Documents: banaliteit gevierd in een modernistisch tijdschrift

Abstract

This article studies the French avant-garde magazine Documents (1929-1931), which was founded by four French intellectuals: Jean Babelon, Georges Bataille, Pierre d'Espezel and Georges Wildenstein. Soon, Bataille became the editor in chief, whereas d'Espezel and Babelon withdrew. The magazine focused on (primitive) art, philosophy and ethnography. Documents reacted to André Breton's surrealism, which Bataille and cooperatives considered too idealistic and naive. They promoted a more materialistic philosophy, called bas matérialisme. A focal point was the formlessness of reality: scientists and philosophers should not try to capture the world in rational and static texts. Documents turned against intellectualism, but did so, paradoxically, in highly intellectual texts. Thus, the magazine's form and content partly contradicted each other. On the other hand, the illustrations in the magazine correspond in interesting ways to Bataille's philosophy. It is this interaction between the form and intellectual content of the magazine that is the focus of this article.