Philippe Soupault recalls the beginnings of surrealism with the publication of "Magnetic Fields" written with André Breton in 1919, his great principles of surrealism based partly on psychoanalysis with "automatic writing" or "daydream" -André Breton had studied medicine-and under the influence of Rimbaud, Apollinaire or Lautréamont by pronting free writing. "Surrealism was only a liberation"
The painter Salvador Dalí returns to his revolt against the authority of Pablo Picasso and André Breton and to what his exclusion from the surrealists meant. For him, Breton was not a poet but discovered the mechanism and method for making poetry through his manifesto.
Questioned by Louis PAUWELS, Tristan TZARA evokes the Dada movement, his relations with André Breton, Philippe Soupault, Paul Eluard and Louis Aragon, all members of this movement with the magazine "Littérature", on his arrival in Paris, relations with surrealism and what the scandal represents today, like the one created by Dalí by going back in time.
Louis Aragon recounts how he managed to introduce the 15-year-old actor Pierre Brasseur into the surrealist group, despite his blushed look. Pierre Brasseur then recounts how the surrealists educated him by giving him a number of books to read.
The sculptor Alberto Giacometti beside Man Ray evokes what the surrealist artists represented to him when he arrived in Paris, "they were geniuses", who knew very well how to write and express themselves with great freedom. His interview is interrupted by the evocation by Man Ray and the composer Jean Wiener of an anedote on the arrival of Erik Satie on foot in an evening organized by the Princess of Polignac and the clash of worlds in presence.
Returning to Paris in the footsteps of the young man he was, Philippe Soupault stopped in front of the building where Guillaume Appolinaire lived and remembered his anguish before meeting the great poet at home for the first time, it is thanks to him that he then met at the Café de Flore his future great friend André Breton with whom he wrote in the room of his friend Hôtel des Grands Hommes, in joy and good humor, "The magnetic fieldss", first surreal text, in a prodigious glow.
At a time when a retrospective on surrealism is taking place at the Galerie Charpentier on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, return on this artistic movement and the first appearance in a text of the term surrealist with Raymond Nacenta, director of the Charpentier gallery and Patrick Waldberg, art historian placed in front of a work by Jacques Hérold, "Le grand transparent". In 1917, Guillaume Apollinaire gave to his novel "Les mamelles de Tirésias", the subtitle "drame surréaliste", the surrealist movement is thus for André Breton a tribute to Guillaume Apollinaire.
For art historian Patrick Waldberg, surrealism is a way of life, a way of apprehending being and sculpture or painting being one of the means of realizing poetry. He explains the two main currents of surrealism: gnosis and scientism.
Installed on top of a scaffolding, in front of a mural by Marx Ernst, at the Galerie Charpentier where a retrospective on surrealism is held, art historian Patrick WALDBERG returns to the genesis of this monumental work painted for a night cabaret in Zurich, the Corso, in 1934 by Marx Ernst and entitled "The garden of the nymph Ancolie". To a question asked about the future of surrealism to a group of painters: it is certain that for them this artistic movement will continue for centuries: interviews of painters Maurice Henry and Félix Labisse.
In front of the Hôtel des Grands Hommes in Paris, Place du Panthéon, Jean Christophe Averty describes his encounter with Breton and surrealism at the Liberation in 1946 and explains why he can no longer adapt for television the novel "Nadja" since the death of its author.
After an introduction in voice over by Philippe Soupault of the contribution of Man Ray in the group of the surrealists, the latter leafing through an album of photos shelling as and when the appearance of their face, the memories of his encounters and friendships with the band of his surrealist friends: Salvador Dali, "a little monster", Paul Eluard, his best friend at the time, André Breton and his intimidating side as a leader of surrealism.
In his studio, the painter André Masson comments on and explains the symbolism of his posed and non-mechanical portraits of André Breton, master of surrealism, placed both under the sign of admiration and revolt against its grip and where many unconscious.
Surrealism presents itself with two revolutionary watchwords: that of Marx, transform the world and that of Rimbaud, change life. André Breton opposes to an Anatole France, defender of reasoning and logic, the progress of Freud and psychoanalysis, the discovery of behind the scenes with the exploration of dreams and unknown continents of the unconscious and published in 1924 the first Manifesto of surrealism that gives the imagination all the powers with the aim of conquering the wonderful. Reading of a text on surrealism in voice over. Photo of the surrealist group, cover of "La Révolution Surréaliste" and examples of collages.
The publisher of the Série Noire, Marcel DUHAMEL, in his swimming pool, recites a poem by Max Jacob published in 1925 in the surrealist magazine "Littérature" then evokes 54 rue du Château, a place of life and meeting of surrealist artists and presents a collage by Jacques Prévert.
The painter Max Ernst evokes his childhood, the dissensions with his father, Philipp Ernst, amateur figurative painter, on the representation of reality in painting. He then explains how he conceives painting with his two eyes: to see and render reality: with one the external reality and with the other, the inner reality.
From the "farm" there was a break in the work of MIRO, under the influence of surrealist poets and others. Blomet Street meetings were of great importance in his life. The painter André Masson was his neighbour and it was he who introduced him to all the great surrealist writers. He also remembers Robert Desnos, he spoke painting like an illuminated
The painter René Magritte reacts to the fact of having become a classic of surrealism after making scandal: he expresses himself on what makes scandal, how what is unknown and breaks habits makes scandal and tries to explain what represents these paintings but "what he suggests with his painting cannot be said with the voices".
The INA Galaxy 
