All totalitarian tyrannies banished modern art …
The Dyn of Wolfgang Paalen
by Allan Graubard
All totalitarian tyrannies banished modern art
They are right.
For as a vital stimulus to imagination, modern art is an invaluable weapon in the struggle for freedom.
(Dyn�number 1, 1942)
Wolfgang Paalen holds a unique place among surrealists who came to notice during the tumultuous 1930s. The inventor of fumage who inhabits the realms of the Combat of Saturninan Princes and Fata Alaska, he is an artist with a passion for philosophical clarity ill content to rest on the thought alone. And while certainly not the first among his friends to perceive the inevitability of war, he is among the first in 1939 to flee Europe for the Americas. Nor does he settle in New York or Los Angeles, as many of his colleagues, seeking there to reformulate themselves for a new audience willing to embrace them. Rather, Paalen turns to the Amerindian tribes of the northwest coast to chart an encounter that will mark him till his death in 1959. Quite simply, he wishes to provoke clarity on a divide as compelling then as it is now: between science and art, quantitative precision and qualitative expression, efficacity of means and the human value of ends. And he does so by turning to cultures steeped in totemism, cultures for which modernity is a grievously repressive force, a protracted means toward their eradication.
Cultures that exalt potlatch as a form of exchange where money has no place, and who know little of an art isolated from common social needs, sustain themselves as they can, in secret. That they are still with us in the 21st century is astonishing – their great rituals, the rituals that sustained and distinguished them being banned for decades. Equally astonishing is what they can teach us — even from the ashes scattered around them – about exchange, image, symbol, and ritual within a continuous historic tradition.
From the Northwest coast, Paalen reels south to Mexico City several months later, where he sets up his home. It is in 1939 as well that he curates, with Andre Breton and Cesar Moro, the first surrealist exhibition in Mexico, whose repercussions will affect artistic culture in that country for years to come. It is a watershed moment, a turning point.
As W.W. II consumes Europe, North Africa and the Pacific, Paalen determines not to diverge from his initial aim. In the pages of Dyn, which he launches and edits in six numbers from 1942-1945, he expands upon his encounter with the Haida, Tsimshian, Bella Coola, etc., along with a consuming interest in the indigenous pre-Conquest cultures of Mexico. He and his colleagues reveal and celebrate both, understanding that in the enigmas and beauty they present is a key to the revivification of Western culture tottering then on a precipice from which, while certainly transformed, we still seem unable to free ourselves. There is no question that Dyn is the most original and prescient art journal of its time.
Dyn is short for "dynaton," or "the possible," a phrase that Paalen lifts from the ancient Greek to define his trajectory as artist and thinker. But Dyn is no harbinger of another movement. Born from surrealism, Dyn opens its first issue with an apt Farewell to Surrealism. That Paalen will later realign himself with Breton in 1950 does not in the least distort his departure here, based on his having recognized the fantastical nature of dialectical materialism and certain clich�s too firmly established within the surrealist orbit.
Dyn will gather to its pages an array of influential creators, from Alexander Calder, to Henry Moore, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Marc Chagall, Roberto Matta, Gordon Onslow-Ford, Jackson Pollack, Carlos Merida, Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, Edward Renouf, Miguel Covarrubias, Alice Rahon, Cesar Moro, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Valentine Penrose, Gustav Regler, and more.
From our vantage more than half a century later, it is perhaps difficult to judge the effort and the quality of the passions behind it. We have little by which to measure the stakes at play and the risk involved. Northwest coast Amerindian, Mayan, Aztec, Olmec, Incan, and numerous other indigenous traditions grace our museum and gallery walls. Anthropology and archaeology have given us veritable libraries on their significance. TV documentaries preview new discoveries or rehash current perspectives. And in Chiapas, the Zapatistas struggle to sustain their culture, at first with force of arms, drawing international support in the process.
Not so for Paalen and for Dyn, which we now see as a provocation toward our current largess, but with this difference. Paalen well understands that modern art did not root in known forms, but in objects brought back by explorers; objects that had yet to gain esthetic eminence; objects valued only by experts; objects whose consequences artists and poets revealed against prevailing tastes and imperial culture; objects that shimmer with hidden meaning and magic potencies precisely for their otherness.
Dyn’s first issue, during perhaps the darkest days of fascist hegemony, carries with it a disarming clarity in several important texts, each authored by Paalen: The New Image, Toward an Objective Morality, and Totemic Passage — the last of which he extends throughout the life of the magazine. The second issue, which quickly appears two months later, offers Paalen’s Surprise and Inspiration, an essential text for anyone wishing to reveal new images in a new space for the new moment exploding all around it.
The double issue, Dyn IV-V, is the piece de resistance. Dedicated to Amerindian cultures from the northwest coast, Mexico and Peru, it balances the cultural scales worldwide, and lays the future before us. As Paalen states: "It is only on the northwest coast of America that totem poles attain the monumental power that makes them rank among the greatest sculptural achievements of all time."
And while Dyn concludes with its sixth number, the artistic work foliates. In 1951, Paalen and friends present the Dynaton exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which also feeds into an ambience important to another group brewing just below the surface: the Beats.
Ever since I found several copies of Dyn at Gotham Book Mart in New York in the 1970s, I have kept them in my library as prize possessions. But now Springer-Verlag has made accessible to those interested the complete set in a fine edition, edited by Christian Kloyber from the Wolfgang and Isabel Paalen Foundation, Tepoztlan, Mexico.
