RESURRECTING THE MINOTAUR

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In the early 1930s André Masson adopted the pre-classical figures of Minotaur and Dionysus as his primarily preoccupation. These figures were imbricated in a wider nexus of ancient myths also appropriated by Masson: the Bacchic slaughter, Pasiphaë’s aberrant copulation with the Cretan bull, decapitated gods, and chaotic labyrinths. While scholarly research on Masson has laid emphasis on the mythological derivation of the themes, it has approached the myths as autonomous narratives extrinsically imposed on Masson’s oeuvre. Thus, it has obscured the intricate politics of the avant-garde’s reception of execrable Greek myths. The present study turns to Masson’s affiliation with the dissident Surrealists rallied around Georges Bataille, Documents, and later Acéphale to trace the predominant intellectual and cultural tendencies that conditioned Masson’s shift to specific themes drawn from sombre Greek myths. In the context of the interdisciplinary orientation of ethnographic surrealism, of Arthur Evans’ excavations on Crete, and the writings of the so-called Cambridge ritualists, Masson reappraised Greek myths as narratives saturated with various primitive, occult elements derived from the Orphic tradition and associated with the chthonic form of Dionysus. He reappraised Greek antiquity on the basis of sanguinary rites, occult rituals and Dionysian ecstasy. Therefore, his interest in a primaeval form of occultism, which he identified with Orphism, preceded André Breton’s fascination with medieval occultism. Last but not least, Masson’s involvement with occultism was informed by his participation in the journal Acéphale (1936-1939). This, even though it constituted a separate organisation from the secret society of Acéphale, expressed the society’s positions and displayed a particular interest in occult practices drawn from the Orphic tradition.