1942

Gouache and graphite on paper (double sided)

11¼ x 17¼ in. (28.6 x 43.8 cm.)

Ex-collection:
Gift from the artist to Joseph Cornell
Elizabeth Benton, West Hampton, by descent
Gift from the above to the present owner, 1976
The Bergman Collection

VVV was a magazine devoted to the dissemination of Surrealism published in New York City from 1942 through 1944.

Only four issues of VVV were published (the second and third issues were printed as a single volume). However, it provided an outlet for European Surrealist artists, who were displaced from their home countries by World War II, to communicate with American artists.

VVV was the product of leading Surrealists. The magazine was edited by David Hare in collaboration with Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, and Max Ernst. VVV’s editorial board also enlisted a number of associated thinkers and artists, including Aimé Césaire, Philip Lamantia, and Robert Motherwell. Each edition focused on “poetry, plastic arts, anthropology, sociology, (and) psychology,” and was lavishly illustrated by Surrealist artists, including Giorgio de Chirico, Roberto Matta and Yves Tanguy.

The magazine was experimental in format, as well as, in content. VVV included fold-out pages, sheets of different sizes and paper stock, and bold typography and color. The second magazine (which included issues two and three) featured a “readymade” by Duchamp as the back cover which was a cutout female figure “imprisoned” by a piece of actual chicken wire.