À son retour en France en 1946, André Breton reçoit avec enthousiasme des pièces de théâtre qui parviennent à renouveler les pratiques dramatiques de l'époque. Ionesco, Schehadé, Gracq, mais aussi Adamov, Arrabal, Audiberti, Limbour, Obaldia, Vian et Weingarten, créent entre 1945 et la fin des années soixante des pièces audacieuses qui ont tout pour séduire le chef de file du surréalisme.Même si la plupart des auteurs n'entretiennent qu'un lien tenu voire inexistant avec le mouvement surréaliste, ils héritent de certaines préoccupations du premier surréalisme par le truchement de dramaturges et théoriciens de théâtre (tels que Artaud et Jarry), de penseurs (philosophes ou psychanalystes) mais aussi de metteurs en scènes. Les vingt pièces étudiées ici questionnent l'existence humaine en analysant tantôt la perception de l'absurdité du monde, l'incapacité à communiquer, tantôt la perte des valeurs et de repères, poussant les personnages à s'interroger sur leur identité, leurs souvenirs et leurs désirs.Au-delà de ces réflexions caractéristiques de la production dramatique de l'après-guerre, les dramaturges de notre corpus explorent de nouvelles voies dramatiques. Les uns proposent un travail linguistique qui vise à retrouver la poésie au sein des conversations quotidiennes. D'autres interrogent les certitudes établies par le biais de l'humour et de l'ironie. Enfin, d'autres encore se tournent vers l'exploration de l'inconscient, des rêves et de la folie. Ces trois démarches nées d'initiatives individuelles des dramaturges s'inscrivent dans une esthétique surréaliste, mais il n'est pas sûr qu'elles suffisent à résumer la diversité des entreprises dramatiques ni à définir a posteriori une nouvelle conception du théâtre surréaliste / When André Breton comes back to France in 1946, he's thrilled with theatre plays which manage to renew the dramatic practices of the time. Between 1945 and the late sixties, Ionesco, Schehadé, Gracq, and also Adamov, Arrabal, Audiberti, Limbour, Obaldia, Vian and Weingarten create daring plays which have everything to allure the leader of surrealism.Even if most authors only have a tenuous or even non-existent link with the surrealist movement, they inherit certain notions of first surrealism through playwrights and theatre theorists - such as Artaud and Jarry-, thinkers -philosophers or psychoanalysts- but also stage directors.The twenty plays studied here question human existence by either analyzing the perception of the nonsense of the world and the incapacity to communicate, or the loss of values and reference markers, leading the characters to wonder about their identities, their memories and their desires. Beyond these reflections characteristic of the dramatic production of the post-war period, the playwrights of our corpus explore new dramatic paths. Some propose a linguistic work which aims at finding poetry within daily conversations. Others question what we take for granted through humour and irony. Finally, others turn to the exploration of one’s unconscious, dreams and madness.These three approaches born of individual initiatives of the playwrights get close to a surrealist aesthetics, but they may not by themselves summarize the diversity of dramatic attempts nor define a posteriori a new idea of surrealist theatre.

