Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You
Speaker 1: thought I forgot how to introduce my podcast. I would
Speaker 1: never forget how to introduce my podcast, because I'm Margaret Kiljoy,
Speaker 1: the host of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, And
Speaker 1: this is what I do for a living, and I'm
Speaker 1: good at my job. But with me today is my guest,
Speaker 1: Caitlyn Dante.
Speaker 2: Hi, Caitlin, Oh, Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. People, if they're keeping track, you were on when
Speaker 1: we talked about Oh God, was anti fascism in film?
Speaker 1: Was that you?
Speaker 2: Yes? And it was specifically oh because we talked about
Speaker 2: someone named Shrek Max Streck.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then there was another episode on the printing people.
Speaker 1: Who were the printers? Yes, yeah, all right, Well I
Speaker 1: have you on for good ones and that's cool because
Speaker 1: today is a good one.
Speaker 2: Can't wait.
Speaker 1: The other person who's on for the good ones. There's
Speaker 1: only good ones is Sophie our producer. Hi, Sophie.
Speaker 3: Hi, Caitlyn Fear.
Speaker 1: Beforehand, I asked Caitlin what they could do if I
Speaker 1: had completely forgotten my script, what they would do an
Speaker 1: episode on And we're not doing that. That's not what's
Speaker 1: happening today. I have a script in front of me.
Speaker 1: But Caitlin said Paddington Bear. Yeah, Kaitlyn, who's Paddington Bear
Speaker 1: for the listeners. He's a cool bear who did cool
Speaker 1: stuff and he's just a little sweetie pie. He loves marmalade.
Speaker 1: He is Sally.
Speaker 2: He wears a Duffel coat.
Speaker 1: Oh that's it.
Speaker 4: I've definitely been with Caitlin where they were doing a
Speaker 4: show and then fans gave Caitlin orange marmalade. Mm hmm,
Speaker 4: yeah that's happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people give me all kinds of Paddington paraphernalia. And yeah,
Speaker 2: he based I mean Paddington. He kind of dismantled the
Speaker 2: prison industrial complex in Paddington two.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay.
Speaker 2: He also fought back against racism and xenophobia and like
Speaker 2: anti immigration sentiments in Paddington I, and who knows what
Speaker 2: will happen in Paddington three.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like he has a lot in common
Speaker 1: with people we're gonna talk about today. Ooh, it's some
Speaker 1: Paddington's cooler in some ways. Our audio engineers Ian Everyone's
Speaker 1: to say hi in Hi ian y. Our music The
Speaker 1: music was done forced by unwoman who has a new
Speaker 1: album out that you should check out on band camp
Speaker 1: or wherever you. I don't know enough about how music
Speaker 1: is distributed. It's probably on Spotify two, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But today we're gonna do an art history day. Oh
Speaker 1: but don't worry, there's still going to be revolvers. Oh good, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because did you ever take art history?
Speaker 2: I did not. I know so little about art history.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 1: It is the boringest class I've ever taken in my life.
Speaker 1: So vay do you concur is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I get.
Speaker 4: I took ap RT history in high school with a teacher,
Speaker 4: with a teacher who took it more seriously than a
Speaker 4: heart surgeon takes heart surgery.
Speaker 2: WHOA.
Speaker 1: I took art history when I briefly went to art school,
Speaker 1: and it's the only class I've ever failed in my
Speaker 1: life because it had no connection to anything that interested
Speaker 1: me at the time. Because my hypothesis, art history is
Speaker 1: taught as if it's boring, as if it's only about
Speaker 1: the ways that people like represented objects through time being
Speaker 1: like and now they represented them with more color and
Speaker 1: less color and shit like that. Right today, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the Surrealists.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to talk about the Surrealists, because what
Speaker 1: I learned about them was just like, oh, they chose
Speaker 1: to paint things and they had melting clocks or whatever.
Speaker 1: To be fair, I also just said that I failed
Speaker 1: art history, so maybe they taught me more and I
Speaker 1: was asleep. But what the pieces like meant was stressed,
Speaker 1: but in this abstract way, as if art was its
Speaker 1: own realm. Kind of like how philosophy is boring as
Speaker 1: shit unless it's connected to daily life. That's my hypothesis.
Speaker 2: Mh.
Speaker 1: The Surrealists. What do you know about the Surrealists? What
Speaker 1: have you heard about these folks?
Speaker 2: I don't know the difference between Like if you were like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, like Cubism and Surrealists and the other styles, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be able to identify who did what what
Speaker 2: eras they were popular, and I don't I have I
Speaker 2: have no information. This is a huge gap knowledge.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think I'm going to be able to present
Speaker 1: it where it's actually going to be exciting. I don't
Speaker 1: know whether will make you care about the Surrealist art itself.
Speaker 1: Although I actually really like some of the Surrealist art.
Speaker 1: The Surrealists were all about daily life. They actually didn't
Speaker 1: set out to be an art movement. They set out
Speaker 1: to be a revolutionary organization of artists aiming to overthrow
Speaker 1: the world order, and not just like philosophically, but like
Speaker 1: with guns and shit as necessary. Oh hell yeah, that said,
Speaker 1: probably most of them would have preferred to let other
Speaker 1: people handle the guns. Well, they did the painting, let's
Speaker 1: be real, And they did all of this as part
Speaker 1: of the larger leftist project, starting off communist, moving ever
Speaker 1: more towards friend of the Pod anarchism, though obviously they
Speaker 1: all as individuals took different routes to different destinations. But
Speaker 1: that is the selfclaimed surrealist group's movement. Okay, we are
Speaker 1: going to structure this episode differently, a bit less linearly.
Speaker 1: Partly I'm going to pretend like it's because the Surrealists
Speaker 1: would have liked it that way.
Speaker 3: They would, I.
Speaker 1: Actually think they would have. Yeah, there's this word that's
Speaker 1: used by the descendant of the Surrealists, the Situationists, who
Speaker 1: are really involved in like late sixties France, lefty revolution
Speaker 1: of everyday life type stuff. And they had this concept
Speaker 1: called the derieve, which is this kind of pretentious but
Speaker 1: also really cool idea of taking wandering around the city
Speaker 1: to be an art form, right, and so like the
Speaker 1: derive is just literally like you like walk out your
Speaker 1: house and you go different places than you would have
Speaker 1: and you just let the and you move from like
Speaker 1: one situation in context to another rapidly. And it's a
Speaker 1: very urban thing for that, right, is a thing that
Speaker 1: works because it is urban. I really like the derieve
Speaker 1: and you can recontextualize the city at random and you'll
Speaker 1: learn different things. So we're going to take a reeve
Speaker 1: through surrealist history and we'll start off with some of
Speaker 1: the things they did, not some of the things they thought,
Speaker 1: or some of the things that they painted or wrote.
Speaker 1: We're gonna start with a story about World War two,
Speaker 1: because apparently everything is about goddamn World War two, and
Speaker 1: also on this podcast, everything is about a goddamn lesbian
Speaker 1: and or non binary surrealist couple who found themselves on
Speaker 1: death rope during the Nazi occupation. Who these two folks,
Speaker 1: Claude Kaa and Marcel Moore, And they were both probably
Speaker 1: would have called themselves women. They both took men's names.
Speaker 1: Claude isn't could be either name, but Marcel is a
Speaker 1: man's name, and Claude at the very least espoused a
Speaker 1: non binary identity. I'm not gonna I'm just gonna use
Speaker 1: she because I'm not gonna like retroactively be like you are,
Speaker 1: the following kind of thing that we currently talk about, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know sure. I don't think she would have
Speaker 1: given a shit no matter what pronounce someone used for them.
Speaker 1: And I'm only going to use one name for each one,
Speaker 1: not because they were like terrified of anyone speaking their
Speaker 1: dead name. That concept wasn't around, and they called each
Speaker 1: other often. They called each other by their birth names.
Speaker 1: But I'm doing it because I can't keep track of
Speaker 1: more than one name for a person there, which really
Speaker 1: helps me in the modern like queer trans world. But
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna call them Claude and Marcel.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Claude ca A was born with a woman's name in
Speaker 1: not A city in western France in eighteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: and she was born into a prominent family of Jewish intellectuals.
Speaker 1: Her father ran a newspaper, her uncle was one of
Speaker 1: the great symbolist poets. I could not tell you what
Speaker 1: that means because I have a similar level of understanding
Speaker 1: of some of these things. If I haven't if they
Speaker 1: didn't fight Nazis. I don't really know anything about them yet,
Speaker 1: you know, sure I will. I kind of know what
Speaker 1: the romantics. They would have thrown explosives at Nazis had
Speaker 1: there been Nazis to throw them at. Anyway, Claude grew
Speaker 1: up bilingual. She grew up speaking French and English, and
Speaker 1: she went to school in England and France both And
Speaker 1: when she went to school in England, like boarding school,
Speaker 1: when she was like a teenager preteen, I think maybe
Speaker 1: she met anti Semitic abuse at the hands of her classmates.
Speaker 1: Because everything is awful, and she fell in love young,
Speaker 1: and she stayed that way for the rest of her
Speaker 1: life with the one person. And this is like one
Speaker 1: of my favorite romances in history. This might be my
Speaker 1: favorite romance I've ever recovered on this show.
Speaker 2: Ooh.
