Max Walter Svanberg and Henri Chopin: The 1955 Enquiry

Fijalkowski, Krzysztof (2024) Max Walter Svanberg and Henri Chopin: The 1955 Enquiry. In: Magic Art. Lopen, Somerset: Fulgur Press.

Abstract

Poet and prime theorist of surrealism André Breton’s L’Art magique of 1957 was the last full-length book published in his lifetime, and is also the last of his major works to be translated into English. Written as part of a wider series of art history volumes, it is a wide-ranging study of traditions of magic, myth and imagination in global and trans-historical art practices, including the creative work of indigenous societies, folk art and outsider art, and counter-modernist aspects of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century avant-gardes, culminating with surrealism. At the book’s centre are the results of an extensive Enquiry on magic art sent to leading specialists in the fields of art, history, ethnography, sociology and philosophy. My work on this publication has been firstly as a joint translator, where specific skills and knowledge in a team of three specialists in the history and theory of surrealism was vital to rendering this often very technical and difficult set of texts into English. Secondly, I am joint author of the substantial translators’ introduction which explains and contextualises the book’s genesis and publishing history as well as its significance in relation to surrealist theory and broader art history. Finally, I am joint author of an appendix essay introducing two contributions to the Enquiry that were not published in 1957, located during archive research in France and Sweden. Two extended de-luxe editions of this volume will be published in January / February 2025.

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