Kurt Seligmann’s Moderate Surrealism

“Artist Canvas Reality” is the first in a series of facsimile editions of Kurt Seligmann’s typed manuscripts for lectures at the New School now being published for the first time by the Seligmann Center for the Arts. Under the editorship of Mary Altobelli, each publication will include a variety of supplementary materials. This first features an introduction by Celia Rabinovitch, eight artists’ responses to Seligmann’s ideas in words and forms, and this essay as afterword. The second lecture, on art and magic, is in preparation and should appear early in 2017. Each is to cost $15 and may be purchased from the Seligmann Center or through me.


At the outset of his lecture “Artist Canvas Reality” Kurt Seligmann admits the partial character of his own analysis and suggests that some elements of art may remain forever mysterious. He then directly addresses his audience, suggesting “I may perhaps give you an impulse for further exploration.” These comments are a response to the artist’s invitation.

     For years Kurt Seligmann was a member of the Surrealist circle, his membership sanctioned by André Breton, and confirmed by his close associations with Ernst and Tanguy among others. Nonetheless, his own theory and practice remained idiosyncratic. Seligmann’s statements on aesthetics, accessible from his American lectures such as “Artist Canvas Reality,” while incorporating certain critical Surrealist tendencies, suggest a significantly moderated version of those announced so dramatically in Breton’s first “Manifesto of Surrealism.”
     In that historic document, Breton calls for the overthrow of reason, insisting that logic has no significant use. He praises the child’s mind, the madman’s consciousness, and the significance of dreams and chance. He celebrates “the marvelous,” declaring realism “the lowest of tastes,” and delights in what Reverdy calls “a juxtaposition of two more or less remote realities” proceeding then to illustrate the point with a series of quotations such as this from Roger Vitrac: “No sooner had I summoned the marble-admiral than he pirouetted on his heels like a horse rearing at the pole star and showed me in the plane of his bicorn hat a region where I ought to spend my life.” To Breton what is important is to compose “without any intervention on the part of the critical faculties,” “unencumbered by the slightest inhibition.” Surrealism to him is a drug capable of producing “an artificial paradise.”
     In his talk titled “Artist Canvas Reality,” Seligmann likewise rejects realism but then poses an alternative quite different from Breton’s. To Seligmann every representation is partial and coded, and thus a claim to realism is always false. Vulgar mimesis is incapable of “creation” and can produce only a “deception.” For him “there is not such a thing as objective reality.” On the other hand “Reality is the All,” the contents of the artist’s mind no less than the tree before his eyes.
     Breton treated reason with contempt, saying it was operative only upon trivial occasions (dismissing at the same time aesthetic and moral concerns) while to Seligmann rational conscious planning was critical to art. He directly challenges Breton by declaring that spontaneous or automatic creation cannot exist. For Seligmann Mind takes an equal role with what he calls Psyche in the “struggle upon the canvas” that generates art.
     Experience to Seligmann is inevitably subjective. Art is “an interpretation of an interpretation” which is again reinterpreted by the viewer, but, far from a diminished vision (as it seemed to Plato), this subtle process is for Seligmann the precise way to signify human experience. Whereas Breton had defined Surrealism as “psychic automatism,” “free from any control,” Seligmann pursued art that reflected the human mind, committed at once to the objective and subjective, the conscious and unconscious. Instead of fishing for truth in the deep waters of dreams, or even beyond, in the chartless realms of chance, Seligmann sought out of the dialectic between the rational and the irrational to produce the “mysterious transubstantiation” of art.

Documents of the Fifth Surreal Cabaret

1. press release (in fact acts numbered 2 and 8-11 did not appear due to snowfall the day of the event)


Surreal Cabaret in Sugar Loaf – One Night Only!

The fifth Surreal Cabaret will be presented at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 3 at the Seligmann Studio, 23 White Oak Drive in Sugar Loaf. Admission is free. The event will feature a series of short performances by local artists produced by Steve Roe with the assistance of William Seaton.

Acts may cross genres, mixing poetry, drama, dance, and music, while featuring conceptual play, experimentation, and improvisation. Several projection screens will provide a variety of visual stimulation in an environment of new word patterns, sounds never heard before, and suggestive theatrical gestures.

The event is part of an ongoing series of exhibits, readings, lectures, and workshops presented by the Seligmann Center for the Arts. Kurt Seligmann was a Surrealist artist who lived in Sugar Loaf, and the Center offers a rare Hudson Valley venue for avant-garde painters, writers, and performers.

This particular show, titled “On Thin Ice,” will memorialize Seligmann’s death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, deemed to be accidental, on January 2, 1962. The extraordinary program, involving a wide circle of performance artists in the region, is detailed below.

For further information contact William Seaton at seaton@frontiernet.net or Steve Roe at sroe33@optonline.net . See www.kurtseligmann.org for details on other programs.

