Otterburn Park, near Mont-Saint-Hilaire. So that is the premises of Danse dans la neige, which I will turn to ahead in our discussion.

 

Sometime later, I phoned Jeanne Renaud, Louise’s sister studying dance in New York to ask her if she would like to present some of her choreographies in a small recital which I hoped to present in Montreal, which she accepted.

 

The Récital de danse was on the 3rd of April 1948 at Ross House, where my studio also was. The group received the idea enthusiastically, and everyone wanted to participate: Mousseau created a stage using yards and yards of jute as well as a costume; Riopelle decided to be the regisseur [director], Claude Gauvreau recited Thérèse’s poem; Pierre Mercure created music, and Maurice Perron did the stage lighting.

 

After the Récital de danse, the group was in gestation at the time, and actively preparing an important exhibition of recent paintings by Les Automatistes. However, Borduas was in the process of writing a text involving social issues and the group decided to publish a manifesto instead of doing the exhibition, gathering at the last minute some texts and ideas we had and that had been boiling for so long. There were no formal meetings, nor organized plans, to decide what to include in it. But Borduas’ text was virulent. I was surprised that the group decided to include my text la danse et l’espoir. It was surely less provocative than Borduas’ main text, but it certainly had a connection to it. On the eve of assembling the contents, some members would have preferred it to be less political. Riopelle for one, argued and cried out: “It is about painting! Painting! Painting!” However, he participated and various texts were assembled. The manifesto was published and it had more to do with the social spheres.

 

On August 9th, the book was launched in Montreal at the Mithra-Mythe Editions, in 400 copies. It received immediate success, in our artistic and intellectual circles and in the socialist community.

 

Almost all the copies were sold out within a few days.

 

After a while, the essence of the text reached the upper levels of government with dire consequences. Sadly, within a few weeks, Borduas lost his job, his family, his health, but kept his friends, even though the group seemed to distance itself.

 

Despite its eventual huge impact on society and the tragic consequences faced by the members in 1948, the manifesto was then forgotten for almost ten years, until a group of artists and intellectuals re- awakened it and took it as a source of inspiration, leading to the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. Since then, it has remained very lively in the collective memory. It’s taught in colleges and universities as a document of broad social importance to this day.

 

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK: The formation of a new myth is one of the central ideas in the manifesto by Borduas, Refus global. What did he mean by that? Do you think Borduas was influenced by Breton in that regard?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN: Though the formation of a new “myth” was one of the key words in Borduas’ Refus global, and André Breton’s thoughts about forming a new myth were known to him, there was no way that either of them could agree on the way it would or should happen. Breton’s attitude about painting was incompatible with the point of view of Les Automatistes.

 

Breton argued against the drift towards pure abstraction in America in the 1940s which he believed “generally serves the extremely impure ends of reaction.” [8] I cannot agree with this, and neither could the group then or since.

 

In an earlier time, Apollinaire had written to Breton: “I am convinced that art itself does not change and that what makes one believe in changes, is the sense of efforts that men make to maintain art at the height of which it could not help existing.” [9] It was Apollinaire who had first used the word “surrealism” years before in his writing about Delaunay’s “Orphism” and in the 1913 manifesto L’Antitradition Futuriste.

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK : Why did Borduas turn down Breton’s invitation to participate in the Sixth International Surrealist Exhibition at the Galerie Maeght in Paris in 1947 (which had myth as its theme)?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN: Any attempts to meet with André Breton had failed, and then when Breton went to Gaspé, Quebec, he passed through Montreal but made no sign of wanting to meet with Borduas or Leduc, or the group.

 

So, there would be many reasons why Borduas turned down Breton’s invitation to participate in the Sixth International Surrealist Exhibition at the Galerie Maeght in Paris in 1947. Perhaps he should have accepted anyway because it was prestigious, but he felt it was right to decline. Riopelle accepted even though he was no longer close to Breton. It was there that he met Pierre Maeght and other people of importance to his career. However, Borduas was then 39 and Riopelle 23.

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK : In your dance La femme archaïque [Archaic woman] (1947–1948), you were also engaging with myth and the idea of primordial womanhood. Can you talk a little about this piece and some of the ideas that relate to it?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN: My choreography La femme archaïque was not the only one on the theme of myth and womanhood. Et la nuit à la nuit [And night to night] (1981) was certainly more clearly mythic, as it involved a large group of women and some of the movements and gestures were inspired by prehistoric cave paintings and Venus figurines from the European Paleolithic period. I don’t really know why I chose this theme. It kind of inspired me.

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK : Lindgren also mentions your interest in the instinctive expression of emotion through dance. Is automatist dance about the expression of emotions?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN: In dance, one can learn steps, movements, and that can be dry; or you can engage your whole being in it. This is what I had chosen.

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK: When we met in person at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you told me that you were in a trance during the performance and filming of Danse dans la neige. Why was this the case? What were some of the feelings and sensations you were having during the dance?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN: On that day, the whole countryside seemed to whisper. The air reddened our cheeks. The soil was rough and slippery under our feet as Jean-Paul (Riopelle) and Maurice (Perron) took silently to their task.

 

Forgetting the familiar snows of childhood play, I stood there daring, not knowing what to dare but daring anyway. Without rules, without guidance. I confronted this rugged terrain and chased the abyss in me. I ran down the spiky and slippery hill and danced on the edge of dance as if dance had never existed before.

