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VVV (journal)

VVV (journal)

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VVV was a magazine devoted to the dissemination of Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, published in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...

 from 1942 through 1944.

Only four issues of VVV were ever produced (the second and third issues were printed as a single volume). However, it provided an outlet for European Surrealist artists, temporarily displaced from their home countries by World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, to communicate with American artists.

VVV was the direct product of the leading Surrealists of the day. The magazine was edited by David Hare
David Hare (artist)
David Hare was an American artist, associated with the Surrealist movement. He is primarily known for his sculpture, though he also worked extensively in photography and painting....

 in collaboration with Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...

, André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist, and is best known as the principal founder of Surrealism...

, and Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst is considered to be one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...

. VVVs editorial board also enlisted a number of associated thinkers and artists, including Aimé Césaire
Aimé Césaire
Aimé Fernand David Césaire was an Afro-Martinican francophone poet, author and politician.-Student, Educator, and Poet:...

, Philip Lamantia
Philip Lamantia
Philip Lamantia was an American poet and lecturer. Lamantia's visionary poems were ecstatic, terror-filled, and erotic which explored the subconscious world of dreams and linked it to the experience of daily life....

, and Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell was an American abstract expressionist painter and printmaker. He was one of the youngest of the New York School , which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston.Motherwell was born in Aberdeen, Washington...

. Each edition focused on "poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

, plastic arts
Plastic arts
Plastic arts are those visual arts that involve the use of materials that can be molded or modulated in some way, often in three dimensions. Examples are clay, paint and plaster.The plastic arts may refer to:* Architecture* Ceramics* Collage...

, anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of human beings, everywhere and throughout time....

, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the scientific or systematic study of human societies. It is a branch of social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, often with the goal of applying such...

, (and) psychology
Psychology
Psychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...

," and was lavishly illustrated by a wide range of Surrealist artists, including Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico was a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Greek-Italian painter born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the scuola metafisica art movement...

, Claude Levi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss is a French-Jewish anthropologist.-Biography:Claude Lévi-Strauss, born in Brussels, grew up in Paris, living in a street of the 16th arrondissement named after the artist Claude Lorrain, whose work he later admired and wrote about...

, Roberto Matta
Roberto Matta
Roberto Antonio Sebastián Matta Echaurren , usually known as Roberto Matta, was one of Chile's and France's and America's best-known painters and a seminal figure in 20th century abstract expressionist and surrealist art.Born in Santiago, he initially studied architecture at the Pontificia...

, and Yves Tanguy
Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy , known as Yves Tanguy was a surrealist painter.-Biography:Tanguy was born in Paris, France, the son of a retired navy captain. His parents were both of Breton origin...

.

The magazine was experimental in format as well as in content. Editions of VVV contained fold-out pages, differently sized sheets and types of paper, and bold typography and color. The second magazine (which contained issues two and three) even featured one of Duchamp's "readymades
Readymades of Marcel Duchamp
The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects that he selected and modified, as an antidote to what he called "retinal art". By simply choosing the object and repositioning or joining, and tilting and signing it, the object became art...

" as the back cover: a cutout female figure "imprisoned" by a piece of actual chicken wire
Chicken wire
Chicken wire, or poultry netting, is a mesh of wire commonly used to fence poultry livestock. It is made of thin, flexible galvanized wire, with hexagonal gaps...

.

See also

  • Acéphale
    Acéphale
    Acéphale designates both a public review created by Georges Bataille and a secret and esoteric society formed by Bataille and some other members who had sworn to keep silence...

    , a surrealist review created by Georges Bataille, published from 1936 to 1939
  • Dyn
    DYN (journal)
    DYN was a journal founded by the Austrian-Mexican Surrealist Wolfgang Paalen, published in Mexico City, and distributed in New York, Paris and London from 1942 through 1944....

    , a counter-surrealist review created by Wolfgang Paalen
    Wolfgang Paalen
    Wolfgang Paalen was an Austrian-Mexican painter and theorist.- Life :Wolfgang Paalen was born in Vienna in 1905 as the first of four sons of the Austrian-Jewish merchant and inventor Gustav Robert Paalen, and his German wife, the actress Clothilde Emilie Gunkel...

    , published from 1942 to 1944 in Mexico
  • Documents
    Documents (journal)
    Documents was a late 1920s-era Surrealist journal edited and masterminded by Georges Bataille. Published in Paris from 1929 through 1930, Documents ran for 15 issues, each of which contained a wide range of original writing and photographs....

    , a surrealist journal edited by Georges Bataille from 1929 to 1930
  • Minotaure
    Minotaure
    Minotaure, published between 1933 and 1939, was a Surrealist-oriented publication founded by Albert Skira in Paris. The editors were André Breton and Pierre Mabille. It was a luxurious publication, sporting original artworks on its cover by prestigious artists like Pablo Picasso...

    , a primarily surrealist-oriented publication founded by Albert Skira
    Albert Skira
    Albert Skira was a French publisher.In 1933, he contacted André Breton about a new journal, which he planned to be the most luxurious art and literary review the Surrealists had seen, featuring a slick format with many color illustrations. Skira's restriction was that Breton was not allowed to use...

    , published in Paris from 1933 to 1939
  • La Révolution surréaliste
    La Révolution surréaliste
    La Révolution surréaliste was a publication by Surrealists in Paris. Twelve issues were published between 1924 and 1929....

    , a seminal Surrealist publication founded by André Breton, published in Paris from 1924 to 1929
  • View
    View (magazine)
    View was an American literary and art magazine published from 1940 to 1947 by artist and writer Charles Henri Ford, and writer and film critic Parker Tyler. The magazine is best known for introducing Surrealism to the American public....

    , an American art magazine, primarily covering avant-garde and surrealist art, published from 1940 to 1947

External links