Notre recherche interroge la philosophie existentielle du premier Sartre en la replaçant dans le paysage de la philosophie française post-comtienne du début du XXe siècle et en restituant un moment anthropologique où le problème de la magie traverse les sciences psychologiques et sociales. En suivant les différentes voies du transfert de conceptualité par lequel la notion de magie devient chez Sartre le magique, nous étudions trois pôles de l'ontologie phénoménologique sartrienne, à savoir la conscience intentionnelle, la réalité-humaine et l'être-dans-le-monde. Notre hypothèse est que, selon différentes modalités allant de la thématisation à l'effacement, le magique joue un rôle déterminant dans l'élaboration de l'existentialisme dont nous retraçons la genèse à partir des premiers travaux philosophiques et écrits littéraires de 1927. Face à l'héritage d'une anthropologie positiviste à la méthodologie analytique, Sartre privilégie une approche synthétique et conçoit la conscience dans ses dimensions affective et irrationnelle. Les figures de la pensée magique sont alors mobilisées pour penser l'ouverture au monde de la conscience ainsi que ses rapports à soi et aux autres dans les termes d'une spontanéité irréfléchie et absolue. Nous faisons ensuite retour sur l'anthropologie sartrienne telle qu'elle conçoit la réalité-humaine à partir de ses attitudes et de ses conduites, et notamment à travers la manière dont elle affronte sa propre liberté, fondamentalement et irrémédiablement exposée à la contradiction. Cette structure de la réalité-humaine comme projet existentiel conduit Sartre à repenser l'être-dans-le-monde à partir de ce que nous appelons la dépossession originaire par laquelle l'ontologie est ramenée au magique. / This research deals with Sartre's early existential philosophy by resituating it in the field of French post-Comtian philosophy in the early twentieth century and by re-establishing an anthropological moment in which the issue of magic is explored in the psychological and social sciences. Following the different paths of the conceptual exchange through which the notion of magic becomes that the magical in Sartre's view, we study three poles of sartrian phenomenological ontology : intentional consciousness, human reality and being-in-the-world. The hypothesis advanced by this thesis is that the magical, according to different modes ranging from topicalization through obliteration, plays a determining role in the elaboration of existentialism whose genesis is traced here from Sartre's very first writings in 1927.Faced with the legacy of a positivist anthropology in terms of an analytical methodology, Sartre privileges a synthetic approach and conceives consciousness in its affective and irrational aspects. Images of magical thought are called upon for rethinking openness to the world of consciousness and its relationship to itself and to Others. Returning to Sartrian anthropology, we question how consciousness can be grasped as an irreflexive and absolute spontaneity and how human reality is interpreted through its attitudes and behaviours; in particular through the way it faces its own freedom which is fundamentally and irremediably exposed to contradiction. This structure of human reality as existential project leads Sartre to reconsider being-in-the-world as based in originary dispossession through which ontology is brought back to the magical.

L’objectif de ce travail est l’étude de la démarche artistique du mouvement surréaliste et de la peinture métaphysique en Grèce pendant la période des années 1930. En particulier la thèse étudie le cas des peintres Nikos Engonopoulos, Gerassimos Steris et Georges Gounaro. Tout en examinant « l’idiome pictural » des artistes, ce travail vise également à élucider les influences reçues des artistes Grecs tant par le mouvement surréaliste en France que par les aspirations métaphysiques de la peinture de Giorgio de Chirico. Ainsi orientée, la mise en relation s’effectue sur deux axes, premièrement thématique et deuxièmement stylistique. Dans la première partie, la thèse considère la réception du surréalisme et de la peinture métaphysique en Grèce, effectuée dans des conditions hostiles. Il s`agit donc d`étudier le concept de la « Grécité » et le contexte historique et sociopolitique qui a marqué l’implantation retardée et l’expression affaiblie de cette peinture qui, affranchie des contraintes de l’académisme, a provoqué un scandale sans précédent, combinant Modernisme et Tradition. Dans les parties suivantes, ce travail aborde des thèmes communs dans l`œuvre des artistes du corpus, à savoir l`espace pictural surréel, méta empirique, et onirique, les visions métaphysiques, le rôle du Mythe Orphique, et finalement la représentation et le symbolisme de la figure humaine, historique et mythique, dans son inquiétante étrangeté. De surcroît, la thèse révèle l’originalité de cette création artistique subversive (thèmes choisis, techniques, dessin, et couleurs utilisées) qui a oscillé entre les influences occidentales et la revendication d`une spécificité nationale et culturelle. / The objective of this work is the study of the artistic process of the surrealist movement and the metaphysical painting in Greece, during the 1930s. In particular, the thesis examines the case of painters Nikos Engonopoulos, Gerassimos Steris, and Georges Gounaro. While examining the artists’ « pictorial idiom », it also seeks to elucidate the influences received from Greek artists by the surrealist movement in France and by the metaphysical aspirations of Giorgio de Chirico’s painting. The method of approach is based on the parallel, performed on two axes, firstly thematic and secondly stylistic. In the first part this work considers the reception of surrealism and the metaphysical painting in Greece, at the time of the inter-war period, which was carried out in adverse conditions. The reasons for the weak expression of Surrealism and its delayed implantation in Greece are attributed to the socio-political context and the imperatives of the time. This surreal and metaphysical creation, freed from the constraints of academic painting, caused a scandal as she approached Greek tradition in an innovative way. In the following sections the research deals with common topics in the pictorial work of Greek artists’, namely the surreal, meta-empirical, and dreamlike pictorial space, as well as painters’ metaphysical visions, the role of the Orphic myth, and finally the presence and the symbolism of historical and mythical human figures which often follow the principle of metamorphosis. In addition this work reveals the originality of this art (topics, drawing and colours used) mainly due to its Greek character. It’s a particular case study of that thoroughly subversive artistic creation, oscillated between Western influences and claims of national and cultural specificity.