Speaker 1: Although it started off when she was fifteen, her dad
Speaker 1: married a Jewish woman with a seventeen year old daughter, Marcel,
Speaker 1: and they fell madly in love. The two stepsisters. Later
Speaker 1: Marcel took There's two versions of the story. Either Marcel
Speaker 1: took the boy's name first and then Claude took one later,
Speaker 1: or they both took it at the same time while
Speaker 1: they were living in Paris, US. I like the version
Speaker 1: where they took it at the same time for no
Speaker 1: good reason, and I have no It's my favorite thing
Speaker 1: about trying to tell a single linear narrative out of
Speaker 1: history when there's perfectly good arguments that completely contradict each
Speaker 1: other about minor things, and then you get obsessive about it,
Speaker 1: and then you cross reference everything and you don't get
Speaker 1: an answer. I don't know if you've had this, and.
Speaker 2: Then it's twenty hours later and you're like, oh, no,
Speaker 2: I still have so much to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't always sleep Wednesday nights. We record on Thursdays,
Speaker 1: just so everyone listening now knows what day I record.
Speaker 2: Gasp.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know what they'll do with it, but
Speaker 1: I still don't trust people. Do not Okay, anyway, I've
Speaker 1: decided to trust.
Speaker 2: You still like to know when you know, they like
Speaker 2: to have that insider information. Yeah, they like it when
Speaker 2: the curtain is pulled back and yeah, really kind of
Speaker 2: mundane details are revealed.
Speaker 1: You see me with my hair unbrushed.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they moved to Paris. They were living together, and
Speaker 1: they were rich kids. They are living off of their
Speaker 1: family money, which is good work if you can get it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They often called each other by their birth names and
Speaker 1: then use the boys' names, as they're like pen names,
Speaker 1: but other times they totally used these other names. I
Speaker 1: think they were pretty fluid about it. It's also so
Speaker 1: they joined the Surrealist movement. We'll get to that, but
Speaker 1: this is their lesbianism, alongside of a lot of Surrealist
Speaker 1: men's open or closeted homosexuality earned the surrealis the epithet,
Speaker 1: which is now a compliment of being a homosexual organization
Speaker 1: has always been fairly welcoming to the case. Obviously, there's
Speaker 1: homophobia everywhere. It's like, we're talking about nineteen twenties and thirties. Nothing,
Speaker 1: it's perfect. Yeah, but yeah, a lot of them are game,
Speaker 1: including Claude and Marcel most to the rest of the
Speaker 1: Surrealists and most of the Western left. Claude. We have
Speaker 1: more written about Claude. She's like more famous, right. She
Speaker 1: spent the early nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties involved in
Speaker 1: communism and the Communist Party, joining a group called the
Speaker 1: Association of Revolutionary Writers, and this was buds with the
Speaker 1: Surrealists because the Surrealists at this time were also really
Speaker 1: into the Communist Party. This didn't last their interest in
Speaker 1: the Communist Party, which was controlled by Russia. Right, So
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty two, she's like, Oh, the surrealism thing,
Speaker 1: we're all organizing together. It seems cool. Sign me up.
Speaker 1: She starts showing work at all the surrealist exhibitions and
Speaker 1: all that shit. I do not understand the art world.
Speaker 1: Like I have an understanding of like how it works,
Speaker 1: but I don't get it or like care shit. Sure,
Speaker 1: someone who's listening who cares, is like, why is this
Speaker 1: bitch to surrealists? I care about other shit. They did
Speaker 1: a lot, and I love the art they made. I
Speaker 1: just don't give a shit about the world of exhibitions
Speaker 1: and stuff.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I guess I've never even thought about it.
Speaker 2: I don't know how I feel about it because I've
Speaker 2: I don't know, I've done no thinking about it.
Speaker 1: There's no reason too. And the only reason I have
Speaker 1: like a weird anger about it is because I like
Speaker 1: all the anti art movements that like, actually, the surrealists
Speaker 1: claim to be against the bourgeois art world and anyway whatever.
Speaker 1: By the late nineteen thirties, the Surrealists were sick of
Speaker 1: Stalin and they were getting really into Trotsky, which is like, hey,
Speaker 1: state communism still seems okay, but like Stalin is a
Speaker 1: motherfucker and authoritarianism is bad, right, So she joins the
Speaker 1: International Federation for an Independent Revolutionary Art because nothing can
Speaker 1: have a fucking nice, normal name. Everything has to be
Speaker 1: the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Blah, so many syllables.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's all. I'm French too, I'm still sticking
Speaker 1: to the English translations of these. And she's making art, right,
Speaker 1: that's like her main thing. She's first and foremost remembered
Speaker 1: as a photographer. She's called a self portraiture artist. This
Speaker 1: is lesbian erasure because her partner took all the pictures.
Speaker 1: Oh I see, okay, it's like she set them up.
Speaker 1: There were collaborations, and we don't really know the details
Speaker 1: of a lot of it, I don't think, but like
Speaker 1: it was only like way later that people were like, oh,
Speaker 1: Marcel was like actually taking all these pictures. It's fine,
Speaker 1: It's like anyway, whatever, Wait, would.
Speaker 2: They have been considered surrealist photographs?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So surrealism?
Speaker 2: Does that even work?
Speaker 1: Okay, so we're gonna talk about this more like next
Speaker 1: week when we get really in the surrealism who they are.
Speaker 1: But the basics of it is that surrealism is not
Speaker 1: about like painting melting clocks or certain color palettes or
Speaker 1: things like that. Surrealism is about reconfiguring the objects of
Speaker 1: everyday life in a way that break out of make us,
Speaker 1: break out of our assumptions about like what things are
Speaker 1: and what things can be. Surrealism is basically like, we
Speaker 1: want to pain dreams, like we want to destroy the
Speaker 1: barrier between like the dream world and the waking world.
Speaker 1: And so this is like part of their revolutionary stuff, right,
Speaker 1: is that they're like, well, we want to we want
Speaker 1: to live the way that we want to live. We
Speaker 1: want to see our dreams come into reality, and we
Speaker 1: want to get rid of this like stagnant, boring world
Speaker 1: that we've been forced into. It's kind of a rich
Speaker 1: kid problem for a lot of them. Some of them
Speaker 1: are working class. We'll talk about some of those, sure,
Speaker 1: but yeah, no, And actually men Ray is the most
Speaker 1: famous surrealist photographer, although one of the techniques that he
Speaker 1: supposedly developed was developed by a surrealist woman who he
Speaker 1: was fucking who was completely ignored for a very long time.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk more about her. She's a very important
Speaker 1: war correspondent. But surrealist photography is absolutely a thing.
Speaker 2: I'm a Google image searching it right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know what's gonna come up. Is there
Speaker 1: gonna be a picture of like someone cutting someone's eyeball?
Speaker 2: That's so whatever movie that's it? Because there's also like
Speaker 2: surrealist film movement maybe or maybe I'm thinking of German Expressionism.
Speaker 1: I don't they both come out of World War One.
Speaker 2: But yeah, okay, so I that was the first thing
Speaker 2: I thought of of like a surrealist photo. I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I wonder if it's like like that image of someone,
Speaker 2: which is I don't want to think about it?
Speaker 1: Well to me because we don't have to because that
Speaker 1: was by Deli, and Deli was kicked out of the
Speaker 1: Surrealist but for being a fascist. But we'll get to
Speaker 1: that the no go ahead. Sorry what you say.
Speaker 2: Though, Oh no, just that it's I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: it's what you'd expect. It's like photography but surreal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like I don't know you you all can
Speaker 1: google it at home. Objects that are not where you
Speaker 1: necessarily expect objects to be, like in different contexts and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's not abstract. It's like still representational art. You know
Speaker 1: you can see, right, it's hard to describe. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, that's the beauty of it.
Speaker 3: Perhaps.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the like most common one that like
Speaker 4: I think of is the guy with the apple covering
Speaker 4: his face. That's like the most that the one that
Speaker 4: I that when I'm like, oh this is what this is,
Speaker 4: that's what I think of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I had a photograph of
Speaker 2: a painting. I can't even see the apple in the face.
Speaker 2: I think that's the painting. Yes, it is apple in
Speaker 2: front of face art.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's a whole subgenre.
Speaker 1: But you can do the same thing with a photo, right,
Speaker 1: there's both. Oh okay, oh yeah, all right, Sophie paid
Speaker 1: more attention art history than I did. There we go.
Speaker 4: I passed my AP test, thank you.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: I was really scared of that teacher, like I, yeah,
Speaker 4: I talk too much in class and guess where I
Speaker 4: am now.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's right. I have this theory about how I
Speaker 1: got listening. I'm scared of him. Still, it's been a
Speaker 1: long time, and I still have fear.
Speaker 2: Sorry for your biggest fan.
Speaker 3: That would be really cool, but don't tell me.
Speaker 2: I don't need to know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're just like that would be really creepy. Yeah, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so back to the surrealist by first, Oh, do you
Speaker 1: know what else? Is a juxtaposition of things that don't
Speaker 1: belong together to create a strange hole and trying to
Speaker 1: make it in the art world while at the same
Speaker 1: time holding revolutionary values. It's the fact that we have advertising. Yep,
Speaker 1: here's the Mads and we're back, and we are talking
Speaker 1: about cloud cause art that she made with with Marcel,
Speaker 1: and like, we have this assumption that women are supposed
Speaker 1: to be obsessed with ourselves, so it's all seeing a
Speaker 1: self portraiture is kind of my read on how this
Speaker 1: is read, right, And you also have like all of
Speaker 1: these like other famous women who did self portraiture and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But it was artistic collaboration with Marcel,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk later about all the porn that
Speaker 1: they took of each other and shit nice and she's
Speaker 1: more reice only more recently getting any credit. So Claude
Speaker 1: became sort of well known for the Paris photographs, although
Speaker 1: really honestly really only got famous in the eighties, like
Speaker 1: years and decades after she died or whatever. In classic
Speaker 1: under misunderstood artist form, the two these photos that she
Speaker 1: takes are really into fucking with gender and costume and
Speaker 1: they're really fucking cool. And there's like photos of herself
Speaker 1: talking to herself, and there's like like photos of her
Speaker 1: like meeting her and like all of these like gender things,
Speaker 1: and she has a shaved head and most of them
Speaker 1: she's very androgynous looking. And at one point she wrote
Speaker 1: masculine feminine it depends on the situation. Neuter is the
Speaker 1: only gender that always suits me. I see you trying
Speaker 1: to google it and her name is spelled like it
Speaker 1: would be Kahun.
