DYN (journal)

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DYN (derived from the Greek word tó dynaton, that which is possible) was a journal founded by the Austrian-Mexican Surrealist Wolfgang Paalen, published in Mexico City, and distributed in New York, Paris and London from 1942 through 1944.

Only six issues of DYN were ever produced. The Number 4-5 was a double issue dedicated to Indian and Pre-columbian Art of the Americas, in which also Paalens great essay Totem Art appears as an attempt to shake Sigmund Freud’s entire construct of totemism, horror of incest and father-murder. It provided an outlet mainly for the young American artists, trying to find new contents for abstraction and the overcome of Surrealism during World War II.

DYN started as the direct product of Wolfgang Paalen, who dominated its contents as editor and contributed its major topics in together seven large essays and numerous smaller reviews and articles. DYN's editorial board later enlisted a number of associated thinkers and artists, including Miguel Covarrubias, César Moro, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Jacqueline Johnson, Gordon Onslow Ford and Robert Motherwell. Each edition covered various subjects and themes, such as poetry, plastic arts, anthropology, science, (and) philosophy, and was lavishly illustrated by a wide range of artists, including Manuel Alvarez-Bravo, Alice Rahon, William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell, Roberto Matta, Jackson Pollock, Harry Holtzman and Henry Moore.

The journal was highly elaborate and cultured for the poor means, Paalen disposed of in Mexico during the War years, and created significant reactions especially in the New York art world as well as in academic circles of the time.

In the first number Paalen emphasized his will to rediscuss some of the fundamentals in surrealist theory and publicly announces to his friend Breton his farewell to surrealism. In the second issue he scandalises his former advocate again by publishing a survey on Dialectical Materialism and an article with the provocative title The dialectical Gospel. The survey consists of a set of three questions sent to two dozen outstanding scholars and writers, and the statements of those who have answered. In a provocative and straightforward way Paalen enquires after the academic validity of the philosophy of Marx and Engels, about the outcome of this science and the universal applicability of its logical laws. Half of the addressees send a reply, amongst them Albert Einstein, Clement Greenberg, Pierre Mabille and the English Philosopher Bertrand Russel. The majority answers all questions with a decided if sometimes tentatively regretful No. Far from the events in Oxford, only Bertrand Russel dares to express straightforwardly what everyone may be thinking: „I think the metaphysics of both Hegel and Marx plain nonsense - Marx's claim to be „science“ is no more justified than Mary Baker Eddy's.".

Paalen's main intention of this provocation was to tease the dogmatic attitudes implicit in surrealist theory, to complete Surrealism from an outer distance without founding a new -ism for the arts, but grounding them in a metaplastic (instead of metaphysical) concept of possibilities, which he called prefigurative. Breton, however, reacted as deeply offended, and in the preface of his own art magazine VVV (journal) it is categorically argued: "We reject the lie of an open surrealism, in which anything is possible". The positive impact on New York's younger painter generation and their first publications, such as Possibilities (ed. by Motherwell and Rosenblum in 1947) was crucial.

Robert Motherwell translated Paalen's programatical essay Image Nouvelle into English (The New Image) and published a collection of essays from DYN as the first number of Problems of Contemporary Art in 1945 (New York Wittenborn). Motherwells Collage Surprise and Inspiration (Peggy Guggenheim Collection) was named after Paalen's essay with the same title. Motherwell had translated this article for DYN as well and the collage was published next to it for the first time.

reprint of DYN

Kloyber, Christian, ed. Wolfgang Paalen’s DYN: The Complete Reprint (Vienna and New York: Springer, 2000)

[edit] See also

VVV (journal), a surrealist review created by David Hare and Andre Breton, published from 1942 to 1944
Acéphale, a surrealist review created by Georges Bataille, published from 1936 to 1939
Documents, a surrealist journal edited by Georges Bataille from 1929 to 1930
Minotaure, a primarily surrealist-oriented publication founded by Albert Skira, published in Paris from 1933 to 1939
La Révolution surréaliste, a seminal Surrealist publication founded by André Breton, published in Paris from 1924 to 1929
View, an American art magazine, primarily covering avant-garde and surrealist art, published from 1940 to 1947