 

I ran and ran from hill to hill and caressed their moonlike cover, I let movements come, vigorous in the cold, charged with the affinities of space. And here is where the rugged state of the land meets with the sublime beauty of the North, in an ecstatic embrace.

 

I followed their logic, swelled with dreams. Some birds flew by, and weeds crackled under my feet, movements followed in passionate action. I saluted a long cloud hovering under the sun.

 

The sun became overcast at afternoon’s end, the gestures were evocative, as a Northern melancholy slowly descended as in a dream.

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK: Your gorgeous ekphrasis brings Danse dans la neige to life in my imagination. Was

 

Dédale (1948) related to this concept of surrealist-automatist dance at all?

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN: Dédale is my favorite piece as it is an example of pure psychic automatism in the way it came about from nothing, and how it evolved from the weight and the impetuous in the body itself, and into a mysterious whole. It came from an unconscious movement of a hand which grew and grew until it carried the whole body into dance.

 

I would like to add a few words as a conclusion:

 

We thought of ourselves as the avant-garde. We had initially embraced surrealism as it was then the most advanced movement, but we strove to go further. The consciousness of being on the frontier, of being ahead rather than behind, of having no model, of encounter, felt images that are intuitively felt.

 

Our friend Gilles Hénault put our thoughts into words, and that became our motto:

 

“AS ARTISTS, WE ARE READY TO FOLLOW, AS RIGOROUSLY AS POSSIBLE, A ROAD ABOUT WHICH WE KNOW NOTHING EXCEPT THAT IT HAS NEVER BEEN TRAVELED BEFORE US. IN THE REALM OF ART AND THOUGHT, THAT IMPLIES A CONSTANT REVOLT AGAINST RIGID AND FACILE SOLUTIONS” [10].

 

I will just end by these opening words by Borduas:

 

AND WHAT IS THE ROLE OF ART IN ALL THIS?

 

Art helps humans to situate themselves in the great movements of history and thought. Their importance is not in their existence as objects, but in their function as testimony to the spontaneity, the necessity of living art.

Notes

 

[1] Maurice Gagnon, « Borduas », Amérique française, vol. 1, n^o 6 (mai 1942), p. 10-13.

 

[2] Tancrède Marsil, « Gauvreau, automatiste », Le Quartier latin (28 novembre 1947), p. 5.

 

[3] Ibid.

 

[4] Ibid.

 

[5] Fernande Saint-Martin, « Le sujet de la peinture et l’automatisme de Borduas », RACAR : Revue d’art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, vol. 7, n^os 1-2- (1980), p. 4-14.

 

[6] Allana Lindgren, From Automatism to Modern Dance: Françoise Sullivan with Franziska Boas in New York, Toronto, Dance Collection Danse, 2003.

 

[7] « Manifeste Prisme d’Yeux » (1948), cité par Guy Robert dans Pellan, sa vie et son œuvre, Montréal, Éditions du Centre de psychologie et de pédagogie, 1963, p. 49, 51.

 

[8] André Breton et Diego Rivera, « Manifeste pour un art révolutionnaire indépendant » (1938), dans Mary Ann Caws (dir.), Manifesto: A Century of Isms, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2001, p. 472-77.

 

[9] Guillaume Apollinaire, « Lettre à André Breton », 29 février 1916, Le poète assassiné, Paris, L’Édition, Bibliothèque des curieux, 1916), p. xiii–cix.

 

[10] Gilles Hénault, « Projets pour une série de cahiers sur l’automatisme » (1946), Regards sur l’art d’avant-garde, Montréal, Les Éditions Sémaphore, 2016, p. 105.

Biographies

 

ABIGAIL SUSIK

In her wide-ranging research devoted to modern and contemporary art history and visual ABIGAIL SUSIK focuses on the intersection of international surrealism with antiauthoritarian protest cultures. She is the author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (Manchester University Press, 2021), editor of Resurgence! Jonathan Leake, Radical Surrealism, and the Resurgence Youth Movement, 1964-1967 (Eberhardt Press, 2023), and coeditor of the volumes Surrealism and Film after 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries (Manchester University Press, 2021) and Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (Penn State University Press, 2022). Susik is a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism and an Associate Professor of Art History at Willamette University. She is a 2023-2024 Fellow at the National Humanities Center.

 

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN (1923–) was born in Montréal, where she initially studied at the city’s École des beaux-arts. This uniquely multifaceted artist first gained renown as a dancer and choreographer, moved to sculpture and conceptual art in the 1960s and 1970s, and then made a return to painting in the 1980s, a practice she continues to this day. Along with Paul-Émile Borduas, she was one of the founding members of the avant-garde Automatiste movement, as well as one of the signatories of its 1948 manifesto Refus global, which included the entire text of Ms. Sullivan’s celebrated lecture on “La danse et l’espoir” [“Dance and Hope”]. Her work has been shown in countless solo and group exhibitions, including at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (198-2018), the Musée national des beaux- arts du Québec (1993) the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2003-2023), The MoMA (2010) and The Met (2021-2022) of New York and at the Tate Modern of London (2022). She has received many prestigious awards, including the Governor General’s Award and the Order of Canada.