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5 THINGS YOU MISSED LAST WEEK IN LOS FOMOS:
with contributions from
@arjantupan - what's in that drink? and, is it really a mocktail?
@bertwurst.eth & @bradq - Bad Bertie
@eduardmsmr - place of the week & Surrealist sat w/ Pierre Roy
@speakup - Mon vs Fri me with Bad bunny & Lady Gagita
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@eduardmsmr
Happy Surrealist Saturday!!!
This week I crossed paths with someone who refused to let Surrealism die. His name is Conroy Maddox
(This is one of my favorite explorations so far even though, to be honest, I don’t know which one/s I love the most, but this one is definitely among them)
He was born on December 27, 1912, in Ledbury, Herefordshire, England, and for the next 92 years, he lived one of the most stubbornly devoted artistic lives I've ever heard about
His friend Desmond Morris (British zoologist, ethologist, and Surrealist painter) called him “the most undiluted, unwavering Surrealist” in Britain. And I have a feeling you will understand why after reading his story
Conroy had no formal art training. He was entirely self-taught, learning the “craft” from working clerical jobs, designing trade fair exhibition stands, and doing whatever he could to survive
But in 1935, while browsing the Birmingham City Library, he stumbled across a book by art critic R.H. Wilenski, and everything changed. That single encounter with Surrealism rewired him completely
He abandoned his naturalistic painting style overnight and never looked back for 7 decades
His nickname was "Coma" which also evoked the dreamlike state at the heart of everything he made. He wore dark suits, had black hair, a military-style moustache, and large glasses. He was spirited, extroverted, loved to argue, and carried fierce political convictions wherever he went
While exploring Conroy what I’ve realized is that to understand him (up to an extent), you have to understand what shaped him before Surrealism. His father was wounded serving in World War I, and one of Conroy's earliest memories was visiting him in a Manchester hospital. That planted a deep anti-militarism in him
His father was also fiercely anti-clerical, something that passed straight to Conroy, who would later declare:
“It is not that I am just against religion: I want to destroy it.”
His father also filled their home with strange artefacts from rural house sales that became the seeds of Conroy's surrealist iconography
In 1935, Conroy co-founded the Birmingham Surrealist group with painter John Melville (British Surrealist painter), after they connected through letters in the Birmingham Post complaining about the city's conservative art scene
Other key members would include Emmy Bridgewater (British Surrealist painter), Oscar Mellor, and the young Desmond Morris, who discovered what he called “Conroy Maddox's surrealist court” while studying at the University of Birmingham
In 1936, Roland Penrose (British Surrealist organizer and collector) put together the International Surrealist Exhibition in London, featuring André Breton (founder of Surrealism), Salvador Dalí (Spanish Surrealist painter), Joan Miró (Spanish painter), and British artists like Eileen Agar (British Surrealist painter) and Henry Moore (British sculptor), which drew 23,000 visitors
But Conroy refused to show his work. He argued that most British artists selected were “anti-surrealists and not Surrealists.” Instead of submitting art, he submitted a letter of protest
But Conroy still attended the opening. He met Breton, Dalí, and Max Ernst (German-American Surrealist painter) face to face. Later, E.L.T. Mesens (Belgian Surrealist artist and gallery director) told Dalí about Maddox's refusal with “mischievous glee”
“He’s quite right, he’s quite right.” This was Dalí's response. A self-taught artist from Birmingham, refusing the biggest Surrealist event Britain had ever seen and Dalí himself validating that refusal
Between 1936 and 1939, Conroy traveled to Paris multiple times, frequenting Le Dôme Café and meeting Man Ray (American artist central to Dada and Surrealism) through the collagist Georges Hugnet (French Surrealist poet). In 1938, he joined the British Surrealist Group at the personal insistence of Breton himself
In 1939, his work was exhibited alongside Breton, Kandinsky, Magritte, and Marcel Duchamp (French-American artist) at the Guggenheim Jeune Gallery
Back in Birmingham, Conroy's huge 11-room house became the nerve center of Surrealist activity. He hosted fortnightly parties where guests included jazz star George Melly, academics, and students
The house was decorated in true surrealist fashion featuring photographs of Maddox in absurd poses with nuns, a giant loom, mandolins, and hand-printed wallpaper. Birmingham Museums have described him as “to Birmingham what Salvador Dalí was to Paris”
During World War II, while Conroy was doing classified military work (designing parts for film projectors), Scotland Yard's Special Branch raided a colleague's home and seized several of Maddox's collages, suspecting they contained coded messages to the enemy
At the exact moment his art was investigated as espionage, he was doing secret war work for the British government. Reality becoming more surreal than anything a painter could dream up
His most iconic work, the Onanistic Typewriter I, came from this period (1940), a typewriter rendered useless by spikes on every key, with paper streaked in blood. Inspired by Man Ray's Cadeau, Conroy described his aim as “disturbance and demoralisation against the commonplace and rational”
He also invented a new technique called écrémage which consists of skimming paper across water-dotted oil paint, combining décalcomania with scratching. It now sits alongside fumage, grattage, and decalcomania in the recognized canon of surrealist methods
His divorce in 1955 and the death of his son in 1971 brought a shift, a new deadpan, eerie style inspired by Giorgio de Chirico (Italian metaphysical painter) and Magritte (Belgian Surrealist painter)
His Passage de l'Opéra (1971), with its bowler-hatted figures and infinite perspective, was purchased by the Tate Gallery
In 1978, when the Hayward Gallery mounted “Dada and Surrealism Reviewed”, implying the movement was finished, Conroy responded by organizing Surrealism Unlimited at the Camden Arts Centre
He even connected with the emerging Surrealist current on the American West Coast, bringing those artists to London. He was proving Surrealism was still alive
Over seven decades, he produced more than 2000 paintings, collages, and sculptures. Today his works are in the Tate, the Guggenheim, and museums across Europe
Conroy Maddox died on January 14, 2005, at the age of 92, the last survivor of the pre-war British Surrealist group. He once said:
“Society will change one day and we will escape from our incessant monotony, from this kind of life where we don't link our dreams to reality.”
He spent his entire life trying to build that bridge. And he never stopped believing it could be crossed
Thank you for reading!🌹
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@pauline-unik
Just found out that Julian Casablancas covered this one. Prepping for wuthering heights with the soundtrack
https://open.spotify.com/track/29engDqjmMr3VLqMm0c0WE?si=4QRWENHLQsah2LLD6n2nmQ&context=spotify%3Aplaylist%3A37i9dQZF1DWXeFtiUMSxKD
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@tako-unik
Making a romantic movie reco list and it's way too long. There's so many subcategories too. How to fit them all 😅
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