Speaker 2: I got there, Okay, yes, and now I'm looking at
Speaker 2: these images. Very cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really like her work. Like she's more famous
Speaker 1: to me for some of her later work during the
Speaker 1: Nazi occupation.
Speaker 5: But.
Speaker 1: She worked in every medium. She wrote and then Marcel
Speaker 1: did the illustration. Like overall, it's like they both did photos,
Speaker 1: but she was more the writer and Marcel was more
Speaker 1: the illustrator. She did collages, which is a really big
Speaker 1: important part of surrealist work. She sculpted, she did performance art,
Speaker 1: they did propaganda, She wrote theory. She especially wrote about
Speaker 1: the idea of perpetual insurrection. They also did some street fighting,
Speaker 1: which is my favorite form of art. What they they,
Speaker 1: I don't know they called it art or not. They've
Speaker 1: they formed a group called Contra Attack, which I think
Speaker 1: means counterattack, which they referred to as the quote Combat
Speaker 1: Union of Revolutionary Intellectuals, and they joined that. They did
Speaker 1: this alongside some other surrealists like Andre Bertrand Breton and
Speaker 1: George Batai, and as far as I can tell, this
Speaker 1: was like a magazine and they're talking about all this
Speaker 1: like need for revolutionary stuff. It also seems like they're
Speaker 1: throwing down in the streets because this is nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: in Europe and there's fascists and they need to be
Speaker 1: stopped right and at this point they're all moving further left.
Speaker 1: They've already left Stalinism, now they're leaving Trotzkyism, and they're
Speaker 1: making their way into anarchism. And they don't do it
Speaker 1: as by necessarily being like, this is the ideology that
Speaker 1: I want to check off, and instead they're like, actually
Speaker 1: we like freedom and all of these Like we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about this more in the longer piece, but
Speaker 1: like all the communists are like, no, you can't draw
Speaker 1: weird things. You have to draw very representational things and
Speaker 1: uphold the workers in the following ways or whatever. My
Speaker 1: favorite thing that I heard while researching this is our
Speaker 1: history people referring to her as a libertarian. This is
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a mistranslation. It is technically true. She
Speaker 1: called herself a libertarian because she was a libertarian communist.
Speaker 1: She was an anarchist. That's just how you refer to
Speaker 1: it at the time where she lived, right, implying an
Speaker 1: American libertarianism is entirely incorrect. Nineteen thirty seven, there's war
Speaker 1: on the horizon. Anti Semitism is picking up in France,
Speaker 1: and they're Jewish lesbians. So the Aazis are like, not
Speaker 1: going to be a really good thing from their point
Speaker 1: of view. I would say, no, yeah, did you know
Speaker 1: you can move from France to the UK by going
Speaker 1: to a small island immediately off the coast of France.
Speaker 2: No, what do you wait?
Speaker 1: The Isle of Jersey. Okay, it's just right off shore
Speaker 1: of France. I had always assumed it was off shore
Speaker 1: of England, but it's not. Okay, it's just right off
Speaker 1: of France. It's technically its own country that belongs to
Speaker 1: the UK for complicated reasons, probably involving like hundreds of
Speaker 1: years of war. Like I think they had a hundred
Speaker 1: year war. I have no idea when Jersey changed hands.
Speaker 2: I just so it's I understand. Now, you can move
Speaker 2: to the you're technically it's something owned by the UK,
Speaker 2: but you're not like Mainland. I completely must understody.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, sorry. They move right off of the
Speaker 1: shore of France. It is the quickest way to get
Speaker 1: to a country that is, you know, the UK, right right, okay,
Speaker 1: And and they go a bit underground. As soon as
Speaker 1: they get there, they revert to only going by their
Speaker 1: birth names, and they claim to be sisters, which is
Speaker 1: technically true. But they ran no further than that. German
Speaker 1: troops landed in nineteen forty. I feel like I should
Speaker 1: spoil this and say that they survived the war. I
Speaker 1: just want to like get that out of the way,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about like Jewish Lesbians who fight against Nazis,
Speaker 1: and I just want to like lead with a little bit.
Speaker 2: Of hope, yes, good to know.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, German troops land on the Isle of Jersey in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty. They bomb the shit out of the place first,
Speaker 1: they kill a bunch of people. It's not a good
Speaker 1: way to make people like you, so Claude probably hearkening
Speaker 1: back to a different anarchist woman who inspired the surrealist
Speaker 1: that we'll talk about soon. She gets herself a pair
Speaker 1: of revolvers and she starts doing target practice. Marcel is like, look, hey,
Speaker 1: that like a for effort, but that might not go
Speaker 1: real well right, Like, that's just that might not be
Speaker 1: the most useful use of our one short, precious lives
Speaker 1: on this earth. Let's fight them, but let's fight them
Speaker 1: like surrealists. So for four years they fought the occupation.
Speaker 1: And the way they did it is they constructed this huge,
Speaker 1: elaborate false conspiracy, pretending that there was a conspiracy of
Speaker 1: German soldiers who were deserting in mass and Marcel spoke German,
Speaker 1: and so they started leaving secret messages for the Germans
Speaker 1: to find. They were like missives from the initially fictitious
Speaker 1: rebellion within German ranks, and they were all signed the
Speaker 1: nameless soldier and they would slip this propaganda into the
Speaker 1: pockets of German soldiers or push it through open windows
Speaker 1: into empty German cars. And it's fucking cool. And I
Speaker 1: want to quote. I'm going to quote from a piece
Speaker 1: from an upcoming issue of the journal Batten, which is
Speaker 1: published by Contagion Press, which is a press worth checking
Speaker 1: out for all your wild queer history needs. The quote
Speaker 1: is one of their earliest tracks, read fighting, Fighting without End, horrific,
Speaker 1: fighting without end. They would just write that in German
Speaker 1: and slip it into people's pockets. Okay, that will part,
Speaker 1: wasn't the quote? Back to the quote. Other tracks simply
Speaker 1: repeat the phrase on end without end. Theirs was a
Speaker 1: conspiracy without names or ends, because they were not aiming
Speaker 1: for revolution that would swap out the powerholders of the state,
Speaker 1: but rather perpetual insurrection and the sensibilities of all. They
Speaker 1: equipped themselves with new weapons charged with the contradiction, ambivalence,
Speaker 1: and uncertainty of the without which is just some surrealistic
Speaker 1: way of praising some shit I don't know whatever. Right
Speaker 1: back to the quote, weapons without name, weapons aligned to
Speaker 1: produce inner and outer ulterity. These nameless weapons included reports
Speaker 1: from the war tips for psychic self defense, instructions for
Speaker 1: casual sabotage, incitements to desertion with violence if necessary, and
Speaker 1: aphorisms from Nietzsche ridiculing nationalism and the state. They were
Speaker 1: posed in German in order to appear to be coming
Speaker 1: from one of the soldiers themselves, written on rolling papers
Speaker 1: and slipped into the pockets and threw fences around town.
Speaker 2: So they were trying to convince this Nazi troops that
Speaker 2: there were like, oh, there was a movement within yeah,
Speaker 2: the yeah military that like people were trying to like
Speaker 2: defect or whatever, just like, whoa, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: And it worked too, did it all? We have one
Speaker 1: quote about that we get to but they didn't know
Speaker 1: whether it was working. I don't think. They just did
Speaker 1: it for four years and it's like risky as shit, right,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen forty four they get caught. They had
Speaker 1: prepared for this, so they both took poison. This saved
Speaker 1: their lives. They tried to kill themselves, but it saved
Speaker 1: their lives because they didn't successfully kill themselves. But they
Speaker 1: got so sick that they missed the last transport for
Speaker 1: them concentration camps. Like I think the last transport from
Speaker 1: Jersey to the concentration. I don't know it was the
Speaker 1: last one of the day, but I think it was
Speaker 1: like the last one total. And I want to go
Speaker 1: back to quoting that article because it's just so good.
Speaker 1: They remained imprisoned on Jersey, where they discovered why their
Speaker 1: enemies considered them such a threat. The prison was filled
Speaker 1: with German soldiers who had revolted or attempted to desert.
Speaker 1: They all seemed to be aware of who the two
Speaker 1: women were and showed them care and solidarity. The theory
Speaker 1: of writing as a mean to engage others in a
Speaker 1: process of becoming had proved itself.
Speaker 2: This should be a movie. Yeah, my gosh, this is
Speaker 2: so cool.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: So the Okay, so they were slipping these secret notes
Speaker 2: trying to and then and then it worked because the
Speaker 2: various soldiers were like, wow, if someone like if there
Speaker 2: are people in here like like being critical of what
Speaker 2: we're doing, I feel that way too, So I'm gonna
Speaker 2: so yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: And then even the fact that the soldiers knew who
Speaker 1: they were like kind of means the soldiers knew that
Speaker 1: they got tricked and were chill with it.
