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London Bulletin
Editor-in-chiefE. L. T. Mesens
CategoriesArts magazine
FrequencyMonthly
Publisher
  • Arno Press
  • Bradley Press
FounderLondon Gallery
Founded1938
First issueApril 1938
Final issue
Number		June 1940
18–20
CountryUnited Kingdom
Based inLondon
LanguageEnglish
OCLC7419596

London Bulletin was a monthly avant-garde art magazine which was affiliated with the London Gallery between April 1938 and June 1940. It was one of the most significant surrealist publications.

History and profile

[edit]

The plans to launch the magazine began following the international surrealist exhibition in London in 1936.[1] The magazine was first published in April 1938 with the title London Gallery Bulletin.[1][2] It was renamed as London Bulletin from the second issue.[2] It came out monthly,[3] and its publisher was the Arno Press based in London.[4] Later the Bradley Press became its publisher.[3] The magazine was financed by Roland Penrose.[5]

London Bulletin regularly published the pamphlets of the exhibitions presented at the London Gallery.[3][6] It frequently featured reproductions of surrealist paintings and poems of the surrealists.[7] The manifesto of an Egyptian anarchist post-surrealist group, Art et Liberté (Art and Freedom), was published in the magazine in English in 1938.[8] The group members were Anwar Kamel, Ramses Younan and Kamel el-Telmissany who would launch a magazine, Al Tatawwur, in Cairo in 1940.[9] In the document entitled "Long Live Degenerate Art!" they objected to the Nazis' views on "degenerate art" and the Marxists' notion "that modern society looks with aversion on any innovative creation in art and literature which threatens the cultural system on which that society is based, whether it be from the point of view of thought or of meaning."[8] London Bulletin folded before World War II,[10] and its last issue, numbered 18–20, appeared in June 1940.[1][5] The same year the London Gallery was also closed.[5]

London Gallery News, a small newspaper, was the successor of London Bulletin.[3]

Editors and contributors

[edit]

E. L. T. Mesens was the editor-in-chief.[5] Humphrey Jennings contributed to the first two issues of the magazine and then began to work with Gordon Onslow Ford as an assistant editor to Mesens.[1][3] Roland Penrose served as the assistant editor from issue 8/9 published in January 1939 and was replaced by George Reavey from issue 11 dated March 1939.[3]

Major contributors of London Bulletin included Herbert Read, Samuel Beckett, Eileen Agar, John Banting, Conroy Maddox, the French Paul Éluard, André Breton, and Francis Picabia, as well as Belgian surrealist writer Marcel Mariën.[11] Pictures by photographer Lee Miller appeared in several issues.[12]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d David Hopkins (2018). "William Blake and British Surrealism: Humphrey Jennings, the Impact of Machines and the Case for Dada". Visual Culture in Britain. 19 (3): 312. doi:10.1080/14714787.2018.1522968. S2CID 192737893.
  2. ^ a b Steven Connor (1995). "British Surrealist Poetry in the 1930s". In Gary Day; Brian Docherty (eds.). British Poetry, 1900–50. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 169. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-24000-5_11. ISBN 978-1-349-24000-5.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Jutta Vinzent (2020). "The Making of Modern Art through Commercial Art Galleries in 1930s London: The London Gallery (1936 to 1950)" (PDF). Visual Culture in Britain. 21 (2): 147, 162, 164. doi:10.1080/14714787.2020.1738265. S2CID 219411278.
  4. ^ London Bulletin. Arno Press. 1938.
  5. ^ a b c d Denis-J. Jean (February 1975). "Was There an English Surrealist Group in the Forties? Two Unpublished Letters". Twentieth Century Literature. 21 (1): 81, 87. doi:10.2307/440531. JSTOR 440531.
  6. ^ Rod Mengham (2009). "'National Papers Please Reprint': Surrealist Magazines in Britain: Contemporary Poetry and Prose (1936–7), London Bulletin (1938–40), and Arson: An Ardent Review (1942)". In Peter Brooker; Andrew Thacker (eds.). The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 691. doi:10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199654291.003.0038. ISBN 9780191803635.
  7. ^ P. B. R. (Autumn 1939). "Foreign Periodicals". The Kenyon Review. 1 (4): 473. JSTOR 4332119.
  8. ^ a b James Gifford (2015). "Late modernism's migrations: San Francisco Renaissance, Egyptian anarchists, and English post-Surrealism". Textual Practice. 29 (6): 1057. doi:10.1080/0950236X.2015.1024725. S2CID 162388367.
  9. ^ Sam Bardaouil (2013). ""Dirty Dark Loud and Hysteric": The London and Paris Surrealist Exhibitions of the 1930s and the Exhibition Practices of the Art and Liberty Group in Cairo". Dada/Surrealism. 19 (1): 1–24. doi:10.17077/0084-9537.1273.
  10. ^ Arthur M. Minters (1967). "A Talk on Modern Art Periodicals". Books at Iowa. 7 (1): 3–8. doi:10.17077/0006-7474.1297.
  11. ^ Marcel Mariën; Beth Roudebush (1962). "Another Kind of Cinema". Film Comment. Vol. 1, no. 3. p. 14. JSTOR 43752656.
  12. ^ "Lee Miller and Surrealism in Britain" (PDF). Fundació Joan Miró. 2018.
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