Here then is Dyn. Avoid it at your peril.
Allan Graubard
Washington, DC October 2002
They are right.
For as a vital stimulus to imagination, modern art is an invaluable weapon in the struggle for freedom.
(Dyn�number 1, 1942)
Wolfgang Paalen holds a unique place among surrealists who came to notice during the tumultuous 1930s. The inventor of fumage who inhabits the realms of the Combat of Saturninan Princes and Fata Alaska, he is an artist with a passion for philosophical clarity ill content to rest on the thought alone. And while certainly not the first among his friends to perceive the inevitability of war, he is among the first in 1939 to flee Europe for the Americas. Nor does he settle in New York or Los Angeles, as many of his colleagues, seeking there to reformulate themselves for a new audience willing to embrace them. Rather, Paalen turns to the Amerindian tribes of the northwest coast to chart an encounter that will mark him till his death in 1959. Quite simply, he wishes to provoke clarity on a divide as compelling then as it is now: between science and art, quantitative precision and qualitative expression, efficacity of means and the human value of ends. And he does so by turning to cultures steeped in totemism, cultures for which modernity is a grievously repressive force, a protracted means toward their eradication.
Cultures that exalt potlatch as a form of exchange where money has no place, and who know little of an art isolated from common social needs, sustain themselves as they can, in secret. That they are still with us in the 21st century is astonishing – their great rituals, the rituals that sustained and distinguished them being banned for decades. Equally astonishing is what they can teach us — even from the ashes scattered around them – about exchange, image, symbol, and ritual within a continuous historic tradition.
From the Northwest coast, Paalen reels south to Mexico City several months later, where he sets up his home. It is in 1939 as well that he curates, with Andre Breton and Cesar Moro, the first surrealist exhibition in Mexico, whose repercussions will affect artistic culture in that country for years to come. It is a watershed moment, a turning point.
As W.W. II consumes Europe, North Africa and the Pacific, Paalen determines not to diverge from his initial aim. In the pages of Dyn, which he launches and edits in six numbers from 1942-1945, he expands upon his encounter with the Haida, Tsimshian, Bella Coola, etc., along with a consuming interest in the indigenous pre-Conquest cultures of Mexico. He and his colleagues reveal and celebrate both, understanding that in the enigmas and beauty they present is a key to the revivification of Western culture tottering then on a precipice from which, while certainly transformed, we still seem unable to free ourselves. There is no question that Dyn is the most original and prescient art journal of its time.
Dyn is short for "dynaton," or "the possible," a phrase that Paalen lifts from the ancient Greek to define his trajectory as artist and thinker. But Dyn is no harbinger of another movement. Born from surrealism, Dyn opens its first issue with an apt Farewell to Surrealism. That Paalen will later realign himself with Breton in 1950 does not in the least distort his departure here, based on his having recognized the fantastical nature of dialectical materialism and certain clich�s too firmly established within the surrealist orbit.
Dyn will gather to its pages an array of influential creators, from Alexander Calder, to Henry Moore, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Marc Chagall, Roberto Matta, Gordon Onslow-Ford, Jackson Pollack, Carlos Merida, Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, Edward Renouf, Miguel Covarrubias, Alice Rahon, Cesar Moro, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Valentine Penrose, Gustav Regler, and more.
From our vantage more than half a century later, it is perhaps difficult to judge the effort and the quality of the passions behind it. We have little by which to measure the stakes at play and the risk involved. Northwest coast Amerindian, Mayan, Aztec, Olmec, Incan, and numerous other indigenous traditions grace our museum and gallery walls. Anthropology and archaeology have given us veritable libraries on their significance. TV documentaries preview new discoveries or rehash current perspectives. And in Chiapas, the Zapatistas struggle to sustain their culture, at first with force of arms, drawing international support in the process.
Not so for Paalen and for Dyn, which we now see as a provocation toward our current largess, but with this difference. Paalen well understands that modern art did not root in known forms, but in objects brought back by explorers; objects that had yet to gain esthetic eminence; objects valued only by experts; objects whose consequences artists and poets revealed against prevailing tastes and imperial culture; objects that shimmer with hidden meaning and magic potencies precisely for their otherness.
Dyn’s first issue, during perhaps the darkest days of fascist hegemony, carries with it a disarming clarity in several important texts, each authored by Paalen: The New Image, Toward an Objective Morality, and Totemic Passage — the last of which he extends throughout the life of the magazine. The second issue, which quickly appears two months later, offers Paalen’s Surprise and Inspiration, an essential text for anyone wishing to reveal new images in a new space for the new moment exploding all around it.
The double issue, Dyn IV-V, is the piece de resistance. Dedicated to Amerindian cultures from the northwest coast, Mexico and Peru, it balances the cultural scales worldwide, and lays the future before us. As Paalen states: "It is only on the northwest coast of America that totem poles attain the monumental power that makes them rank among the greatest sculptural achievements of all time."
And while Dyn concludes with its sixth number, the artistic work foliates. In 1951, Paalen and friends present the Dynaton exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which also feeds into an ambience important to another group brewing just below the surface: the Beats.
Ever since I found several copies of Dyn at Gotham Book Mart in New York in the 1970s, I have kept them in my library as prize possessions. But now Springer-Verlag has made accessible to those interested the complete set in a fine edition, edited by Christian Kloyber from the Wolfgang and Isabel Paalen Foundation, Tepoztlan, Mexico.
Here then is Dyn. Avoid it at your peril.
Allan Graubard
Washington, DC October 2002