Speaker 2: They were going along with it because.
Speaker 1: Because at this point it is a real rebellion, you know.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, that is awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they did get sentenced to death. They were gay, Jewish,
Speaker 1: anarchist radical rebels, so that is like four strikes in
Speaker 1: the Nazi mind. Their home was confiscated, a bunch of
Speaker 1: their art was destroyed. This is part of the reason
Speaker 1: that Claude wasn't really known until the eighties. I want
Speaker 1: to quote a German officer about them. The two Jewish
Speaker 1: women who have just been arrested belonged to an unpleasant category.
Speaker 1: These women had long been circulating leaflets urging German Schultz
Speaker 1: soldiers to shoot their officers. At last they were tracked down.
Speaker 1: A search of the house, fully full of ugly Cubist paintings,
Speaker 1: brought to light a quan of pornographic material of an
Speaker 1: especially revolting nature. One woman had her head shaved and
Speaker 1: had been thus photographed in the nude from every angle thereafter,
Speaker 1: she had worn men's clothes. Further nude photographs showed both
Speaker 1: women practicing sexual perversion, exhibitionism, and flagellation.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Also, I bet he actually liked it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he did. I would too. It is a
Speaker 1: I am mad the Nazis destroyed this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a huge bummer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen forty five the island was liberated and
Speaker 1: they were freed from the prison. Claude's health was fucked
Speaker 1: up by that year in prison, and nine years later
Speaker 1: she died at the age of sixty. Marcel lived on
Speaker 1: for another eighteen years, but in nineteen seventy two she
Speaker 1: was like fucking him out and killed herself. She was
Speaker 1: probably seven nine or eighty, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what went into her decision making. She was buried alongside
Speaker 1: her partner in the churchyard of Saint Berlade Ballade, probably
Speaker 1: an early medieval church, like an over one thousand year
Speaker 1: old church under one headstone with two stars of David,
Speaker 1: which is just fucking like relationship goals for like lesbian
Speaker 1: Jewish rebels.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The legend on Jersey is that this church it was
Speaker 1: going to be built in one place, right, This is
Speaker 1: like and no one knows exactly when it was built,
Speaker 1: but it was built before ten thirty, not in the morning,
Speaker 1: but like the year the year, yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: going to be built in one place. The worker started
Speaker 1: digging foundations and then they like put down their tools
Speaker 1: and stones for the night went home. When they came
Speaker 1: back the next day, their tools had been moved over
Speaker 1: a mile down to the beach, so they dutifully moved
Speaker 1: all their shit back to the original place and got
Speaker 1: back to work. The next night, the same thing happened.
Speaker 1: The fairies did it, according to this legend, and the
Speaker 1: workers took the hint and they were like, all right,
Speaker 1: she'll never mind. We'll put the church where the fairies
Speaker 1: want us to put the church instead of in there
Speaker 1: like special fairy spot.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Oh, And apparently this is like a fairly common legend.
Speaker 1: There's like a bunch of churches that it is legend.
Speaker 1: But I don't care. I like that the fairies chose
Speaker 1: where these women would rest in the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah they knew. It's like they knew they were going
Speaker 2: to come around a thousand years later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, from a different religion. And fuck it, Well, the
Speaker 1: fairies don't give a shit. Fairies at Christian Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: kind of their old thing. They moved the church to
Speaker 1: hit the fuck away from them. Yeah, they're like, this
Speaker 1: is our spot. Yeah, get out of here. There's a
Speaker 1: street named after the pair of them. Jointly in Paris
Speaker 1: now and I'd like, hmm, I haven't off the top
Speaker 1: of my head seen a street name that's like named
Speaker 1: for more than one person, but like, oh yeah, what
Speaker 1: a cool like that is non lesbian erasure. What eventually
Speaker 1: happened was like lesbians to be an exposure, yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: which is what they took lots of pictures of.
Speaker 2: But it, yeah, in so many different ways because I
Speaker 2: think about exposure photographs.
Speaker 1: You know, it's true, it's true.
Speaker 2: Something, Yeah, I'm smart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny that mostly only Claude is remembered and
Speaker 1: mostly for her photographs, and even then she was forgotten
Speaker 1: for decades right until her photos were unearthed because history
Speaker 1: in the art world have worked really hard to conflate
Speaker 1: the surrealist down to a single dimension of just being artists.
Speaker 1: Even though art for art's sake was like high on
Speaker 1: their list of enemies, they absolutely hated the concept of
Speaker 1: art for artsake. They believe that artists to express things right,
Speaker 1: the artists to have an impact, you know, and that
Speaker 1: like you have to actually participate in the world around you,
Speaker 1: and her art matters too, and I really like her
Speaker 1: art and feminist scholar see is one of the most
Speaker 1: see her as one of the most important forerunners of
Speaker 1: discussing gender's performance. And I think she's really fucking cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but she was not alone in being a surrealist using
Speaker 1: weird art shit to fuck with the Nazis. You want
Speaker 1: to hear about more.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right?
Speaker 1: You know, like everyone from all across the world will
Speaker 1: have known a thing for thousands of years, but then
Speaker 1: when like white Western Europeans figured out, people suddenly are
Speaker 1: like it's been invented, right, Yes, of course, like the
Speaker 1: printing press that existed a thousand years earlier in China,
Speaker 1: or gunpowder that existed in thousand years earlier in China,
Speaker 1: and et cetera, et cetera. Well camouflage. Sun Zoo was
Speaker 1: a Chinese general writing during the Warring States period hundreds
Speaker 1: of years before the birth of Christ. In the book
Speaker 1: The Art of War, he wrote, quote, all warfare is
Speaker 1: based on deception. Hence, when we were able to attack,
Speaker 1: we must seem unable. When using our forces, we must
Speaker 1: appear inactive. When we are near, we must make the
Speaker 1: enemy believe we are far away. When far away, we
Speaker 1: must make him believe we are near. Like so, deception
Speaker 1: is very important in conflict in war, right, and everyone
Speaker 1: has used camouflage forever, but Western Europe wasn't as into
Speaker 1: it for a very long time. It was used here
Speaker 1: and there in Western armies. But camouflage comes back in
Speaker 1: a big way in the First World War.
Speaker 2: It wasn't the whole thing with like the I don't know, like,
Speaker 2: not only do I know nothing about art history, I
Speaker 2: know nothing about regular history too, just events. But I
Speaker 2: was gonna say something like, yeah, it wasn't the whole
Speaker 2: thing with like the American Revolutionary War, Like the British
Speaker 2: were like, here I am in my red coat, like
Speaker 2: the most obvious color, yeah, the most noticeable thing, not
Speaker 2: the opposite really of camouflage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which actually, and we're gonna talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more later too. But I was always just like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's because they're all fucking idiots, right. That was like
Speaker 1: that was like the it was actually a very conscious
Speaker 1: decision that Western Europeans were making that intimidation was a
Speaker 1: more important thing than like hiding. Oh okay, and so
Speaker 1: that's why like here's my big fuck off castle, not
Speaker 1: you can't figure out where I live. And it's like.
Speaker 2: That's such a Broie way to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a Broie way that in World War
Speaker 1: One didn't work anymore because the machine gun existed, and
Speaker 1: you can kill a lot of bros in a very head.
Speaker 2: Coat from far away and kill that person if you have, yeah,
Speaker 2: that kind of artillery.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And of course camouflage comes back first under the
Speaker 1: name in France. And you know that because it's impossible
Speaker 1: to spell the word camouflage.
Speaker 2: It sure is.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If there's a word that I cannot spell on
Speaker 1: the first try, and it is a regular word in
Speaker 1: the English language, it means it comes from France, like bureaucrat,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, bourgeois bourgeoisie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I can't. How are you supposed to spell
Speaker 2: bougie good? Because every time I write it, I was like, no,
Speaker 2: that just says boogie yeah or borgies. Once ime, I
Speaker 2: made this pin years ago, and it was like someone
Speaker 2: in front of a machine I was a little edge
Speaker 2: loaded anarchy kid, and I made this like one inch pin.
Speaker 2: It's like a guy sit in front of an old
Speaker 2: fashioned machine gun and it says death to the capitalist bourgeoisie.
Speaker 2: Only I spelled it wrong, so I was actually saying
Speaker 2: death of the capitalist women, rich people, okay, instead of
Speaker 2: like all gender people. M m my, my lovely pedant
Speaker 2: friend caught it and saved me a lot of embarrassment.
Speaker 2: Good good, good good.
Speaker 1: Anyway, in World War One, uh, there was a job
Speaker 1: someone operating in the French camouflage units was a camoufloor.
Speaker 1: And at the beginning of World one War one, a
Speaker 1: painter showed up and was like, Yo, what about like
Speaker 1: sick camouflage outfits? And the French army was like, no way,
Speaker 1: we like our blue coats and red trousers. And then
Speaker 1: just like absolute fuck tons of them died, and then
Speaker 1: the army was like, what if horizon blue is a
Speaker 1: nice color for her uniforms? Now? And so in World
Speaker 1: War One, cubists and other artists stepped up and were like, hey,
Speaker 1: we know how to deceive the eye. I am not
Speaker 1: covering the Cubists today. I don't know as much about them.
