Révolution surréaliste, La

Révolution surréaliste, La. The first major periodical of the Surrealist movement, published in Paris between December 1924 and December 1929; there were twelve issues, appearing at irregular intervals (nos. 9 and 10 were published together in October 1927). André Breton was the driving force behind its creation, but the first three issues were edited by two of his writer friends, Pierre Naville and Benjamin Péret (who later married the Spanish Surrealist painter Remedios Varo). In contrast to many Dada magazines, with their dynamic typography and air of anarchy, La Révolution surréaliste was consciously serious in tone and sober in appearance, its layout based on the scientific journal La Nature. The lead article of the first issue was on dreams; the front cover photographs were by Man Ray and the back cover was an advertisement for Breton's first Surrealist manifesto, published a couple of months earlier. Artists whose work was illustrated included Ernst, Masson, and Picasso, and there was also a still from a Buster Keaton film. Issues two and three became more anarchic and pessimistic in tone, under the influence of Antonin Artaud (1896–1948), a writer, draughtsman, stage designer, actor and director, who has been described by John Golding as ‘one of the most unpredictable and most extreme personalities to be associated with the movement'. Unhappy at Artaud's dominance, Breton took over the editorship himself for the rest of the magazine's life and transformed its outlook. Hitherto the illustrations had been fairly meagre, but ‘The pages of issue number four and of all the subsequent issues … were to be enriched by an astonishing diversity of visual material, including reproductions of many of the works now acknowledged to be the movement's masterpieces’ ( John Golding, ‘The Blind Mirror: André Breton and Painting’ in Visions of the Modern, 1994). By its final issue it was selling over 1,000 copies, a substantial number for an avant-garde journal.

It was succeeded as the main mouthpiece of Surrealism by another magazine edited by Breton, Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution, which appeared very irregularly in six issues between July 1930 and May 1933 (the last two issues were published together). It sold less well than its predecessor, but Breton later reflected that ‘of all the Surrealist publications, Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution … is by far the richest … the best balanced, the best constructed, and also the most alive (with a dangerous and exalted life). It is there that Surrealism is shown at full flame.’ The final issue carried an advertisement for another review, Minotaure, the first number of which had appeared in February 1933 and which became the main Surrealist journal for the next six years.