H-ART. Revista de historia, teoría y crítica de arte: "Times of Wonder: Latin America, Magical Realism, Surrealism", special issue.

Edited by:
Maria Clara Bernal (Associate Professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá) and
Jonathan P. Eburne (Professor of Comparative literature: English, French, and Francophone Studies, Penn State University)

Guest author:
Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann (Associate Professor, University of Connecticut Wayne Modest, and Director of Content National Museum of World Cultures, Wereldmuseum, Rotterdam)

Though canonized as a French avant-garde movement, Surrealism emerged as an international and cosmopolitan imperative in poetry, art, and thought. Developing at multiple geopolitical sites at roughly the same time, surrealism names a constellation of site-specific artistic and intellectual formations characterized by transnational exchange. In this regard, the surrealist movement was neither a closed circle of authorized members, nor merely an “influence” for the international artists and writers who encountered it. Rather, throughout the Americas in particular, surrealism served as a catalyst for independent intellectual endeavors, whether in explicit dialogue with or in rhetorical opposition to the European iterations of the movement.

In Latin America, the hemispheric presence of surrealism was and continues to be the subject of debate. For many art and literary historians, the relationship between modern Latin American writers, artists, and intellectuals and European Surrealism was necessarily one of assimilation—or, for this very reason, a non-relation that prompted opposition and refusal. Well-known literary figures such as Alejo Carpentier and Juan Larrea, among others, posited that the prospect of a Latin American surrealism entailed a surrender to a kind of aesthetic colonialism, stifling attention to the hybrid, creolized languages, and histories of the Americas. As César Vallejo put it most succinctly in his 1930 Autopsia del superréalismo, “Surrealism is a corpse.”

Other Latin American artists and writers did not conceive of Surrealism as an attack on cultural identity, however, but as an opportunity for voicing the continent's collective psyche, or even as an imperative to recognize and heed the sovereignty of Indigenous cultures. In this regard, Julio Cortazar, in belated response to Vallejo, playfully warned the public to beware of surrealism, for the corpse was still very much alive.

This special issue of H-Art: Revista de historia, teoría y crítica de arte seeks scholarly essays that reflect anew on the multiple histories and iterations of surrealism in Latin American studies. The guest editors, Maria Clara Bernal and Jonathan P. Eburne, are especially interested in essays that offer new approaches to the intersections between surrealism and Magical Realism in Latin America, particularly in relation to exigencies of Indigeneity, colonialism and decoloniality, histories and legacies of the Middle Passage, revolution and structural violence, and alternative forms of embodiment.

Submission:
Manuscripts will be received through the OJS platform: https://revistas.uniandes.edu.co/index.php/hart/about/submissions

The selected articles will be published in the first semestre of 2024.
For further information, please write to revistahartuniandes.edu.co.