Speaker 1: The surrealist Love Picasso, who is a Cubist. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that they would do is they sort
Speaker 1: of explode out objects into sort of different geometries and
Speaker 1: just like explore different ways of seeing the world, right,
Speaker 1: And so Cubists were very good at a very different
Speaker 1: style of camouflage. You ever heard of dazzle camouflage?
Speaker 2: No, but it sounds fun.
Speaker 1: It is. You should google damp dazzle camouflage and look
Speaker 1: for a picture of a boat on it.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, dazzlemo. Well, how do you spell camera?
Speaker 1: Just do camo. I'm sure it'll work.
Speaker 2: Boat. Oh the boat comes up right away. Yeah, whoa okay.
Speaker 1: And so what do you say to describe to the audience.
Speaker 2: It's okay, so it looks like a war ship, but
Speaker 2: it's got mostly horizontal black and white stripes. But they're
Speaker 2: like they're not quite zig zaggy, but I don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a circus zebra, high contrast. Like it
Speaker 1: does not hide the.
Speaker 2: Ship, right, No, I would say not.
Speaker 1: When you would normally think of camouflaging a boat, you
Speaker 1: might think about painting it like water or islands or something.
Speaker 1: Dazzle camouflage bright bold lines that dis rupted the eye
Speaker 1: make it harder to discern how many ships there are,
Speaker 1: what they're doing, and how fast they're going.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah it oh huh.
Speaker 1: And there's like a bunch of people who claim to
Speaker 1: have invented this. There was like a I think a
Speaker 1: lawsuit about it, and eventually this marine painter, not a Cubist,
Speaker 1: named Norman Wilkinson like one out and was like I
Speaker 1: invented it first, you know. The Cubists were like, no way,
Speaker 1: it was us, right, the jury is out. There's still
Speaker 1: people who argue about whether or not it worked. Sure,
Speaker 1: it seemed to slightly increase the chance that torpedoists would
Speaker 1: miscenter mass because they wouldn't know which direction the ship
Speaker 1: was going and like this is the like best guess
Speaker 1: of running analysis. On the other hand, it seemed to
Speaker 1: make it more likely to be seen overall, so it
Speaker 1: was like kind of a.
Speaker 2: It is not subtle, No, we're not talking.
Speaker 1: About and it's not done anymore. Although it's not done anymore,
Speaker 1: mostly because like radar and other technology like methods of
Speaker 1: detecting ships became more advanced there. And yeah, so Cubist
Speaker 1: camouflage tended towards like bold lines that disrupt the eye. Right,
Speaker 1: But camouflage importantly isn't just about having like cool uniforms, right,
Speaker 1: And of course I don't know if this is part
Speaker 1: of your world, but obviously camouflage is mostly known as
Speaker 1: having the latest real tree baseball cap. So people know
Speaker 1: that you're a cool rural queer even though you live
Speaker 1: in New Orleans. Right, It's about disguising things more generally like. Also,
Speaker 1: what they were starting to do during this war was
Speaker 1: built fake trees to use as observationists, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of like we have cell towers now, right, And Cubism
Speaker 1: provides us sort of fundamental ideas to World War One camouflage,
Speaker 1: but surrealism provides it for World War II camouflage. Most
Speaker 1: of the camoufloors weren't surrealists, but they did partake in
Speaker 1: buying stuff from things that were advertised to them on podcasts.
Speaker 1: In the middle of a sentence, switched like that, pretty fancy.
Speaker 1: This is what we do. We do fancy transitions.
Speaker 2: Love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're against my transitions, then you are anti
Speaker 1: trans I'm sorry. Ahha, that's the worst fun I'll ever.
Speaker 1: Here's some ads and we are back. So most of
Speaker 1: the camoufloorers were not surrealists, but their styles and methods
Speaker 1: were influential as fuck. The guy who wrote the UK
Speaker 1: Military guide on camouflage was surrealist, and we'll get to him.
Speaker 1: And so instead of fucking with the eye with strong lines,
Speaker 1: it became about fucking with people's heads and also mimicking
Speaker 1: the natural world. A lot of early camoufloors, if they
Speaker 1: weren't painters, they were like zoologists, being like, yo, check
Speaker 1: it out. Look how this bug looks like a different
Speaker 1: kind of bug, you know. And the Surrealists were also
Speaker 1: obsessed with mimicry because so much of their work is
Speaker 1: about what objects can discuss other objects. So the main
Speaker 1: camoufloor we're going to talk about the surrealist quaker named
Speaker 1: Roland Penrose. It's been too long since we've had a
Speaker 1: cool Quaker on this show. And wait, well the name
Speaker 1: was what Roland Penrose. That's a cool name, I know,
Speaker 1: and he's like sir rolland Penrose, but it's like never
Speaker 1: written that way. I think he probably was like a
Speaker 1: little bit of embarrassed because he's supposed to be counterculture,
Speaker 1: right right. He helped establish the English Surrealist movement, which
Speaker 1: started in a lot of ways with art shows to
Speaker 1: send money to the anti fascists in Spain during the
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil War. Like that was like, oh, we're going
Speaker 1: to have the big Surrealist exhibition because we need to
Speaker 1: send money to the people shooting francoists. You know, I
Speaker 1: would argue to this day one of the most important
Speaker 1: roles for artists and revolution is fundraising and drawing attention
Speaker 1: of causes. This is where I was going to put it.
Speaker 1: I actually wrote a little cue for myself to put
Speaker 1: in an ad transition here, and I completely messed it up.
Speaker 1: Because the benefit show does both of these things really well.
Speaker 1: It draws a ten things, and it also normalizes support
Speaker 1: for a thing. And this episode could be brought to
Speaker 1: you by the concept of supporting or throwing benefit shows.
Speaker 1: But since I forgot to use that que, there was
Speaker 1: a bunch of capitalist shit that got stuck in, so well.
Speaker 2: Hey, you could always go to it.
Speaker 5: And Third, providing identification to law enforcement required in some
Speaker 5: states and situations, giving them an address expedient in most circumstances.
Speaker 5: Never discuss the events leading to arrest with anyone except
Speaker 5: your lawyer, doctor, or therapist. Posting pictures of protests and
Speaker 5: actions on social media may lead to complications. If you
Speaker 5: have already talked to cops or experienced confusion about talking
Speaker 5: to cops, call your attorney immediately, as these may be
Speaker 5: signs of more serious legal problems. The concept of not
Speaker 5: talking to cops does not provide legal advice, and the
Speaker 5: foregoing statements are for informational purposes only. If you have
Speaker 5: specific legal questions, consult an attorney.
Speaker 1: And we're back before World War two. Penro In a
Speaker 1: pacifist in proper Quaker form. In World War One, he'd
Speaker 1: been a conscious conscientious objector driving an ambulance around in Italy.
Speaker 1: So clearly actually conscientious objector, not like a coward or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But nineteen thirty nine he ran a civilian camouflage unit
Speaker 1: because basically at this point they're like England's going to
Speaker 1: get invaded, Like we are alone against the communist menace,
Speaker 1: and not the communist menace that comes later. We are
Speaker 1: alone against the fascist menace. Right, We're in trouble. And
Speaker 1: also we're getting all these air raids and shit, I
Speaker 1: don't I remember what year the blitz started, but it's
Speaker 1: the thing, right, And so he's helping businesses disguise themselves
Speaker 1: from air raids, and he's working alongside another surrealist who
Speaker 1: saw camouflage in practice, and that aforementioned Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 1: Everyone at home, this is her why we've already had
Speaker 1: the Spanish Civil War? Bingo checkbox. But soon enough he
Speaker 1: finds himself a captain in the Royal Engineers, and he's
Speaker 1: teaching camouflage techniques, and he teaches the fact that for
Speaker 1: previous centuries, intimidation have been the way to do things
Speaker 1: like ride elephants into battle, where red coats build huge castles.
Speaker 1: But now there's artillery and machine guns, so hiding is
Speaker 1: better than intimidation. The surrealists struggle to fit into military life, right.
Speaker 1: They are not conformists. They're like, they mostly hate government
Speaker 1: and capitalism and all this shit, but they hate Nazis more.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like World War two kind of
Speaker 1: overrode a lot of political ideologies and people just threw
Speaker 1: down wherever they could be the most effective. But they
Speaker 1: kept doing things like adding like walking canes and funny
Speaker 1: hats to their uniforms. I read about one person who
Speaker 1: like wore his like coat when he like walked the
Speaker 1: battlements or whatever, as he's like, you know, surveilling the
Speaker 1: area or whatever. The fuck Sorry I said code, I
Speaker 1: meant cape old timing, oh, old timing coat. And so
Speaker 1: he's now a captain. His romantic partner and eventually wife
Speaker 1: is another surrealist, a photographer from the US named Lee Miller,
Speaker 1: who she had been one of the most sought after
Speaker 1: models in New York City and then spent years inventing
Speaker 1: new photographic techniques like solarization while fucking the surrealist photographer
Speaker 1: Man Ray is more famous than her for whatever audiences
Speaker 1: left to imagine why, and she leaves him and moves
Speaker 1: to London. But warheaders has a correspondent and a photojournalist,
Speaker 1: and she took photos of many of the most important
Speaker 1: parts of the war, like the liberation of Paris, the
Speaker 1: Blitz in London, and the thing that gave her PTSD
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life, the horrors of concentration
Speaker 1: camps during their liberation. What she got to do with camouflage. Well,
Speaker 1: the surrealists really like naked people, especially naked ladies, and
Speaker 1: as part of our derive through surrealism, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go on alongside note about surrealism and feminism and naked
Speaker 1: ladies and all that shit. Hell yeah, most of the
Speaker 1: readings of surrealism i'd run across had basically that weren't
Speaker 1: written women. Surrealists were basically like look at start off
Speaker 1: as a boys club that only let women in, as muses,
Speaker 1: not as people are artists, and they kind of sucked, right,
Speaker 1: and that's fair, but that's not the whole story. Later,
Speaker 1: feminist surrealists, to all the history better. Women absolutely had
Speaker 1: to fight for inclusion and it was imperfect and women
Speaker 1: were obsessed over in like objectifying and like muse ways.
