{"id":46263,"date":"2021-05-17T12:13:36","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T16:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=46263"},"modified":"2021-05-20T11:50:37","modified_gmt":"2021-05-20T15:50:37","slug":"brion-gysin-uncut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2021\/05\/brion-gysin-uncut.html","title":{"rendered":"Brion Gysin Uncut"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Have you ever seen a more revealing photo of Brion Gysin than the one on the cover of BRION GYSIN<\/em> His Name Was Master: Texts & Interviews<\/em>? It shows a profound sense of dislocation, something Gysin often talked about but rarely showed in his demeanor\u2014which was characteristically grand and worldly and laced with humor<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
BRION GYSIN His Name Was Master: <\/a><\/strong><\/em>
Texts & Interviews by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge
With Peter Christoferson and Jon Savage<\/a><\/strong><\/em>
Portrait of Brion Gysin \u00a9 2018 by Ulrich Hillebrand
Trapart Books, 2018<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This sprawling book by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, with Peter Christoferson and Jon Savage<\/strong>, offers Gysin in talking mode. It is Gysin uncut. Having already been comprehensively reviewed in The Brooklyn Rail<\/a>, it needs no review from me. More interesting than anything I might have to say is an excerpt from one of the interviews with Savage, which gives Gysin’s account of his brief, teenage involvement with the Surrealists.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b0\u00b0\u00b0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brion Gysin:<\/em> I\u2019d met this Greek who knew the Surrealists, and he introduced me to them within the very first few months that I was at the Sorbonne. And I hardly ever went to any of my classes after that\u2026They liked my drawings, and then I met their whole kind of \u2018group,\u2019 and everything\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Savage:<\/em> WHAT WAS GETTING INVOLVED WITH THE SURREALISTS LIKE AT THAT PERIOD?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BG:<\/em> Oh, that was very overwhelming, and very inclusive\u2014inasmuch as they were the dominant group in Paris at that moment, and had been the first, in a way, to turn an Art movement into a terrorist Political Party\u2026and had allied themselves with leftist politics, on one hand, and the sort of \u2018Haute Couture\u2019 world, on the other\u2014so that they had a nice spread between\u2026you know, left-wing Duchesses, and Communist millionaires\u2026and Trotskyist intellectuals. And they covered the \u2018scene\u2019 in the thirties here [in Paris]. It was, you know, people who had left the movement, for one reason or another because of the sort of \u2018Party Politics\u2019 that\u2026It was a Party, it was really definitely a terrorist Party, where you were supposed to think Surrealist, work Surrealist, eat Surrealist, and naturally, of course, dream Surrealist\u2026and it was run by\u2026an iron hand\u2026! Breton was a tyrant. And he eventually lost his power. But the whole thing was a very dubious enterprise, I thought, such a dubious enterprise, that I was very  quickly expelled for “sedition.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JS:<\/em> EX-COMMUNICATED.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BG:<\/em> Ex-communicated in full flight! In 1935, I had been to Greece that summer, and had come back with a series of very finished drawings\u2014which I still have, unfortunately\u2014and they had agreed to organize an exhibition of just drawings. And everybody in the group participated, and that was the only time, even, that they had Picasso\u2026[he] went along with them. It was the only time that he exhibited with the Surrealists, who were naturally flirting with him like mad\u2026because they had lost Aragon, and Tzara, who had left the Party for one reason or another\u2026expelled by Breton\u2014more power politics. And they had all become members of the Communist Party. Picasso had not YET joined the Communist Party\u2026I\u2019ve forgotten when he did\u2026I think it was after the Spanish Civil War, the next year, in 1936, that he joined the Party. But I still went on seeing Picasso. I went, actually, to the Spanish Pavilion at the World\u2019s Fair of that year and saw him over the two or three weeks that he painted the famous \u201cGuernica.\u201d I saw it in various stages as he changed it from one day to the other\u2026and went home, furiously, and laid out more drawings, and then came back the next day and then changed it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JS:<\/em> DID IT CHANGE, FROM HOW HE SAW IT AT THE START?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BG: <\/em>Oh yeah. Sure, I mean, I saw it change right on the wall, before the exhibition was opened.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JS:<\/em> HOW DID IT CHANGE? DID IT BECOME SORT OF HARDER, OR\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BG:<\/em> Harder, and richer, and tighter, and more highly organized, from the point of view of\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JG:<\/em> AND YOU GOT EX-COMMUNICATED.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Genesis Breyer P. Orridge (left) and Brion Gysin<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

