"View" was an American magazine published between 1940 and 1947 by Charles Henri Ford, which played a significant role in promoting surrealistic art in the United States.
This page is dedicated to the magazine and its creator.
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View: Through the Eyes of Poets
"View" was the first New York surrealist magazine. It debuted in September 1940 as a six-page tabloid. Edited by poet Charles Henri Ford, a former American editor of the "London Bulletin," a British surrealist magazine published by the London Gallery from 1938 to 1940, "View" aimed to fill the void left by European avant-garde periodicals disrupted by the war during its seven years of existence (36 issues in 32 editions).
Ford positioned his magazine between the "little magazines" (avant-garde periodicals edited in Paris by Eugene Jolas and Elliot Paul from 1927 to 1938) and "Minotaure". After the release of the "Surrealist Number" in 1941, under the editorship of Nicolas Calas, "View" became the most significant American surrealist magazine, showcasing texts and visual contributions from all major figures in this circle.
In 1943, "View" changed its format from tabloid to a more standard magazine printed on glossy paper with colorful covers. This increased production costs, which were not covered by the maximum of 3000 paid copies.
To maintain regular quarterly publication, Ford accepted relatively expensive advertisements for fashion and perfumes, as well as for books, magazines, and other cultural events. The deputy editor, Parker Tyler, was responsible for the typography and graphic design of "View," creating a refined visual image on par with "Minotaure", yet unique to "View."
Volume VII, Issue 1, Fall 1946.
[From the collection of P. and M. Jaworowicz]
Volume IV, Issue 2, Summer 1944.
[From the collection of P. and M. Jaworowicz]
Volume IV, Issue 3, Fall 1944.
[From the collection of P. and M. Jaworowicz]
The covers, designed by standard-bearers of surrealism such as Andre Masson, Man Ray, Kurt Seligmann, and Marcel Duchamp, as well as other contemporary artists like Alexander Calder, Fernand Léger, and Georgia O'Keeffe, were the boldest among all American magazines. Moreover, these weren't random images placed on the covers but images specifically designed for this purpose. Sometimes, the shared "View" logo (set in Bodoni typeface) was designed by the cover artist: the 1946 cover by Isamu Noguchi is a perfect example of this transformation, where the letters "View" became sculptural elements, reading diagonally across the page and surrounding the sculpture in the center of the cover.
"View" told stories related to Dada and introduced key surrealists to New York.
The The first American interview with André Breton was published here. An entire issue in 1942 was dedicated to Max Ernst, with an article about him by Breton; and a spectacular issue in 1945 featured Duchamp, complete with layouts designed by the artist — it was the first monographic issue of his work.
Peter Lindamood's essay describes the technical maneuvers involved in creating Duchamp's "View" cover, a collage with a burning wine bottle. It explains how the master of "artistic hydraulic expedience" connected a smoke pipe to the bottle and then manipulated various halftone layers to achieve the desired effect.
In this and other articles, "View" provided a human context to surrealist art, which was intriguingly absent in the pseudoscientific and hyperanalytical texts of earlier European magazines.
Volume V, Issue 1, March 1945.
[From the collection of P. and M. Jaworowicz]
Volume V, Issue 3, October 1945.
[From the collection of P. and M. Jaworowicz]
Encompassing the European avant-garde was only part of the editorial menu. Ford felt a duty to bridge the transatlantic gap, drawing Americans into the surrealist circle, and in 1943, "View" was the first to publish the earliest "found compositions" by Joseph Cornell ("The Crystal Cage: Portrait of Berenice"). It provided an outlet for emerging American writers and artist-writers, including Henry Miller, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Alexander Calder, and others.
Morris Hirshfield, whose alluringly detailed and folksy paintings were discovered by Sidney Janis in the thirties, was also part of the "View" community.
The 1945 cover titled "View" by Hirshfield, featuring a meticulously crafted portrait of a cunningly veiled nude figure, was surrealist in its most subtly innocent form.
"View" celebrated the artist as a visionary and surrealism as a source of artistic eccentricity. In its role as a vanguard spectator, the magazine pushed the boundaries of decency, and therefore, in 1944, it was banned by the U.S. Post Office, likely for publishing nudes by Picasso and Michelangelo. However, despite its confrontational stance and debates on Marxism, communism, and Trotskyism conducted in European surrealist circles, "View" did not advocate political activism but rather supported the right to individual artistic freedom—and eclecticism.
"View's editors found it illusory to believe that art could ever serve any other cause than its own," wrote Catrina Neiman in "View: Parade of the Avant-Garde" (Thunder Mouth Press, New York, 1991), who further noted that while some poets of the time called for opposition to the inevitable world war, "View" did not print any editorial articles condemning the war. Nonetheless, it maintained a pacifist position that supported conscientious objection.
Volume V, Issue 2, May 1945.
[From the collection of P. and M. Jaworowicz]
Volume VII, Issue 2, December 1946.
[From the collection of P. and M. Jaworowicz]
Volume IV, Issue 4, December 1944.
[From the collection of P. and M. Jaworowicz]
"View" found itself embroiled in the conflicts between warring factions vying for dominance in their respective art forms. Surrealism wasn't universally admired, and "The Partisan Review," a leftist intellectual magazine, declared Surrealism both depraved and dead, endorsing abstract art as the new avant-garde.
This wasn't just a matter of preference; it was a contest over which genre and which artists would dominate in museums, galleries, and private collections. "View" sought to maintain the significance of surrealism and thus disregarded competing art forms. However, this defense wasn't so much militant in its ideological aim as it was a campaign for the hegemony of style.
Volume VI, Issue 1, February 1946.
[From the collection of P. and M. Jaworowicz]
Volume III, Issue 1, Spring 1943.
[From the collection of P. and M. Jaworowicz]
Volume VII, Issue 3, Spring 1947.
[From the collection of P. and M. Jaworowicz]
"View" was a significant medium for surrealism, but it remained unengaged in the movement as a "party," thus becoming a tool for popularizing the avant-garde. Surrealism as a style was, without malice, ripe for exploitation as a marketing trope.
Despite paid advertising, "View" ceased publication in 1947.
Color advertisement (III cover) in the edition View Vol. III no. 4, Winter 1943.
Advertisement inside the issue in View Vol. III no. 4, Winter 1943.
Full-page advertisement in the edition View Vol. III no. 4, Winter 1943.
Advertisement inside the issue in View Vol. III no. 4, Winter 1943.
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