FRANÇOIS BAUDOT, MODE & SURRÉALISME

par Myriam Felisaz-Debodard

Grand reporter, editorial advisor for the women's weekly ELLE, a magazine renowned not only for devoting numerous pages to the most cutting-edge trends in fashion, but also for questioning all social phenomena, whether cultural or political, François BAUDOT proposes to us an unexpected rapprochement that will not fail to awaken curiosity: Mode & surréalisme. He is moreover the author of about twenty works—published, for the most part, by Assouline, like the opus that interests us here—devoted to the great names who make fashion (from Poiret to Alaïa via Chanel, Schiaparelli, etc.) and to the vast universe of "glamour" in general.

This interest in fashion and this active involvement in its history and theorization justify the predominance (claimed) accorded to the concept of fashion over that of surrealism stricto sensu. The title, moreover, can hardly mislead us about the author's elective affinities: separated by means of the ampersand, the usual typographical symbol of the coordinating conjunction, it is indeed the term fashion that presents itself first to the gaze, before that of surrealism (let us recall that the title of the collection in which this work is published confirms the purpose: "Mémoire de la mode"). Let us note however, regarding the hierarchy established in the images offered to the gaze, that the elegant dust jacket protecting the book (and thus concealing the austerity of a pearl gray cover on which the title appears modestly in white) reproduces on the recto in full page a painting by Magritte, La Philosophie dans le boudoir (1948): one must turn the book over to glimpse, inserted in reduced format in the middle of the presentation text, a photograph signed by Cecil Beaton of the Manteau-bureau (1936) by Elsa Schiaparelli. Invalidation of the bias announced by the paratext or a game of false leads? We must keep this question present in mind, although it must for the moment remain in suspense.

One will note again, before taking more detailed interest in the text, the absence of any determiner before the two terms that compose the title of the work. This would tend to confirm the hypothesis that we sketched in half-words above, according to which it is more (or above all) the concepts that Baudot puts in relation to each other, rather than the phenomena themselves. And, although the author takes care to make explicit and concretely illustrate these concepts (which, following the distinction established by Kant, it would be appropriate to qualify here as empirical), in other words, to propose different modes of "appearing of the object" (as Husserl defines the "phenomenon"), it is indeed rather on the side of history, of mental representation (collective and individual), of the abstract idea that he initially situates himself, and it is still there that he shows himself most convincing.

The book is separated into four parts of unequal volume and, honesty compels us to specify, of similar interest. Although this restriction that we establish is perhaps abusive, in the sense that it is only valid for those who are mainly interested in surrealism and already have some knowledge of it. The first part begins in regard to the definition of surrealism, as given in 1924 by Breton in the Manifeste du surréalisme. About fifteen pages, purely textual, divided typographically into thirteen "landmarks" or "tableaux," more than into true sub-parts, quite brief and of rapid rhythm (the author is a journalist and does not practice essayistic writing, which, in the present case, one can praise him for), this initial part, untitled, seems to have the vocation to fulfill concomitantly the introductory, definitional and historicist functions. This last function being completed, moreover, by the third part which, in only one page, facing the reproduction of the photograph of Breton taken in 1933 by Man Ray, gives some "Chronological landmarks." From one and the other of these two parts, one will learn for example that Magritte conceived in 1927 and 1928 a catalog for a Brussels department store; that Man Ray worked, as "fashion photographer," in the service of the couturier Paul Poiret; that Dali decorated the window of the New York store of the jeweler Tiffany's... by throwing a stone at it; that the famous sofa reproducing the shape of Mae West's mouth had been initially conceived in 1937 by Dali (still him) for Elsa Schiaparelli's boutique. And other anecdotes. But of the irruption, use or diversion of fashion in surrealist texts or those related to the movement (one thinks for example of La Liberté ou l'amour! by Robert Desnos, 1927), there is no question in this book.

Much more complex is the second part of the book: iconographic, consisting of numerous photos and some reproductions of paintings, it seems to offer us a catalog (in the sense of "census") parcellary, often composed, one has the feeling, according to the author's whim. This fifty pages of non-captioned material is made, with rare exceptions (Max Ernst, La Sève monte, 1929, for example), of couples of images, brought together in a more or less obvious manner (for example: Elsa Schiaparelli, collier Insectes, 1937-38 / Francis Picabia, La Femme au monocle, 1924-26), more or less incongruous (among others: Dorothea Tanning, Anniversaire, autoportrait, 1942 / Man Ray, Serge Lifar). Let us specify that these binary associations can take place according to three different configurations: between a fashion image and a surrealist image stricto sensu, between two fashion images, between two surrealist images finally. Perhaps then one should rather look at this iconography as a bestiary, a cabinet of curiosities, a "shock monstration," which would then be in the perfect lineage of the "happening" exhibitions organized in their time by the surrealists.

