Pacific surrealism

This chapter argues that the geographical heterodoxy of Pacific surrealism might be understood as a correlative to surrealism’s transgressive impulse, extending logics of inversion across oceanic space. It discusses how irregular forms of mapping were commensurate with surrealism’s aesthetics of defamiliarization. More specifically, the chapter discusses representations of Pacific iconography in visual artists (Man Ray, Brassaï), visits to Pacific regions by European surrealists (Paul Eluard, Jacques Viol) and the role played by surrealism in theorizations of ethnography (Claude Lévi-Strauss). It also analyzes the ways in which Pacific space was understood by theorists of surrealism such as Bernard Smith and James Clifford, while addressing the complicated political situation of surrealism in mid-twentieth-century Japan. The chapter subsequently tracks more recent manifestations of surrealism in Pacific writers and artists such as Aloï Piloko, Shane Cotton, Len Lye and Alexis Wright, commenting on connections with cultures of indigeneity and ways in which these artists integrate styles of hybridity.