8 Perry St.
New York City
3 December 1941

Dear Mr Williams:

‡ would rather see you in person, but since that at the moment seems impossible, I must write you in behalf of the new surrealist venture, the magazine to be called "W". I am writing you because, of the three editors already chosen, Breton, Calas, and myself, I am the young American (as Calas is the young European); and perhaps, as an American, I can guess most accurately the kind of thing you must want to - and certainly are entitled to know. Moreover, the surrealist vocabulary demands a certain translation, a translation a European I think would find difficult to make, -rather more on cultural than on linguistic grounds. It also happens that I had a hand in proposing you (though I do not know you), which is a further reason that I - rather than one of the others - should write you.

The proposal is that a neutral person, a business man, say, should appear as the editor, with an editorial board consisting of Breton and Calas (for European culture, youth & maturity), and yourself and myself (for America). The staff would be completed by a managing editor for the details of business. The collaborators on the graphic side are Max Ernst, Tanguy, F. Leger, Kurt Seligmann, Andre Messon, Matta, Onslow-Ford, myself and others; and the magazine is to be financed largely by 100 subscriptions to an album of original works by these artists. Ordinary subscriptions will probably be 3.00 for four numbers. The proposal is for a collective, non-profit journal.

The question of written material makes it necessary to say a word about myself; and the word is probably appropriate anyhow, as the unknown among the collaborators. I am a Californian who graduated from Stanford in philosophy (instrumentalism) in 1936; I worked a bit there with Yvor Winters, though he doubtless does not remember me. I then was in the graduate school of philosophy at Harvard; and the late D.W. Prall and Arthur O. Lovejoy of Johns Hopkins (who was at Harvard in 1937-8) send me abroad to finish a book on Delacroix which I had written. In Paris I took up again my first love, painting, and exhibited there in 1939. At the beginning of the war I returned here to assist Prall at Harvard, but took a lectureship in painting at the University of Oregon instead because I wanted to look rural America, and because the job offered me a transition from philosophy to painting as a profession. The contract was for one year, and when it expired Prall was dead and Harvard no longer interested me, and so I came to New York to study with Meyer Schapiro, and take my Ph.D. in archaeology instead. Through him I came

8

into contact with the surrealists - against whom I had
many philosophical prejudices - but they seemed to under-
stand empirically the solution of or perhaps better, a
solution to those problems of how to free the imagination
in concrete terms, which are so baffling to an American.
Until then, in short, I had been an observer, like a
character in James; but with the advantage of having
logical and plastic weapons with which to test my ob-
servations. Now I have taken a partisan stand, in the
creative sense that the surrealism automatism is the
basis of my painting, and in the theoretical sense that
I find myself intellectually in accord with them. (the
philosophical objections I once held against them no longer
seem very relevant, nor a better epistemological state-
ment of their position very important.)

Now it so happens that among our
collaborators there are an extraordinary number of first-
rate painters, and further, painting, like music, does not
need much translation from one land to another. But literature,
I think, does, and moreover the European writers who can
collaborate are few. I have given my (rather inexpert)
opinion that there is very little imaginative writing,
in either poetry or prose, in this country: you and Stevens
are the only ones I know whom I can read. I do think
however, that there is a great deal of good philosophy,
psychology, criticism, and science of interest to a
magazine which takes as its function the stimulation of
imagination, and the preservation of the dignity and
value of personal feelings; and I have taken as my natural
task the finding of such material. Our hope has been
that if you are too busy to very actively collaborate,
you could at least give us advice and rough orientation
in regard to imaginative material in this country: you
are a position to know well, and your judgment is obviously
to be trusted. So the proposition is, roughly, that Breton
and Cales handle the European end of the international,
collaboration, and you and I the American, with you rep-
resenting poetry and prose, and I science and painting.
Your collaboration can be extremely active, if you have
the time, or, if not, limited to giving me occasional
advice. The use of your name in any case is of such
obvious aid to us that it needs no comment.

