BLACK DAHLIA SURREAL APPEARANCES
RELEVANT BLACK DAHLIA HOMICIDE PHOTOGRAPHY 
The Black Dahlia: Elizabeth Short (1924-1947) 
Autopsy by Dr. Frederick Newbarr, Chief Coroner, January 16, 1947 
Autopsy documented sadistic torture, culminating in homicide and subsequent bisection 
Victim discovered on Wednesday, January 15, 1947 
Abandoned in empty lot at 39th and Norton Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 
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 MAN RAY BLACK DAHLIA SURREAL APPEARANCES 
Legend is an early painting, later repainted in Los Angeles 
Los Angeles studio, 1947, with Legend hanging on the wall 
The original Promenade was painted in 1915 Man Ray painted it again during 1945 in Los Angeles 
Early art journal The Ridgefield Gazook by Man Ray, 1915 Precursor to future Dada and Surrealist journals Z and Minotaure 
The original Le beau temps was painted in 1939 Man Ray painted it again in his Los Angeles studio during 1945 
Juliet Browner in minotaure repose below Le beau temps Vine Street studio, Los Angeles, 1945 
Watch Man Ray's Film Le Retour A La Raison (The Return To Reason), 1923 |
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SALVADOR DALÍ BLACK DAHLIA SURREAL APPEARANCES 
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EXQUISITE CORPSE BLACK DAHLIA SURREAL APPEARANCES 
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OTHER BLACK DAHLIA SURREAL APPEARANCES 
Helene Vanel performance at Galerie Beaux-Arts Exhibition, Paris, 1938 
Man Ray, Dalí and other surrealists participate in the performance 
Max Ernst, Anatomy as Bride, 1921 
Max Ernst, Sacred Conversation 
Max Ernst, Celebes, 1921 
Max Ernst, One Must Not See Reality As I Am, 1923 
Marcel Duchamp, Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, 1915-23 
René Magritte, The Menaced Assassin, 1927 
René Magritte, La Ruse Symetrique, 1928 
René Magritte, Marshes of Summer, 1939 
René Magritte, Les Idées de l'acrobate, 1928 
Hans Bellmer, Peppermint Tower in Honor of Greedy Little Girls, 1937 
Hans Bellmer, Poupée (Doll) Seven variations from 1934-6 
Georges Hugnet, La silhouette frangée de bleu électrique, 1936 
André Masson Massacres, 1928 Appeared in Minotaure, no. 1, 1933 
André Masson Gradiva, 1939 
Roland Penrose Octavia, 1939 
Victor Brauner Magic Games, 1938 
Victor Brauner Mitsi, 1939 
Raoul Ubac Penthésilée, 1937 
Raoul Ubac Le Combat de Penthésilée II, 1937 
Two covers from the American art journal View (1940 - 1947) The magazine is best known for introducing Surrealism to the American public Above: Cover by Man Ray, June, 1943 Below: Cover by André Masson, October, 1943 
View was banned by the U.S. Postal Service in early 1944 for no given reason, probably a reaction to published nude reproductions by Picasso Man Ray wrote the editor a sympathetic letter while casting sarcastic barbs at postal officials Other readers encouraged the editor to translate articles from the French journal Minotaure, specifically an article regarding the Papin sisters double homicide in 1933 Both content and readerships for View and Minotaure were closely linked 
Seven covers from two French Surrealist journals La Révolution surréaliste (1924 - 1929) and Minotaure (1933 - 1939) Minotaure was popular in American avant-garde art circles Minotaure was circulated in America through galleries on both coasts, and its surrealist content was reproached by mainstream periodicals such as Time 
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ART IMITATING LIFE POST-BLACK DAHLIA APPEARANCES
To Be- continued unnoticed by Man Ray Catalogue for Cafe Man Ray Exhibit William Copley Gallery, Los Angeles, December, 1948 through January 9, 1949 Less than two years after Black Dahlia murder 
Birth of Venus by William Copley, 1953 Six years after Black Dahlia murder 
Death of Montalita by Fred Sexton, 1955 Eight years after Black Dahlia murder 
It is midnight, Dr. _ by William Copley, 1961 Fourteen years after Black Dahlia murder 
Vergine indomata by Man Ray, 1964 Seventeen years after Black Dahlia murder 
Natural Painting by Man Ray, 1965 Eighteen years after Black Dahlia murder 
Étant donnés (Given: 1 The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas) by Marcel Duchamp, 1946-1966 Exhibited nineteen years after Black Dahlia murder 
Étant donnés exhibit structure 
Rebus by Man Ray, 1972 Twenty-five years after Black Dahlia murder 
Rebus II by Man Ray, 1972 Twenty-five years after Black Dahlia murder |
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SURREALIST APPEARANCES 
Salvador Dalí and Man Ray 
William Copley, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp 
Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp 
Max Ernst, Jacqueline Breton, André Masson, André Breton and Varian Fry, 1941 
André Breton 
Max Ernst 
Paul Éluard 
René Magritte 
Raoul Ubac 
Hans Bellmer |