My research on Victor Brauner’s work in the first two decades of his affiliation with the Surrealist group in Paris re-establishes the role played by the Romanian Jewish artist in the definition of automatic Surrealist procedures of painting and mixed-technique objects that relied upon a new and unconventional understanding of the occult. In the three chapters of this study of Victor Brauner’s work in the 1930s and early 1940s, I analyse key notions, such as the fantastic, animal magnetism, and the occult practices of art making in a Surrealist context. The fantastic is discussed in the first chapter of the thesis from a literary perspective with political connotations in Surrealism, which resulted from a debate engaged in nineteenth-century French literature on the issue of the marvellous versus the fantastic. Due to the Surrealists’ interest in the fantastic a new category emerged, the fantastic art, which is examined in this first chapter in connection with Brauner’s artworks in the 1930s. The incursion into the fantastic, with focus on the premonition of the painter’s left eye loss in his artworks of the 1930s is completed with an approach to spiritualism that had a revival at the time. The second chapter of the thesis investigates the doctrine of animal magnetism and the state of magnetic somnambulism in eighteenth-century scholarship and shows how this experimentation had influenced the development of a new branch of the science, metapsychics or psychical research at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth one. I take into account and demonstrate that these outdated and modern domains of enquiry into the unknown and beyond reality were appealing to Surrealists, in particular to Brauner, due to their research into unconscious processes of the mind. I argue that through the attainment of a condition similar to the one of the somnambulist in sessions of magnetic sleep, the Surrealists aimed to generate automatic procedures of painting and object making. In the third chapter of the thesis I discuss Victor Brauner’s technique of drawing with a candle, or le cirage, as an automatic procedure of art developed in connection with the occult. This final part of the thesis makes also manifest the association of Brauner’s artworks in the early 1940s with practices of the occult in the near and centuries before past.

The diploma thesis deals with the topic of new myth in art since the end of 1920s to the February coup in 1948. The thesis focuses on the work of Josef Šíma and the artists of Groop 42 and it is based on the premise that there was a new myth emerging in both cases. This premise relies on historical sources and secondary literature and the idea is further developed in the thesis. Its structure responds to chronological order of the topics in question, which correspond to the individual chapters. Connecting link of the thesis is the personage of Josef Šíma, which was also role model for the younger artists of Groop 42. Important are also the approaches to the new myth of Václav Navrátil, Jindřich Chalupecký and Karel Teige. All of them commented on both work of Josef Šíma and the art of newly formed generation, all of them also commented on the political situation. The thesis stresses the difference between the artistic and political myth in that period and more attention to the new myth in political ideology is paid in the last chapter. This version of myth manifested itself in February 1948 by establishment of totalitarian political regime. Key words New myth, crises, revolution, symbol, Josef Šíma, Le Gand Jeu, Group 42, romanticism, Karel Hynek Mácha, Jindřich Chalupecký, Václav Navrátil, Karel...

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Walking and writing the world. An approach to modernity in Bohemia and France from the beginning of the 19th century to the 1940's In Christian allegoric texts the Pilgrim traditionally symbolizes the journey of mankind to heaven. From the second half of the 19th century on, poets, travelers, and vagabonds pursued the quest of an afterlife from within city walls. This dissertation examines the different representations of modern wandering via an in-depth analysis of the theme as encountered in French and Czech literature and arts from the early 19th century to the 1940's. It reveals, in chronological order, the different artistic approaches to modernity. By bringing out the various patterns that emerge from the texts, while taking into account the historical and social contexts in which they were created, this work adds to existing knowledge on the cultural similarities between France and Bohemia. It also examines the different literary genres which originate from mankind's need to walk and write the world.

