Abstract: On June 28, 1943 in Santiago de Chile a group of artists organized a “Surrealist soirée,” and documented the event in the magazine Leit Motiv. The photograph in many ways amplified and prolonged the existence of the show, which itself served as a bridge between publications, exhibitions, and polemical texts that the artists deemed “Surrealist experiments.” Across the Americas at this time, editors explored various ways magazines could supplement or supplant exhibitions, circulating artwork to larger audiences. My talk will outline the magazine’s different intersections with the reproduction and display of art, with a focus on these Surrealist experiments in Chile, to underscore the fluidity between editorial, artistic, and curatorial practices in the Americas in the early twentieth century.
Bio: Lori Cole is Clinical Associate Professor and Associate Director of the interdisciplinary master’s program XE: Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement at New York University. She has written extensively on the intersection of art and magazines, most recently for the exhibition “Surrealism Beyond Borders” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is the author of Surveying the Avant-Garde: Questions on Modernism, Art, and the Americas in Transatlantic Magazines (Penn State University Press, 2018).