Speaker 1: But there are two things that are sounds familiar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was why it was so easy for me to
Speaker 1: like the Someone was like it was a shitty boys club,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, yep, yeah, I've seen.
Speaker 2: Those for almost everything.
Speaker 1: I'm going to complicate it because I was reading feminist
Speaker 1: surrealists talking about talking about in a really complicated way.
Speaker 1: First they got better, like literally the same people got better.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty four, the generally accepted a sort of
Speaker 1: leader of the Surrealists, Andre Breton wrote, we shall be
Speaker 1: masters of ourselves, masters of women and of love too,
Speaker 1: because they're annoying boys club boys.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen forties, the Surrealists were actively attached to
Speaker 1: the feminist movement, and the same writer Breton wrote that
Speaker 1: the time had come to quote make the ideas of
Speaker 1: women prevail at the expense of those of men.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, all right, sir.
Speaker 1: Along the way most of the sexist men dropped out
Speaker 1: of the movement, several male surrealists took their female partner's
Speaker 1: last names. I don't even think before even getting married.
Speaker 1: I think they were just like, whatever, her name's better,
Speaker 1: fuck it, you.
Speaker 2: Know, hell yeah.
Speaker 1: And they were into free love instead of marriage, which
Speaker 1: is absolutely a thing that could be just shitty misogyny. Right,
Speaker 1: there's this complicated feminist icon. Andrea to Work and who
Speaker 1: wrote about a lot about this in like the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies about how like hippie men are into free
Speaker 1: love and abortion rights because they want sexual access to
Speaker 1: women right right, But opposition to marriage was absolutely a
Speaker 1: feminist issue, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
Speaker 1: because legally marriage made women into property, right, so free
Speaker 1: love was like a women's liberation argument from within radical circles.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing that is really interesting and
Speaker 1: complicates it, even when it was a weird, shitty boys club,
Speaker 1: is that what they were doing was like fucking with masculinity.
Speaker 1: Penelope Rosemont is an anarchist, an IWW member, and the
Speaker 1: co founder of the Chicago Surrealist group, And she's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite surrealist writers that I've read during all
Speaker 1: this research, and she wrote quote as males who had
Speaker 1: no use for any of the proffered models of maleness soldier, politician, cop, gangster, banker, businessman, athlete, bureaucrat,
Speaker 1: or boss. The men who founded surrealism could be called
Speaker 1: traitors for their sex. Not only did they reject such
Speaker 1: quote masculine prerogatives as law and order, reason and logic,
Speaker 1: they went so far as to champion their opposites, the
Speaker 1: so called feminine virtues or vices, intuition, impulsiveness, and passivity
Speaker 1: as in automatic writing and trans speaking. We didn't talk
Speaker 1: about this yet, but like one of the main things
Speaker 1: surrealists were into his automatic writing, where they just sit
Speaker 1: down and like let the words flow, man, you know,
Speaker 1: which was like probably cool and radical at the time,
Speaker 1: but mostly I don't want to read it anyway. To
Speaker 1: finish the quote in a brilliant manifesto, Aragon and Breton,
Speaker 1: these are too early Surrealists hailed hysteria, a label commonly
Speaker 1: tossed at women whose emotional upheavals exceeded the boundaries of
Speaker 1: bourgeois propriety propriority stuff, as a supreme means of expression
Speaker 1: French word. Probably yeah, probably, I think I noticed spell
Speaker 1: up and not pronounce it.
Speaker 2: Actually, oh well then it's maybe an English word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably is. I'm just someone who grew up reading
Speaker 1: a lot more. And I talked, and she went on
Speaker 1: to add, despite their very real problems, confusions, and mistakes,
Speaker 1: the first Surrealist group was probably the least sexist, male
Speaker 1: dominated group of its time. And so I just I
Speaker 1: found that so interesting because like because yeah, it was
Speaker 1: just so easy to believe, like, I don't know, whatever,
Speaker 1: fuck these guys, right right.
Speaker 2: Well, also, if surrealists are their whole thing is to
Speaker 2: like subvert like you know, what is considered quote unquote normal,
Speaker 2: or like subvert the status quo, then yeah, that would
Speaker 2: make sense that they would be more feminist than any
Speaker 2: other movement. Yeah, but also it's still like whatever the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, So yeah, you can only.
Speaker 1: Get so far. Yeah, totally okay, And then like here's
Speaker 1: a complicated one the reason that all this side note existed.
Speaker 1: So so Penrose, Sir Penrose is teaching camouflage to soldiers, right,
Speaker 1: and one of the things he does is I think
Speaker 1: it's a slide, but he might just be holding up
Speaker 1: a picture. He's like showing all this stuff about camouflage
Speaker 1: and like the soldiers are dozing off, and then he
Speaker 1: holds up a picture of his hot girlfriend naked except
Speaker 1: for camouflage netting and then says, if camouflage can hide
Speaker 1: Lee's charms, it can hide anything.
Speaker 2: That that's good.
Speaker 1: I like it, yeah, and like it's funny to me
Speaker 1: because I'm like, all right, it's just some fucking like
Speaker 1: here's like I want to show off that my girlfriend's hot,
Speaker 1: like what. But it also he used it to try
Speaker 1: and make soldiers pay attention to his lectures and it
Speaker 1: worked and like the sleeping soldiers would like, wake up
Speaker 1: and pay attention. It also got soldiers to come more
Speaker 1: than once to his lectures.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: And also the other really important part of this, Lee
Speaker 1: is an active and willing participant in this. It is
Speaker 1: very likely that she set up the photo. She is
Speaker 1: the photographer of the pair, so it's probably her fucking idea,
Speaker 1: you know, right.
Speaker 2: She'd be like, I know how to get meant to
Speaker 2: pay attention. Yeah, my naked body.
Speaker 1: It has worked historically, I see no reason why it'll
Speaker 1: work again. And during all of this Lee, in particular,
Speaker 1: especially after the war, Lee is suspected of communism, and
Speaker 1: so she's like the British Red Scare I think wasn't
Speaker 1: quite as bad, but it was like not great, you know,
Speaker 1: And so they actually can't get higher ranking positions within
Speaker 1: the British government as a result. Like, but the reason
Speaker 1: we're talking about all this shit. So Penrose he publishes
Speaker 1: the quote Home Guard Manual of Camouflage. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I put quote that's just the title of it.
Speaker 1: It's because I was too lazy to italicize the title.
Speaker 1: Usually I remember to italicize the titles in my scripts,
Speaker 1: but I didn't this time, which, actually, in retrospect annoys me,
Speaker 1: because I'm the kind of pedant who really cares that
Speaker 1: short stories are in quotes and books are in italics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I italicize the titles of movies in emails, I write.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as well, you should, which as I should? Does
Speaker 1: it make texting really frustrated?
Speaker 2: I know, I'm like, how will people know that I'm
Speaker 2: referring to a movie because it's not an italic.
Speaker 1: You better make sure that you do your title casinge.
Speaker 2: Right, Nerds, How to do that?
Speaker 1: Oh, just by capitalizing the first letter of all the words.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see I say it. Yes, yeah, of course
Speaker 2: I did that.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 2: I thought that was like a special feature where it's like,
Speaker 2: you know how some platforms let you make something in
Speaker 2: bold by like putting asterisks on either.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I hate that because then it turns things into bold. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like, why can't we do that for italics?
Speaker 1: Though?
Speaker 2: Well, it's the shortcut.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it exists.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna call mister Apple and say, hello,
Speaker 2: my iPhone, I need to be able to talicize my
Speaker 2: text messages. Okay, anyway, why.
Speaker 4: Is that not a thing I was a second ago?
Speaker 4: Well it signals better than I message, that's for sure.
Speaker 4: But uh, Tim Apple, the fuck I was hating like
Speaker 4: one minute ago.
Speaker 3: Now I'm like, you know.
Speaker 2: What, Yeah, you're right. Time to get fired up, Time
Speaker 2: to become a surrealist. Yea, and Tim Apple.
Speaker 1: What are you doing if you don't do this, I'm
Speaker 1: going to convince you that there's a conspiracy of your
Speaker 1: children to murder you for your their inheritance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna leave little notes in your pockets and yeah,
Speaker 2: it's gonna.
Speaker 1: Until your children actually have a conspiracy. This is good
Speaker 1: and not legally.
Speaker 2: One of the coolest. That's still one of the coolest
Speaker 2: stories I've ever heard. No, I love it and it
Speaker 2: needs to be a movie. I'm going to write this movie,
Speaker 2: please do I heard.
Speaker 1: You know how to write movies.
Speaker 2: Well, if you're referring to my master's degree in screenwriting
Speaker 2: from Boston University, which I.
Speaker 3: Would never mentioned a whole hour in rich job, Caitlin,
Speaker 3: thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I actually don't know if there's a movie about
Speaker 1: this next one too, and there should be. It'd be
Speaker 1: more likely to have that one to a movie because
Speaker 1: it involves like tanks and men. But oh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: another really good one.