BG:<\/em> I was ex-communicated very brutally for a tender nineteen-year-old\u2026 I went [to the exhibition] thinking that something might be necessary\u2026Keep an eye on things\u2026I went early\u2026The exhibition was to open at six o\u2019clock in the evening, and I thought, \u201cI think I\u2019d better go there about five.\u201d And I got there about five, and I found Paul \u00c9luard unhanging my pictures, and I said, \u201cWhat\u2019s this all about?\u201d And he said, \u201cOrders from Breton.\u201d And very shortly after that Valentine Hugo arrived, and she had been Breton\u2019s mistress in some period or other, and she too had been expelled from the\u2026ex-communicated from the movement, and was on very bitter terms with Breton, so she took up my defense, which was, at the same time, rather embarrassing Then there was no question about it. I was OUT. I mean, if I was being defended by Valentine Hugo, all I had to do was go off with her\u2026I went off with her for a while\u2026Some six or seven years ago, a dealer had collected all that sort of stuff, and he had bought the entire\u2026her succession, when she died, which must have been about \u201973, \u201974, like that. I read in the newspaper, in \u2018Le Monde,\u2019 that letters were sold, and e-v-e-r-y name in the whole list was of very famous people\u2014except my own. But apparently MY correspondence was also sold publicly, along with everybody else[\u2019s] of that period. But that also never added up to anything because I never\u2026um\u2026I didn\u2019t admire her painting, I didn\u2019t really particularly want to be associated with her\u2014there was no future in that for me. There was SOME future in that for her, to have a handsome young dissident around [\u2026] I just couldn\u2019t see myself becoming a lapdog in her house\u2026and I sort of went off on my own, and then my first one-man show was in the Spring of 1939. The same gallery which had been on the Left Bank had moved off to very Right Bank\u2026Right off the Champs Elys\u00e9e there, in the Rue D\u2019Avignon, and I had a v-e-r-y sort of\u2026\u2019social\u2019 opening. All sorts of\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JS:<\/em> QUITE CROWDED?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BG:<\/em> Mmm, sort of\u2026Everybody who was passing through at that moment was there. So that\u2019s why some of those early pictures of mine got so dispersed. [\u2026] And I then met the Surrealists again in New York, where I got to by 1940. They trickled in a little bit later, for one reason or another. I was quite well established, and of course I spoke the language\u2014which they didn\u2019t\u2014and I had a big studio right on the corner of 56th<\/sup> Street and Madison Avenue, which was very central\u2026I just sort of opened my house to them and gave big parties, mostly with Peggy Guggenheim, who was an old friend of theirs\u2026Naturally, she was one of their patrons, and was always a friend of mine. And a patron I guess, in a way, in as much as she gave various pictures of mine to museums around the world. My motto was, \u201cThere\u2019s no point in carrying quarrels from the old world to the new.\u201d So we would go through that AGAIN, if necessary.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of that, nothing of any interest came, except my friendship with Matta at that time, who hadn\u2019t yet joined the Surrealists. In 1935 he was still in Chile someplace, as an architectural student. He had come in the interim, and had joined the group, and so then I met him, and we became intimate and worked together, and you know, drew all night in front of live models and things like that. Which you wouldn\u2019t quite suspect from\u2026from any of us. But we did.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JS: WHY DID YOU GO BACK TO NEW YORK? HAD YOU BECOME SORT OF TIRED OF EUROPE, OR DID YOU WANT TO GET\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BG: Oh no\u2026One RAN to New York\u2014what do you m-e-a-n\u2026? 1939, 1940\u2026! One didn\u2019t want to be anywhere ELSE! E-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y came to New York. It was a V-E-R-Y extraordinary city at that time. It REALLY was Babylon, very little English spoken, anywhere\u2026whether it was in the streets, or in a bus, or in an elevator, or wherever you liked. There was every language spoken there that you could think of, except English\u2026American English. And sort of EVERYBODY from Berlin was there, EVERYBODY from Vienna was there, EVERYBODY from Budapest was there, like everybody that COULD get there who wasn\u2019t already dead in a concentration camp, was in New York. Everybody from France\u2014at least one half of France\u2014came, and certainly all the painters came who could. They ranged all the way from the Surrealist group\u2026That means Max Ernst, who married\u2026or was married BY Peggy Guggenheim, and Matta of course, and Tanguy, who had married an American\u2026on and on. Masson and his whole family were there, and then people that weren\u2019t of the Surrealist group, the most important painter was Leg\u00e9r, who spent all that part of the War in New York. One saw him regularly. And there were all the European composers, they were there, all the musicians were there\u2026It was an extraordinarily brilliant period. It was really [an] amazing three or four years. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever seen a more revealing photo of Brion Gysin than the one on the cover of “His Name Was Master: Texts; Interviews”? It shows a profound sense of dislocation, something Gysin often talked about but rarely showed in his demeanor\u2014which was characteristically grand and worldly and often laced with humor. This sprawling book by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge with Peter Christoferson and Jon Savage offers Gysin in talking mode. It is Gysin uncut. Having already been comprehensively reviewed in The Brooklyn Rail, it needs no review from me. More interesting than anything I might have to say is Gysin’s account of his brief, teenage involvement with the Surrealists. The disappointment, not to say trauma, of that experience was a harbinger of later ones. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":46267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,26,18,4,20,21,22,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-46263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"category-books","9":"category-literature","10":"category-main","11":"category-media","12":"category-movies","13":"category-music","14":"category-news","15":"category-political-culture","16":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/BrionGysin-HisNameWasMaster-cover-365.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-c2b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46263"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46406,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46263\/revisions\/46406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}