La présente thèse en histoire visuelle réinvestit la photographie surréaliste parisienne de l’entre-deux-guerres, afin de démontrer le rôle moteur des dispositifs de la revue et de la publicité dans la production et la diffusion de la photographie entre 1929 et 1936. Au cours d’une période que nous nommons la « seconde naissance de la photographie », nous établissons une articulation inédite entre les stratégies de diffusion de la photographie dans le contexte des revues surréalistes et les logiques spectaculaires régissant la circulation intensifiée des images à travers les médias imprimés. Notre argument s’appuie sur la notion de concurrence, que nous élaborons en construisant une approche pragmatique et énergétique fondée sur les théories dites de la vie des images (W. J. T. Mitchell entre autres), la conceptualisation du dispositif pulsionnel par Jean-François Lyotard et les études intermédiales qui se formulent autour du Centre de Recherches sur l’Intermédialité (arts, lettres, techniques). Suivant un principe microhistorique, le parcours de la thèse se construit à travers une série d’études de cas qui mettent en jeu des configurations variées entre la photographie, le surréalisme, la revue et la publicité. Nous offrons des analyses détaillées de la revue Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution (1930–1933), des premières années de publication de Minotaure (1933–1935), ainsi que de l’album Électricité (1931), commande publicitaire réalisée par Man Ray, et des projets publicitaires pour Pétrole Hahn (1933–1935) du studio Kéfer-Dora Maar. L’étude de ce corpus ciblé éclaire les relations médiales qui définissent la vitalité des images photographiques dans un contexte de profusion visuelle intensifiée. En proposant de nouveaux outils conceptuels pour l’interprétation des séquences visuelles et des trajectoires d’images, la thèse contribue à l’avancement des études visuelles, en particulier les recherches sur les revues et les modes de diffusion de l’image photographique. L’histoire de la photographie surréaliste que nous restituons dans l’optique nouvelle d’une énergétique des images démontre également la pertinence de réévaluer les avant-gardes historiques à la lumière d’innovations méthodologiques. / This thesis in visual history revisits Surrealist photography from interwar Paris in order to demonstrate the role of periodicals and advertising as agents (dispositifs) of photographic production and dissemination between 1929 and 1936. During a period which I refer to as the “second birth of photography,” I identify a previously overlooked relationship between the dissemination strategies used for photography in periodicals produced in the Surrealist context and the logics of the spectacle that governed the intensified circulation of images through print media. To explore this relationship, I draw upon the concept of competition (concurrence), which I elaborate by way of a pragmatic and energetic approach inspired by theories of the “iconic turn” (such as W. J. T. Mitchell’s), by Jean-François Lyotard’s idea of the dispositif, and by intermedial studies of the kind practiced by the Centre de Recherches sur l’Intermédialité (arts, lettres, techniques). Adopting the tenets of microhistory, this thesis is structured around a series of case studies involving varied configurations between photography, Surrealism, the periodical and advertising. I offer close readings of the Surrealist periodical Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution (1930–1933), the first publication years of Minotaure (1933–1935), as well as the Électricité portfolio (1931), an advertising commission completed by Man Ray, and the advertising projects for Pétrole Hahn (1933–1935) produced by the Kéfer-Dora Maar studio. My analysis of this carefully chosen body of works sheds new light on the medial relations shaping the vitality of photographic images in the context of an intense visual proliferation. By proposing new conceptual tools to interpret visual sequences and image circulation, the thesis contributes to current conversations in visual studies regarding periodicals and the dissemination of photographs. The history of Surrealist photography I offer, with its novel concern for the energetics of images, also demonstrates the value of continuing to re-evaluate historical avant-gardes in the light of methodological innovations.