As for the meaning of surrealism - i.e.,
with what as opposed to with whom you are asked to collab-
orate - the question is not easy to answer, and I think
must in part be answered by just who is collaborating. A
just and exact theoretical answer would involve a book; a
short answer, as I understand the matter, would run like
this: a. stimulation of the imagination - in the sense
of enriching sensuous life by insisting on ignored aspects
of reality, the invention of new objects of perception
within reality, etc. b. the preservation of the dignity
and value of personal feelings - a response to the felt
need( in a world increasingly able to deal with physical
nature, and potentially, with social relations) of #********
insisting that the only possible end of science and of a
good society, the felt-content of the organism's experiencing, must
not be annihilated or be held in contempt because it
is not scientifically or sociologically useful. Hence
the importance of the artist, etc. #C. revolutionism -
not so much in the sense of dwelling on the material

difficulties and means(though this is implied), but revolu-
lution in the sense of increased consciousness, of con-
sciousness of the possibilities inherent in experiencing.
Emphasis therefore on novelty, invention, the disturbing,
the strange - the power of feeling to move the organism.
d. The dialectic - not so much in the Hegelian sense
as constituting the metaphysical nature of reality, or
in the Marxist sense as the economic nature of society, but
in the sense of a weapon for interpreting and synthesizing
as when Breton asks for a union between normal conscious-
ness and the unconscious. In the sense that these four
propositions are meant, I find it difficult to suppose that
any creative mind would find it easy to reject them.
The concrete result of the 'programme' will be, I think,
a magazine with a plastic quality (in both the illustrative
material and the magazine itself being treated as an obj-
ect of sensuous perception) and with a poetic quality
(in dynamiting the imagination) unknown in this country.
Magazines like the Partisan Review, the Kenyon Review,
the Southern Review, and so on, seem to rather fine crit-
ically (for all of their various limitations), but to
be shockingly weak just where the surrealists are strongest.

This is the best I can do on such short
notice: we are extremely anxious to communicate with you
at once, and I, too, am pressed for time. I should be more
than pleased to talk over anything with you, and if your
practise is as demanding of your time as I suspect, I
should be glad to spend a whole day waiting about, and
talking between calls. Or whatever else is feasible.
I can be reached by telephone via Matta.

Faithfully yours

Robert Motherwell

8 Perry St
New York City
8 December 1941

Dear Mr Williams:

I am extremely pleased that you liked what I wrote; and even more pleased at my suspicion that we speak the same language. But there is great deal more to be said: the general situation is complex, so much so that I am inclined to ascribe my view of it in part to my inexperience beyond the walls of a university. At any rate, I am extremely anxious to talk to you, and describe in great detail everything as I see it. I have to make continually this last qualification because surrealism is extremely difficult to nail - as a 'thing' or as a series of personal relationships - and I hesitate to say anything to you which in the end turns out to be merely a personal interpretation. I do not know how well you know Matta; I forgot to ask him last time I saw him - but if it is agreeable to you, I should like to have him present when we talk, because he is my intermediary, so to speak, with surrealism. I see eye to eye with him (which I often do not with Calas - or perhaps **** it's just that I don't follow Calas very well); and Breton and I have to talk through translators, because I am tone-deaf. Moreover, Matta more than anyone (in fact almost alone) understands both the French and the American backgrounds; and the differences between the two seem more and more to me to represent the chief problems, on every level of experience. But this is as you like.

Breton has refused to speak to Dali for several years now: Dali is regarded as our Benedict Arnold. I have heard Breton is on bad terms with Man Ray: I do not know him. And I gather that Tchelitchew's offer of collaboration has been refused point-blank. In any case, I am sure you need have no fears about Breton's moral strictness - in terms of actual integrity, I mean.

I live permanently at 8 Perry St., and am always here. I have a young Mexican wife who would be glad to cook you a simple dinner, or we can go out, or you can come in the afternoon, etc. Again, as you like. Simply let me know. Telephone via Matta, or write. I agree that there's a lot to be done.