1. The program opens with a benediction from Surrealist chaplain Lama Swine Toil.
2. The Surreal Cabaret house band Mr. Sexy and the Hot Chicks warms up the audience.
3. “Lamp,” inspired by 1964 lamp subculture and other new wave consumerism is staged.
4. Spreaders offers “SoftError\\\drenched electronics::: damaged cassette loop junk media disruptions.”
5. “Dada Frolic” features Dan & Detta Andreana- speaking in their native tongue (Jibberish) and making sound art on the Bow Box and The Micasonic String Board.
6. William Seaton and the voice of Patricia Seaton alert the audience to “The Metaphysics of Everyday Life.”
7. Steve Roe performs “I Am Strange,” a work inspired by the work of Sun Ra.
8. The New York Pop Conceptualists, featuring Julie Mejia on bass, synthesizer, and vocals and Matt Luczak on drums, create “a response to the event itself.”
9. “Caution Horses,” from Jeffery Justin Van Dunk, is an experimental audio visual performance.
10. Jonas Bers offers an “abstract audiovisual improvisation using handmade electronics and modified consumer equipment to produce projected images and corresponding sound.”
11. The “23rd Toad Psalm” by the Orchestra de Fou, a long standing noise orchestra led by Dr. George Omara, with the assistance of members of Ohms of Resistance and Council of (Poetic) Experimentation will close out the evening.
For further information contact Steve Roe at sroe33@optonline.net or William Seaton at seaton@frontiernet.net. See www.kurtseligmann.org for details on other programs.


2. posters by Steve Roe

3. The Lineage of the Lama Swine Toil

I am the Lama Swine Toil and, like each of you, though singular, I am not alone.

I knew the divine madman Gundam Raul who played with Vishnu in the temple babbling and sticking his fingers in the statue’s mouth: “he’ll bite, he won’t bite, he’ll laugh, no he won’t, he’ll talk, but be silent”

And my neighbor next door is that Christ of the Gospel of Thomas who warned that buyers and merchants could not enter the kingdom and said to dance naked and unashamed, trampling on one’s clothes once and for all.

I am descended from Shi de, whose janitor’s broom swept his own mind clean, wiser than all the learned monks at the Guoqing Temple

And the illiterate Huineng who was delivering firewood when enlightened and who stole away in the night to avoid the envious when he was named Sixth Patriarch

I am at one with Muhammed who cut the sleeve of his robe to avoid disturbing his dear cat Muezza who slept and later the cat bowed to him in thanks as my own latter day cats have been known to do.

I revere the memory of the great Ji Gong who crazy and drunk was expelled from his monastery and thereafter practiced compassion in wine shops and low dives up and down the dusty streets crowded with suffering souls.

And in France my brother, the tumbler of Our Lady outshone the learned monks when he leaped and danced in love before the altar and heaven’s queen found his offering most sweet.

Not a hair’s breadth separates me from Johannes Tauler who knew Mechthild’s Flowing Light and knew as prophets and physicists alike will say that all without exception returns in the end to the source.

I am cousin, so I think, to Zhuang Zi who preferred his “filthy ditch” to the sovereign’s court and said, “I have determined never to take office, but prefer the enjoyment of my own free will."

I would scratch Diogenes that dog upon his hoary head, Diogenes who when he saw the shepherd boy drink from his own hand, then tossed away his begging bowl and said, “Fool that I am, to have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time.”

I strain my ears to hear the strain that came one night to that most annoying lady Margery Kempe as she lay with her husband in bed and “herd a sownd of melodye so swet and delectable, hir thowt, as sche had ben in paradyse.”

I think of dear Ikkyu who was brilliant with his flute entered brothels in his monastic robes and insisted his time with pavilion girls deepened his enlightenment.

I am as one with Hakuin Ekaku who, when asked about the afterlife, said, “Why should I know?” and when the questioner cried out, “You are a great teacher!” replied, “Yes, but not a dead one.”

Xuefeng Yicun tells all we need to know: “The Buddha is a bull-headed jail-keeper and the Patriarchs are horse-faced old maids!”



4. a further fit of "The Metaphysics of Everyday Life"

And a birth releases widening waves rolling fugue-like in four dimensions or more throughout fields known and fields awaiting a viewer and further yet where sight is unnecessary altogether;

For a death as well makes waves of an inverse character but no less graceful and potent, and were some gifted eyes to view from time’s back end they would see the end as the start spelled backwards, though the symmetry escapes us now,

And just as the truth of a birth is concealed behind jubilation that, in spite of mortality, we are keeping abreast of the game through efforts strenuous and strongly felt through the entire human race,

So the truth of a death is folded in self-pity and vain attempt to grasp at the straws that felt the summer sun so many years ago and, though we knew this moment was coming, we were nonetheless hard hit.

And we wept not for the departed but for ourselves, and not for our loss and raw loneliness torn open but as well for our own death lurking in a distant hallway awaiting most patiently our approach ever closer past the dusty doors of abandoned offices until we come upon it all at once.

For to be immortal would be like being of infinite height and would surely prove an inconvenience and hardly a thing to be wished for though it is true that one’s finiteness does not always seem to fit even after squirming and stretching!

