What is 'Magic Art'? In 1953, André Breton, founder of the surrealist movement, was invited by a prestigious French publisher to explore answers to this question. His resulting analysis is wide-ranging and evocative. Beginning with a literary review of magic and art, Breton draws upon Novalis and Baudelaire before considering the prehistoric rock art of Spain and France, the native art of the Pacific Northwest, the magical grimoires and alchemical symbolism of the Middle Ages, and the work of Hieronymus Bosch, Antoine Caron, Paolo Uccello, Gustav Moreau, Paul Gauguin and the Surrealists. Through these and other diverse sources, Breton traces a mystery that lies at the heart of our timeless fascination with otherness and seeks to place surrealism as a successor to a magical sensibility that began with art itself. First published in 1957 as L’Art magique, this important text is offered here as an English translation for the first time. Working from manuscript notes for the original project, this edition presents the iconographic content as Breton intended, together with more than 300 new citations and a comprehensive bibliography that emphasizes sources found in Breton’s own library.

This edition includes a supplement volume offering contemporary reviews, modern responses to the re-enactment of Breton’s 1955 Enquiry for L’Art Magique, and an essay that provides an analysis of the wider cultural contexts for the original Club Francais du Livre project.

This special edition is referred to as the “Jappard” edition. The name “Jappard” derives from a dream Breton recounts while staying at Saint-Cirq-Lapopie in 1956.

VOLUME ONE

Edited by Robert Shehu-Ansell and Merlin Cox

Foreword—Robert Shehu-Ansell
Translators’ Introduction—Michael Richardson and Krzysztof Fijalkowski

Introduction

Enquiry

I. Art as a Vehicle of Magic

Prehistoric Art and Primitive Art Today
The Art of Ancient Cultures: Dialectic of Magic
Magic Diverted: The Middle Ages

II. Modern Times: The Crisis of Magic

The Transmission of the Legendary Message
Romantic Vision and the Inner World
The ‘Grand Illusion’: Marvels and Limits of Optical ‘Error’
The Call to Chaos: From Expressionism to the Ideogram
Two Great Syntheses: Gustave Moreau and Paul Gauguin

III. Magic Regained: Surrealism

Appendices

a. Strolling Freely—Gérard Legrand
b. Under the Sign of Jappard—Anne Egger
c. Max Walter Svanberg and Henri Chopin: The 1955 Enquiry—Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Kristoffer Noheden
d. Biographies of respondents to the 1955 Enquiry

Notes
Bibliography

VOLUME TWO

I. Postscript 1957
Extract from an Interview with André Breton

II. Contemporary Reviews

André Breton and magical art—Alain Bosquet
André Breton: Magic Art—Henry Amer
Magic Art—Pierre Guerre

III. The Enquiry 2024

Edited by Tessel M. Bauduin, Abigail Susik and Robert Shehu-Ansell

Introduction
Robert Shehu-Ansell

The Responses

Will Atkin
Laetitia Barbier
Jeremy Biles
Jesse Bransford
Alexander Brattell
Nadia Choucha
Kate Conley
Jillian Conrad
Laurent de Sutter
Peter Dubé
Rikki Ducornet
Mariano Errichiello
Kate Feld
Jon Graham
Allan Graubard
Stuart Inman
Elizabeth Insogna
Alex Januário
Kate Laity
Sufenas Lupus
Ian McAlpin
Paul McRandle
Randall Morris
Judith Noble
Penelope Rosemount
Kevin Shelton
Dominic Shepherd
Penny Slinger
Kay Turner
Robert Wallis
Simon Weir
John Wilson

IV. Postscript 2024

Appreciating Magic Art Today: On the Terrain, Reception and Resonances of Breton’s Project—Will Atkin

Notes