Speaker 2: I'm sure Michael Bay tried to. Yeah, yeah, do it.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 1: Penrose wrote the Home Guard Manual for camouflage, and it
Speaker 1: covered how to make fake guns and fake people and
Speaker 1: how to disguise the shadows from vehicles, right, because like
Speaker 1: aircraft is now a big part, right, so you also
Speaker 1: have to disguise everything, camouflage everything from up above.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So these surrealis in Britain they start camouflaging shit all
Speaker 1: over the aisles. They're making concrete pillboxes in case everyone's
Speaker 1: pretty convinced. The Germans are about to invade, right, and
Speaker 1: so they set up pillboxes everywhere to shoot the Germans, right,
Speaker 1: But they don't want the pillboxes to get bombed, so
Speaker 1: they have to disguise them. So the surrealists and others
Speaker 1: come in and they're turning them into houses, gas stations, cafes,
Speaker 1: chicken houses, fancy ruins. This is how, you know, the
Speaker 1: fucking like this is where artists show up. They're like,
Speaker 1: we can do it. I've been waiting my life for this,
Speaker 1: you know, military budget.
Speaker 2: Turn this yeh pillbox into something that looks like stone hengs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what if the original Stonehenge was camouflage makes you think, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and so there's lots of camoufloors. But the surrealists
Speaker 1: and their students are the ones who went a little
Speaker 1: bit extra. They made sure that it was like closed
Speaker 1: for seasoned signs on the fake stores, and there's like
Speaker 1: bathrooms in the fake cafes and all this shit, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and surrealists all over the Allied world are joining camouflage
Speaker 1: units and basically preaching the wonders of tricking the eye,
Speaker 1: and so are like sign painters and shit, Like every artist.
Speaker 1: This is like what they're getting into but the surrealist
Speaker 1: wrote the manual on it.
Speaker 2: Got it.
Speaker 1: Dolly claimed that all this was his idea. This is
Speaker 1: not true. He had nothing to do with any of it.
Speaker 1: And my the way I wrote him into the script
Speaker 1: is Dali, that weird white supremacist asshole, got kicked out
Speaker 1: of Surrealist for being friends with fascists in Spain who
Speaker 1: might come up later try to take credit. But he
Speaker 1: hadn't done shit.
Speaker 2: This is Salvador.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Salvador delim.
Speaker 2: I would that's funny because this is how much like
Speaker 2: history is rewritten and revised, Like when you said surrealist
Speaker 2: art and then you're talking about like melting clocks. Right
Speaker 2: at the beginning of the episode, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: Salvador Dolly, that's the one surrealist artist I could name
Speaker 2: by name. Yeah. No, But it turns out he's not
Speaker 2: even he got kicked out.
Speaker 1: Well, and what he did is he showed up in
Speaker 1: America and he was like, I am the surrealist and
Speaker 1: he was like very good at capitalizing and self promotion,
Speaker 1: and he was like, I am the surrealist painter. You know,
Speaker 1: he's also a very good surrealist painter. Like but he's all,
Speaker 1: he's in another part of the script. We'll talk more
Speaker 1: about him. So, the coolest use of all this camoufloor shit.
Speaker 1: You had your lesbian couple creating a fake rebellion with
Speaker 1: the Nazi ranks until it became a real one. The
Speaker 1: British managed to create an entire fake army through Operation Bertram,
Speaker 1: and it was run by folks who studied under Penrose
Speaker 1: and basically took the ideas from his book and put
Speaker 1: them into life. There was this North African offensive by
Speaker 1: the Allies coming up against a German force that it
Speaker 1: was winning and driving the Allies back over and over again.
Speaker 1: And the Allies needed a trick up their sleeve, and
Speaker 1: they realized it wasn't just a matter of disguising some stuff.
Speaker 1: They wanted to create an entire false story, right, So
Speaker 1: they created two fake armored divisions in Egypt. They made
Speaker 1: five hundred dummy tanks, one hundred and fifty dummy guns,
Speaker 1: two thousand dummy transport vehicles. Meanwhile, the actual tanks and shit,
Speaker 1: they're disguised too. This is like goofy movie stuff, right,
Speaker 1: there's like pictures of the tanks, the actual tanks. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's pictures of the disguise tanks, and they're like wire
Speaker 1: framework that they like build some shit onto, Like I
Speaker 1: think some of them are fucking paper mache and shit right,
Speaker 1: whereas the actual tanks they're like building like truck shell
Speaker 1: to go around it, you know, so it looks like
Speaker 1: a truck within. The two halves fall apart, and then
Speaker 1: there's a fucking tang.
Speaker 4: Whoa.
Speaker 1: This is likely the largest physical camouflage operation of all time.
Speaker 1: It was certainly the largest one of World War two.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, so Rommel this is a trojan horse?
Speaker 2: Yeah, shit, sort of.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It also reminds me of Argo, a movie that I
Speaker 2: would put that title in italics, of course if I
Speaker 2: was writing this stone anyway, we're I don't remember it
Speaker 2: super well. But it's like they pretended to be a
Speaker 2: they made like a fake movie, or like they're like,
Speaker 2: we're developing where they needed to go in and rescue
Speaker 2: someone from another place, and then they're like, we can't
Speaker 2: do that easilyunless we pretend that we're a movie crew.
Speaker 2: Yeah is that? And I'm sure this was based on
Speaker 2: true events in history. Buff I am a movie? Buff
Speaker 2: I am?
Speaker 1: Anyway? Well, it's like much in a very similar noble effort.
Speaker 1: I once stuck into a punk show when I had
Speaker 1: no money by taking empty pizza boxes and showing up
Speaker 1: at the back door and saying, this is pizza for
Speaker 1: the band. So sad, yeah, but the top okay. Actually
Speaker 1: it was like a bunch of a film crew had
Speaker 1: been like, hey you street kids, do you want this pizza?
Speaker 1: And there's a little bit left in each box, and
Speaker 1: so I compiled it into like one big like there
Speaker 1: was like about a whole pizza's worth. I put it
Speaker 1: in the top box so I could be like, Eh,
Speaker 1: there's a pizza and then see. But then I went
Speaker 1: in and I was like watching the show and I
Speaker 1: was like this is fun. I was like, man, I'm hungry.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, I know where there's some pizza. So I
Speaker 1: went back to the green room and grabbed pizza. And
Speaker 1: then the manager was like, hey, pizza person, did you pay?
Speaker 1: And I'm like I did not. I will leave now.
Speaker 1: So I got kicked out my hubris like Icarus, I
Speaker 1: flew too close to the pizza shaped sun, which is
Speaker 1: or is.
Speaker 2: The is the sun shaped like pizza pizza? Or is
Speaker 2: a piece of shape like a pizza in her egg?
Speaker 2: That's moon hits your eye and pizza and that's and that's.
Speaker 1: A more which is different than.
Speaker 2: What's what joke? I have to sing the whole song
Speaker 2: to get there.
Speaker 3: But you did it, you got there. I'm so proud,
Speaker 3: thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: So uh so. Rammel is the Nazi commander of this army,
Speaker 1: that not the Allied army, but the Nazi army.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: And he couldn't tell which was a way so which
Speaker 1: was the fake army, which was the real army. So
Speaker 1: he split his army in two, and the Allies beat
Speaker 1: the shit out of him and has turned things around
Speaker 1: for the British and the North African theater, at least
Speaker 1: according to as far as I read, I read more
Speaker 1: about the way that they made fake tanks and less
Speaker 1: about the way it effected the course of the war. Right,
Speaker 1: Penrose and Miller they got married after the war. They
Speaker 1: had a kid, but Miller did have from being embedded
Speaker 1: in the front, had pretty bad PTSD. Most of the
Speaker 1: surrealists in their forties and sh at some at this
Speaker 1: point weren't directly involved in the fighting. Most fled the war,
Speaker 1: especially to New York City. But there's one other surrealist
Speaker 1: whose wartime activity is interesting to me and is a
Speaker 1: way to tie in surrealist concepts. Renee agreed. He is
Speaker 1: a Belgian painter.
Speaker 2: He's a guy.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen that this is not a pipe painting?
Speaker 2: No, but here comes another Google search this is not
Speaker 2: a pipe.
Speaker 1: So he has a piece called I'll describe it for
Speaker 1: the listeners. It's called the Treachery of Images. Everyone calls it.
Speaker 1: This is not a pipe, and it is a It's
Speaker 1: a picture of a pipe, like a painting of a
Speaker 1: pipe that you like smoke out of, you know. And
Speaker 1: it has pretty cursive lettering that says in French, this
Speaker 1: is not.
Speaker 3: A pipe, Caitlyn.
Speaker 4: Once you google it, you'll be like, I've seen this
Speaker 4: a million times, say, oh.
Speaker 2: I actually never have.
Speaker 1: Really, you live under different rocks. I live under a rock,
Speaker 1: but you live under a different rock.
Speaker 2: Yes, there are many types of rocks by which to
Speaker 2: obscure you knowing things.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have seen this for the first time. What
Speaker 1: is your reaction?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, fascinating. I it this. This is comedy, you know,
Speaker 2: like a pipe. And then it says this is not
Speaker 2: a pipe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I.
Speaker 4: Feel like I've seen this very commonly being used as
Speaker 4: like a tattoo.
Speaker 3: This is like a this is a no no, no,
Speaker 3: this is not a body.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, like I've seen it, but like the actual
Speaker 4: pipe of it all, like I've seen it. I've seen.