Each of these couples (as a couple first but also, separately, for each of the two reproductions) the famous principle of the fortuitous, recalled at the beginning of the work, proposed by Lautréamont in Les Chants de Maldoror, this effect that produces the "encounter of an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissection table." Above all, our gaze, plunging and, doubting having omitted some significant detail, replunging into this iconography, must let itself be surprised, struck, accept that violence be done to its senses and to sense, and find the means to slip into this virtual gallery, so that its possessor finds by himself, forgetting all a priori (iniquitous in any case in this situation) and without any help (no explanatory text is co-present with the images), a justification, a logic, a reason for being for this ex-position.

Unless, of course, the prudent reader (and, above all, who will have taken care to quickly leaf through the book as a whole before becoming acquainted with it in more detail) interrupts himself between each binomial of images, in order to systematically refer to the captions proposed in the fourth part under the repetition of the general title "Mode & surréalisme." But these interruptions make reading extremely uncomfortable. These captions therefore exist indeed, but they are succinct, and beside each one figures, as a reminder, a very reduced reproduction (the initial double page is reduced to 2.8 cm x 2 cm) of the two images it accompanies. The systematic iconographic reminder therefore encourages one to be content with a reading posterior to the contemplation of the "catalog" itself. However, these captions, essentially nomenclatural, very rarely, or partially, justify the choice that presided over the rapprochements made. This probably contributes to the reader considering the following possibilities: these images are united by an implicit logic, going without saying, or, conversely, they are, for the most part, by the author's subjectivity and the will to illustrate absolute "non sense." Both hypotheses do not exclude each other, but, if one admits that Baudot also serves surrealist research through this book, one will privilege the second.

One will have understood and we warned readers from the beginning: this is not a book on surrealism, but on fashion. And it is indeed to this very interesting ontological question that the rapprochement of images in the second part leads us: what is fashion (just as one never tires of asking: what is art)? A garment or accessory elevated among others to the rank of art object? A particular gaze brought to bear on the female body, arranged, again, according to a particular scenography, like a work of art? A universe made of materials (paper of sketches, fabrics, threads, etc.), totem-objects (the dressmaker's mannequin) and icons (the flesh and blood models, the creators, the photographers, etc.)?

For this reason, one will perhaps remain frustrated at not managing to identify the pragmatic intentions assumed by the author in the whole book: to show and illustrate the possibility of a dyad between the two concepts? to shock visually (unlikely, nowadays)? to draw up a possible inventory? One could certainly find others still, which have escaped us. In any case, none of these goals seems fully achieved, and one will be able to regret notably, regarding the last intention envisaged, the absence of the works of the Delaunay couple, of Sonia notably (who created fabrics and dresses in abundance), or even of Picasso (must one recall, for example, the sets and costumes he conceived for Icare by Serge Lifar, or even Parade, on a theme by Cocteau, music by Satie and with choreography by Léonide Massine?), for, if they are not truly members of the surrealist group, Baudot does not hesitate elsewhere to annex some drawing by Cocteau to the side of surrealist visuals.

Nevertheless, and even if, for the last two notably, they are not posed in such explicit and schematic fashion, interesting questions arise from reading this book: what were the effective links of the surrealists with fashion, and vice versa? and, from a more conceptual point of view, to what extent is there surrealism in fashion? and fashion in surrealism? To these questions, Baudot obviously provides elements of response. But his propositions sometimes seem a bit easy, and, for these last two questions notably, it seems to us that he cheapens the initial meaning of the adjective surrealist, a widespread abuse that he nevertheless carefully denounces in his first part: "Having become in the interwar period synonymous with scandal, this neologism has so well passed since then into common language that one would almost forget its initial meaning." If everything that is strange and disturbing can be called "surrealist," then everything is surrealist, and Baudot's "demonstration" is in this regard receivable. One will regret that he does not clearly pose the nuance between eternal surrealism and historical surrealism, which would make his purpose more convincing. He simply evokes this distinction, when he writes, shortly before concluding the first part:

"The first surrealists, in their original purity, were certainly not concerned with the universe of fashion. (...) But things are so made that their eruption, today still, translates through details, secondary instances, and these small acts of daily insurrection that also make surrealism—great intellectual movement—a modest manifestation of the strange in its most insurrectional expressions." (p. 19)

It is therefore appropriate to consider Mode & surréalisme as an art book, a beautiful object of curiosity—and in this regard it does not lack it, assuredly—and not as an essay (such is not, moreover, its vocation), which would aim to confine to exhaustiveness and would ambition to investigate a field hitherto little explored, because judged minor or negligible, of surrealism. Curious and art lovers in all its forms will therefore take much pleasure in this reading, and, even more, in the contemplation of the iconographic documents, the pure and hard "scientists" could feel some frustration from it. However, let us not sulk our pleasure in leafing through this original object both in its purpose and in its conception, a book whose quality of reproductions must be emphasized, and let us simply keep in memory the questions raised, in waiting, perhaps, that a more argued and substantial response be brought to them, but which one can bet will be for this reason less "ludic."

June 2003