Language is a system that fundamentally influences us as human beings. There are numerous schools of thought critiquing our use of language and celebrating attempts to break free of the control it has over our lives. In that perspective a transformative play with language can be seen as critical play, and a game design approach supporting this kind of play can be defined as critical. The cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique invented by the Dadaists in the 1920s. It was the fundamental lack of belief in society and language that gave birth to the cut-up method. Mary Flanagan includes it in her book “Critical Play: Radical Game Design” as part of the critical game-design paradigm. The singer-songwriter Dave Kapell invented Magnetic Poetry in the early 90s inspired by the cut-up technique and how artists such as William Burroughs and David Bowie used in their work. I am a co-founder of Ozma Games – a game studio based in Malmö, Sweden. In Ozma we are working on a social word game called Words of Oz. Magnetic Poetry inspired us in the design of Words of Oz, as we wanted to make a casual game that could evoke players’ creativity. The Dadaists clearly wanted to challenge the way we use language. In this essay I will compare the Dadaist cut-up method with its later adaptations Magnetic Poetry and Words of Oz. My question is whether the critical design approach is sustained in Magnetic Poetry and Words of Oz or if the change in technology and framing has limited the subversive potential from which they originated.

Thèse en cotutelle / Le genre du manifeste prend son essor dans la première moitié du XXe siècle, notamment dans le contexte des avant-gardes historiques en réaction aux nombreux bouleversements sociopolitiques et esthétiques à l’aube des deux guerres mondiales. Alors que les signataires des manifestes dits « fondateurs » des mouvements futuriste, dadaïste et surréaliste se sont vu arroger le titre de « chef de file » dans la foulée de leur publication, la faible participation des femmes dans leur élaboration est remarquable, se limitant tout au plus à une co-signature (comme dans le cas de Sophie Taeuber et du manifeste Dada-Zurich). Or, nombreuses sont les autrices et les artistes à avoir investi ce genre mêlant création et théorie dans une volonté de négocier avec la pensée dominante d’un mouvement avant-gardiste donné et – cela va sans dire – avec les conventions littéraires et esthétiques institutionnalisées. Observer leurs productions dans une approche à la fois féministe et rhétorique montre que les femmes signataires investissent singulièrement cette écriture marquée par la provocation et la violence verbale. Elles forcent ainsi la redéfinition des trois principes fondateurs du geste manifestaire : l’opposition, l’imposition et le regroupement. En résultent des programmes polémiques en réaction explicite aux manifestes officiels ainsi qu’à d’autres consacrés à la défense et à l’illustration d’une pensée artistique qui se veut plus indépendante des textes signés par des hommes. En se mettant elles-mêmes en scène, les créatrices incarnent des positions de dissociation par rapport à certaines idées, valeurs ou pratiques scripturaires et artistiques défendues plus largement dans l’un ou l’autre des mouvements. Dès lors, le manifeste devient le lieu d’une réelle performance de soi rendant possible l’appropriation par les femmes de ce genre historiquement investi par les hommes pour l’adapter à un discours qui s’inscrit dans une marginalité complète. / The genre of the manifesto is linked to the cultural history of the first half of the 20th century with the historical avant-gardes, in reaction to the numerous socio-political and aesthetic upheavals at the dawn of the two world wars. While the signatories of the so-called « founding » manifestos of the Futurist, Dada and Surrealist movements were given the title of « chef de file » in the wake of their publication, the low level of participation by women in their elaboration is remarkable, limited at most to a co-signature (such as Sophie Taeuber with the Dada-Zurich manifesto). Yet many female authors and artists have taken up this genre, which combines creation and theory, in a desire to negotiate with the dominant thought of a given avant-garde movement and – it goes without saying – with institutionalized literary and aesthetic conventions. Observing their productions from both a feminist and a rhetorical perspective shows that the women signatories are singularly invested in this form of writing marked by provocation and verbal violence. In doing so, they force a redefinition of the three founding principles of the manifesto gesture: opposition, coercion and grouping. The result is polemical programs in explicit reaction to official manifestos, as well as others devoted to the defense and illustration of an artistic thought more independent of texts signed by men. By putting themselves on stage, women creators embody positions of dissociation from certain ideas, values or scriptural and artistic practices defended more broadly in one or other of the movements. From then on, the manifesto becomes the site of a real self-performance, making it possible for women to appropriate a genre historically invested by men and adapt it to a discourse that is completely marginal.