And great flares of transformation arise and stars pass out of existence in the blooms of supernovae and think quiet afterthoughts of cosmic rays, world without end,

For there is always a further readjustment to be sought whether in the passing of stormy galactic clouds or some sac of eggs suspended in swampy water, restless and wriggling, or patterns of pencil marks on paper, and things never come wholly to rest.

And what Socrates called wind-eggs may not be without value in the end, for the church and the film industry and indeed all the advertisers likewise trade in images, and enjoy good custom indeed, though poets may go begging.

For liberation as well as manacles must be mind-forged, though the meadow breeze in one’s hair is none the less palpable for that, nor the dizzying sight from the peak, and we must be glad of our bargains and catch them where we may.

And the sum of all things is precisely nothing at all, when positive charges meet negative and matter meets antimatter and finds annihilation perfect and sweet and a most elegant end,

For we can only think that the primary concerns of the kosmos are aesthetic in spite of baryon asymmetry and other pebbles of ignorance that cramp our walk and give us blisters;

And Kurt Seligmann has gone off to join the many, for a single slip on a January morning may overpower a legion of intentions and halt the burgeoning of a host of futures each full of fresh promise,

For like him it is all we can do to pursue the vermin that annoy and the nightmares that trouble our sleep and the furtive darting threats that circle about seeking to gain advantage in this imperfect light.

And we can only breathe together and think of him and gaze each other in the eye and know we walk also a path that can only end in drama and alarm.

For the pot will continue to boil and sometimes to boil over and sometimes to simmer and in it the currents are drifting describing lovely patterns that never repeat and the dance cannot come to rest and in this it is like feet when the music plays.

Documents of the third Surreal Cabaret

The third Surreal Cabaret was presented at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, August 23 at the Seligmann Center for the Arts, 23 White Oak Drive in Sugar Loaf.

The program

1. Steve Roe performed Museum Piece, a monologue describing a bizarre museum treating the relationship of art to commerce, science, and violence.
Roe is founder of COPE, the Council of (Poetic) Experimentation, a performance group dedicated to performing classic and original multimedia experimental works. Roe was Associate Producer and acted in the prize-winning film Under Jakob's Ladder.

2. Jennifer Kraus did Mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror which through video, movement and voice searches for redeeming vulnerability behind the current "selfie" culture.
Kraus, a Warwick native, is a dance teacher and choreographer. She most recently worked at HERE Arts Center in NYC as an Assistant Director. She has formed a theatrical production company, HUGE CUP Productions, through which she develops original dance theater work.

3. Michael Sean Collins delivered Igor’s Revenge, or The Black Dog Takes Another Bite, a macabre surreal existential monologue representing a conversation between a man and his unconscious.
Collins is an actor, poet, magician, photographer and former 22-year resident of New York City. He has performed in television, film, theater, cafes, night clubs circuses and alternative performance venues across the United States and Canada.

4. Chloe Roe sang Aria, John Cage’s composition which requires a single performer to vocalize in five languages using ten vocal styles.
Roe is a professional actress and singer. She appears as the lead in the feature film Feral Child and as Francis in The Library. She is also a member of The Manhattan Girls Chorus. But most of all she likes to rock out with her band.

5. William Seaton enacted The Debate of Thaumastes and Panurge, a disputation conducted entirely in gestures.
Seaton conceived the Surreal Cabaret. He also produces the Poetry on the Loose Reading/Performance Series and teaches workshops at the Northeast Poetry Center’s College of Poetry.

6. ArtCrime with John Korchok provided opening and incidental music and performed a unique version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
ArtCrime is a cell of committed aesthetic hackers devoted to the overthrow of musical expectations. Using jazz, classical, and rock idioms, we make music that is reminiscent of the future. We sleep in the daytime, we work in the nighttime. We might not ever get home.


The poster by David Horton

[I haven't succeeded in reproducing the excellent poster by David Horton. Blogger doesn't seem to like the pdf format. Perhaps it will appear here soon.]


The benediction by the Lama Swine Toil

Good evening and welcome to the Surreal Cabaret at the Seligmann Studio, the staging area for advanced artistic research in Orange County. I am the Lama Swine Toil, Surrealist Chaplain, midwife to your imaginative endeavors for the next few hours. Allow me to bestow the special benediction of the unordained and to share a few words of scripture.
I am bedazzled to gaze upon you and to behold radiant perfect Buddhas enjoying the endless unemployment of Eternity. But in this quantum universe we find ourselves like Schrödinger’s cat in two states at once. I see as well as Buddhas small caged and pacing beasts like those in the Humane Society, motherless, anxious, and feeling alien indeed. Suspended between these realities, I invite you to make of yourself tonight a young child with no responsibilities beyond observing and playing.
And now a few words from our scriptures. Remember always the rule of the Abbey of Theleme which existed never and always: “Do as thou wouldst.” In different words the rural Midwestern prophet Ezekiel Cole expressed the same timeless thought “If thou hast eyes, go thy way.” Allow me to conclude with the glad exclamations of Lord Buckley’s Nazz, “Oh great swingin’ flowers of the fields! And the Nazz say “Dig Infinity!”