Documents

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Documents: doctrines, archéologie, beaux-arts, ethnographie was a Surrealist art magazine edited by Georges Bataille. Published in Paris between April 1929 and January 1931, it ran for 15 issues, each of which contained a wide range of original writing and photographs.

The journal focused upon a host of cultural traditions, spanning the disciplines of poetry, sociology, photography, sculpture, music, archaeology, and painting. It was overseen by the writer-philosopher Georges Bataille, who became more and more its single guiding figure as the issues progressed. Primarily through the pages of this journal, Bataille forcefully challenged the tenets of Surrealism espoused by André Breton in favor of an alternate model, in which humanity could embrace the formless, the sordid, the discarded and disregarded. To this end, he featured articles and images whose subjects ranged from slaughterhouses to nonwestern tribal arts. Every issue also included a set of “dictionary” entries that treated disparate and often mundane objects and concepts with scientific precision. [1]

Issues

Documents, Vol. 1 (1929), reprint (1991). Download (82 mb).
Documents, Vol. 2 (1930), reprint (1991). Download (102 mb).

The above PDFs are sourced from BNF Gallica.

Literature

Links


Avant-garde and modernist magazines

Poesia (1905-09, 1920), Der Sturm (1910-32), Blast (1914-15), The Egoist (1914-19), The Little Review (1914-29), 291 (1915-16), MA (1916-25), De Stijl (1917-20, 1921-32), Dada (1917-21), Noi (1917-25), 391 (1917-24), Zenit (1921-26), Broom (1921-24), Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet (1922), Die Form (1922, 1925-35), Contimporanul (1922-32), Secession (1922-24), Klaxon (1922-23), Merz (1923-32), LEF (1923-25), G (1923-26), Irradiador (1923), Sovremennaya architektura (1926-30), Novyi LEF (1927-29), ReD (1927-31), Close Up (1927-33), transition (1927-38).