View (Art magazine 1940-47)

View magazine was an American periodical of art and literature, published quarterly from 1940 to 1947 with heavy emphasis on the Surrealist art of the period. The jaw-dropping list of contributors included: Pavel Tchelitchew, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, André Masson, Pablo Picasso, Henry Miller, Paul Klee, Albert Camus, Lawrence Durrell, Georgia O'Keefe, Man Ray, Jorge Luis Borges, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Jean Genet, René Magritte, Joseph Cornell, Jean Dubuffet, and Edouard Roditi.


The editor was Charles Henri Ford, one of those mercurial polymaths who seemed to know everybody of significance in the world of arts and letters which explains how he could summon such an extraordinary roster of contributors. Ford made a splash initially in 1933 when he co-wrote what's generally regarded as the first gay novel, The Young and Evil, with Parker Tyler. This received guarded praise from Gertrude Stein (Ford's writing was influenced by Stein and Joyce) who later said it was "the novel that beat the Beat Generation by a generation", and the book was sufficiently frank about the lives of its Greenwich Village characters to be banned in the US until the 1960s.

The tragedy of all magazines is that they flourish for a period then are quickly forgotten, no matter how much impact they may have made in the general culture. View was published in limited runs which means individual copies now command high prices. At a time when other forms of media are being continually resurrected, magazines fall by the wayside; museums and libraries collect them but they remain out of view of the world at large.
Music by Brian Eno, 'In Dark Trees'.

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[maddalena61]

Prezioso video. Grazie!

[almacattleya]

Mi piace l'interesse che dai alle riviste soprattutto di questo genere. Non so se te l'ho detto, ma un giorno ho trovato, pronta a essere buttata in un cassone dell'immondizia, una rivista che si chiama Ubu come il personaggio di Alfred Jarry.