Speaker 4: I definitely know people have the statuo got it. This
Speaker 4: is like a hugely popular thing.
Speaker 1: The best niche meme I ever made that I don't
Speaker 1: think you, either of you or any of our listeners
Speaker 1: will get is I made one a meme that said, uh,
Speaker 1: this is not a pipe bomb, and it was a
Speaker 1: picture of a bicycle and it was done in the
Speaker 1: same stuff. Do you get it?
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 1: There's a band called this Bike is a Pipe Bomb,
Speaker 1: and there's a punk band from the early oughts, and
Speaker 1: they pretty much just existed to get people's bikes cut
Speaker 1: in half by the police because they made stickers that
Speaker 1: said this bike is a pipe bomb, and people would
Speaker 1: put them on their bicycles and entire cities have shut
Speaker 1: down over this.
Speaker 3: That's fucking clever.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, well done. I'm sorry to have
Speaker 1: doubted your knowledge of.
Speaker 3: Oh it's so good, but yeah sorry podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, okay, so this is not a pipe what
Speaker 1: it is saying, I really like this piece. I also
Speaker 1: think it's funny, and I don't have any object like.
Speaker 1: It's an exploration of the difference between the symbol and
Speaker 1: the symbolized. People would be like, but mcgreet, this is
Speaker 1: a pipe, and he would be like, of course, it
Speaker 1: is not a pipe. Just try to fill it with tobacco.
Speaker 1: The surrealists were obsessed with semiotics, the study of symbols
Speaker 1: and recognizing, like recognizing that words are arbitrary is sort
Speaker 1: of a key to surrealism. In semiotics, you have the
Speaker 1: signifier and the signified. The signifier is the expression and
Speaker 1: the signified is the content. Right, so the signified isn't it?
Speaker 1: But so it's like saying the word pipe, right, is
Speaker 1: a is not a pipe? Right? Drawing a pipe is
Speaker 1: not an actual pipe, and even the signified is not
Speaker 1: exactly the thing. I want to quote a modern surrealist
Speaker 1: author who goes by the name Merlin. For example, the
Speaker 1: signifier bird refers to a particular idea which has been
Speaker 1: constructed by humans in order to understand and refer to birds,
Speaker 1: rather than an authentic object as it exists externally to humans.
Speaker 1: The entire concept of a bird, in essence is a
Speaker 1: metaphor the bird itself is not a bird.
Speaker 2: I wish I was smart enough. I know.
Speaker 1: Is the kind of shit that, like, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's worth pointing out. It's just like you can stick
Speaker 1: with like the pipe is not the word pipe, or
Speaker 1: a drawing of a pipe is not a pipe, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can. You can signpost to something that the stop
Speaker 1: sign doesn't make your car stop, you know. And it's like,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting. It's funny because I'm like, in some ways,
Speaker 1: I'm like, this doesn't really matter, right, Like this isn't
Speaker 1: but it's I find it neat. I guess that's the
Speaker 1: best I can say about it.
Speaker 2: So do I am I limited understanding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're gonna end up with the the tattoo. The
Speaker 1: other thing I really like about mcgree besides the fact
Speaker 1: that I didn't look up how to pronounce his name,
Speaker 1: it's probably magree because I don't know. I should have
Speaker 1: looked it up beforehand. I looked up so many words
Speaker 1: for this fucking episode. He was a commercial painter, unlike
Speaker 1: a Ball all the other surrealists, not all the other
Speaker 1: Unlike most of the other surrealists I've talked about, he
Speaker 1: actually had a work for a living. He wasn't a
Speaker 1: ser you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he wasn't a member of the bourgeoisie or the
Speaker 2: boogie Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he wasn't a boogeyman, a bougie man. He worked
Speaker 1: as an advertising designer and a wallpaper maker and shit.
Speaker 1: And so what he did is he painted this. This
Speaker 1: painting did really well. It made him famous, right, so
Speaker 1: he just painted it over and over again and sold
Speaker 1: it every single time. Okay, and like that rules. I
Speaker 1: went with one of my surrealist friends to see an
Speaker 1: exhibition of these paintings once and was like, as a matterfucker,
Speaker 1: knew how to make some money. He also made his
Speaker 1: money spinning out forgeries of picassos and shit. Okay, And
Speaker 1: during the Nazi occupation in World War Two, he also
Speaker 1: turned his art to the direct forgery of money.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: And I far too often anti capitalists are too shy
Speaker 1: to like actually just try to procure get the needs,
Speaker 1: the things they need to eat, right, Like people are
Speaker 1: like too afraid to go get fucking money. But he
Speaker 1: once wrote, the confusion and panic that surrealism wanted to
Speaker 1: create in order to bring everything into question were achieved
Speaker 1: much better by the Nazi idiots than by us. This
Speaker 1: is not a pro Nazi statement by him. It is
Speaker 1: a questioning of the value of trying to shake things
Speaker 1: up for the sake of shaking things up. It's like
Speaker 1: Trump people will be like, oh, I want the whole
Speaker 1: system shooken up, and someone's like, I'll shake up the system.
Speaker 1: People are cool and they're like, oh, you're Nazi right.
Speaker 1: He stayed in Belgium during the Nazi occupation, and basically
Speaker 1: he was like, I can't paint dark shit anymore. I
Speaker 1: need to offer hope in these nightmare times. So he
Speaker 1: started painting with bright colors like flowers and shit, and
Speaker 1: he called it sunlit surrealism. To quote him directly, before
Speaker 1: the war, my paintings expressed anxiety. But the experiences of
Speaker 1: war have taught me what matters in art is to
Speaker 1: express charm. I live in a very disagreeable world, and
Speaker 1: my work is meant as a counter offensive. Other historians
Speaker 1: claim he switched styles so they wouldn't get labeled as
Speaker 1: a degenerate artist and murdered by the Nazis, which is
Speaker 1: also fair sure, but I tend to believe him. I
Speaker 1: think he did it because, like the dark edgy shit
Speaker 1: wasn't what's called for during a Nazi occupation. Then nineteen
Speaker 1: forty eight, he's like, man, the war's over, I'm going
Speaker 1: back to paint dark shit. This is what I like.
Speaker 1: People like to say that surrealism fell apart after World
Speaker 1: War Two. That absolutely is not true. What happened as
Speaker 1: it became less the art darling of the bourgeoisie. They
Speaker 1: all hated the bourgeois anyway, except Ali, but he doesn't count. Instead,
Speaker 1: surrealism became a vibrant international anarchist movement that's still alive today.
Speaker 1: Went on the influence of the sixties radicals in particular.
Speaker 1: We will get to that next week, but first we're
Speaker 1: gonna come back on Wednesday talk about surrealism before the war,
Speaker 1: about surrealism before surrealism, and about a black sex magician
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century who paved their way.
Speaker 2: Okay, can't wait.
Speaker 1: That's my cliffhanger. I keep pointing out the things for
Speaker 1: my cliffhanger. I've now done it every week. I need
Speaker 1: to stop pointing it out. But if people don't want
Speaker 1: a cliffhanger and want to go directly to the things
Speaker 1: that you do, what should they do?
Speaker 2: Well, you should listen to The Bechdel Cast, which is
Speaker 2: a podcast that I co host with Jamie Loftis where
Speaker 2: we talk about movies and from an intersectional feminist lens.
Speaker 2: And uh, you can follow me on whatever social media
Speaker 2: platforms don't absolutely suck, just kidding, it's all of them.
Speaker 2: But I'm found at Caitlin Dronte and that's about it. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: my worst job plugging myself ever. I think just now.
Speaker 1: People should go listen to the Bechdeal Cast. It's funny.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you. Margaret has been a guest. It's
Speaker 2: true and we must have you back.
Speaker 1: What was the name of this? Like a Swedish punk
Speaker 1: movie we watched We Are the Best.
Speaker 2: We Are the Best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very good. That's what I'm gonna plug is
Speaker 1: people should go watch that movie and then listen to
Speaker 1: the Bechdel Cast talking about it. Once again, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: keep pointing out that there's something that's been in the
Speaker 1: back of my mind to plug. I remember what it is.
Speaker 1: For the past couple of weeks, I've been like, I
Speaker 1: don't remember. There's a thing of just a plug. Tell
Speaker 1: people about podcasts that you like. If you like this podcast,
Speaker 1: tell people about it. Word of mouth is cooler than algorithms.
Speaker 1: That's my plug. But you could also really like other
Speaker 1: podcasts un Cooler Zone Media because they're also really good.
Speaker 1: Because the cool thing about having a little umbrella, like
Speaker 1: the little surrealist painting of umbrella anyway, is that it
Speaker 1: has a lot of cool things under that umbrella. And
Speaker 1: Sophie is the umbrella who shelters us from the rain
Speaker 1: of the corporate world.
Speaker 3: It may work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what do you need from me?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 4: You need to plug something?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's up to you. You don't have to plug
Speaker 1: anything if you don't want.
Speaker 4: No, I want you to listen to sad Oligark, hosted
Speaker 4: by jkn rhand. We just but we just wrapped it
Speaker 4: the whole things out. Listen to it.
Speaker 1: Oh hell yeah, now that's done. I'm going to go
Speaker 1: listen to it. I binge listen. I felt really bad
Speaker 1: that I haven't listened yet. I've been wanting to. Now
Speaker 1: I'm going to go do it nice right now.
Speaker 2: Bye bye.
Speaker 4: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 4: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 4: visit our website Coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 4: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 4: your podcasts.