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PRE-DAHLIA SURREAL LITERARY APPEARANCES Here are excerpts from surrealist literature and influential precursors, prose ranging from intellectual libertarianism to misogyny and sadistic, criminal behavior. All cited literature predates the Black Dahlia murder. This material was published both in French and English, including Chants de Maldoror by Isadore Ducasse, a long, lurid poem that captivated many surrealists. Large tracts of Maldoror appeared in Surrealism by Julien Levy, published in New York by The Black Sun Press in 1936. Levy's startling and perceptive book introduced the American public to surrealist ideas, presenting a comprehensive review that referenced critical source material, including Minotaure and La Révolution Surréaliste.  "When surrealist methods extend from writing to action, there will certainly arise the need of a new morality to take the place of the current one, the cause of all our woe." Surrealism: "Dictates of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, beyond all control aesthetic or moral." "Living and ceasing to live are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere." "Beauty will be convulsive or nothing." - André Breton, Manifeste du Surréalisme, 1924, and What is Surrealism?, 1936 "To intensify experience – The surrealists often deliberately propose to shock and surprise, so that you may be deprived of all preconceived standards and open to new impressions. . . . To shock as the bull-fighter first bares the nerves of his audience by the willful shedding of blood and disemboweling of defenseless horses, so that the super-sensitized public might the better respond to the grace and agility of subsequent performance." "Hans Bellmer [promising surrealist newcomer] carries his exciting little girl dismembered in a suitcase or immobilized in the plate-holder of his camera or, built of bricks, she becomes a break-water for the high seas and a temptation for ships." - Julien Levy, Surrealism, 1936 "Verily it must be that crime is an enchanting affair, for, in truth, from the flames by which it licks us is kindled the torch of our lust. Only crime is sufficient, it alone inflames us, and only crime can ravish pleasure through all degrees of our sensibility." - Marquis de Sade, Juliette, or Vice Amply Rewarded, 1797-1801 "The poet becomes a seer by a long, enormous, and reasoned derangement of all his senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness. He seeks himself. He exhausts in himself every poison, retaining only their quintessence. Ineffable torture, in which he requires supreme faith, superhuman strength in which he becomes among all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the one accursed—and the supreme sage!" -Arthur Rimbaud "The body was drained of blood- exsanguinated- and her hair and skin were washed clean." - Steve Hodel, Black Dahlia Avenger, p. 227 "Better to wash with spittle than not to wash at all, after an entire night passed in vice and crime." - Isadore Ducasse (Comte de Lautréamont), Chants de Maldoror, excerpt from Chant III "Each day I traversed a narrow street; each day, a slim young girl, ten years old, would follow me, at a distance, respectfully, the length of the street, watching me with curious and sympathetic eyes. . . . Perhaps that girl was not what she seemed. Beneath a naive exterior perhaps she hid a huge deceit, the weight of eighteen years, and the charm of vice. . . . I imagine her mother must strike her because she does not ply her trade with sufficient skill. . . . Look here, maiden, I urge you never to appear in my sight, if ever again I pass through that narrow street. It might cost you dear! Already the blood mounts to my head in boiling tides of hate. . . . They do not love me, those creatures! . . . Maiden, you are not an angel, and you will become, in short, like other women. No, no! I beg of you; do not reappear before my frowning and suspicious eyes. In a misguided moment I might seize your arms, twist them as one would wring water from a cloth, or break them with the crackling of two dry twigs and force you to eat them. I might, while taking your head between my hands, with a caressing and gentle mien, force my avid fingers into the lobes of your innocent brain, to extract therefrom, with a smile on my lips, an efficacious unguent with which to bathe my eyes, sore from the eternal insomnia of living. I might, sewing your eyelids with a needle, deprive you of sight and make it impossible for you to find your way; it would not be I who would serve you as guide. I might, lifting your virginal body with an arm of iron, seize you by the legs, whirl you about my head, like a sling, putting all my strength into describing the last circle, and hurl you against the wall. . . . No doubt the body has remained plastered on the wall, like a ripe pear, and has not fallen to the floor; but dogs can jump high, if one does not take care." - Isadore Ducasse (Comte de Lautréamont), Chants de Maldoror, excerpt from Chant II Script introduction to Un Chien Andalou: "[The film is] a desperate, passionate call to murder." - Luis Buñuel, 1929 "It is dark truths which appear in the work of the true poets; but they are truths, and almost everything else is a lie." "One good mistress deserves another." -Paul Éluard "There is a surrealist light . . . the light of flashlights on murder victims and on love." "A new vice has been given to man: Surrealism, son of frenzy and darkness." - Luis Aragon, A Wave of Dreams, 1924 |
POST-DAHLIA LITERARY APPEARANCES
Here are excerpts from surrealist literature and biographical sources.
All cited literature postdates the Black Dahlia murder.
"They [Surrealists] were well placed to carry out a dissection of bourgeois mores, particularly with regards to sexuality."
"It is evident that romantic love, in Duchamp’s work in particular, is reduced to a mechanical operation. The human body is posited as a machine which has no natural relation with the soul or mind."
"The overriding impression is surely one of a compulsive fetishization of the female body . . . Much of the erotic art of Surrealism has a fundamentally fetishistic character. A representative example would be the concentration on the female torso...."
-David Hopkins, Dada and Surrealism
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