Surrealist

golds of the Gallic currency

Los oros surrealistas de las monedas gálicas

Raphaël Neuville

Summaries

After reviewing shortly the first tracks of the interest of the surrealistic movement for the
gallic arts, we will linger on the rediscovery of gallic currencies in the fifties. For far too long,
they have been retroceded to the rank of clumsy copies of greco-latin models, but the gallic
coins were born again thanks to L’art gaulois dans les médailles, published in 1954. Behind
André Malraux, Lancelot Lengyel lead an analysis on photographic enlargments of these
coins. The surrealistic group was fascinated by the incredible plastic qualities they revealed.
As a rupture with tradition, a new Antiquity is offered to sights. But this reinterpretation is
not reduced to a numismatic erudition. We will analyse how André Breton bridges the gap
between gallic art and contemporary creation. The exhibition Pérennité de l’art gaulois, in
1955, is the chance to answer a topical question by suggesting the surpassing of the quarrel
between abstraction and figuration.

………..

1To the question of the literary Figaro asking André Breton what was, in his eyes, the
landmark event of the year 1953, it responds bluntly:

For sure, the discovery of the treasure of Vix. I would have given, he says, a part of my life to
be there, January 8, 1953 at nightfall, when Moisson, "farmer and gravedigger" (on the path
of alchemy) discovered the first handle of the vase which appeared to him a "saddle of
horse". 1

2In the cold reality of some of the answers proposed by Le Figaro , the poet chooses the
marvelous of this archaeological discovery revealing a world that is finally not so far, as we
shall see, surrealism. Before talking about the interest of Gallic art for the surrealists, where
does the attraction for the Celtic world 2 come from in Breton? Although this wonder is said
that mitan 1950, it should probably look towards past holidays, so children at Saint-Brieuc
with his grandfather to find the beginnings 3. There is no doubt that the Breton legends - as
distant echoes of a vanished culture - have been able to exert their enduring power of
fascination with the incipient sensibility of the future poet, as they have marked with an
indelible seal the painter Yves Tanguy, whose family was originally from from Locronan, a
stone's throw from the mythical town of Ys. Let us also recall, with Henri Behar, that Breton
already said in 1919, about Jacques Vache, born in Lorient: "I knew a man more beautiful than
a dog. He wrote letters also serious that the Gauls 4 ".
3André Masson has also succeeded in his time, link the figure of André Breton Celtic world by
this portrait 5 straight inspired by a sculpture for the artist at Museum of Archeology
Marseille 6 , although Masson mixes with this first reference elements pertaining to Kabbalah
and Alchemy 7. Discovered in 1926 during a dig site on the site of Roquepertuse in Velaux,
not far from Aix-en-Provence, this statue recalls the Roman Janus. Its origins remain
mysterious, however. Would it signify a mental duality or would it express the passage
between the world of the dead and that of the living? Breton's double portrait shows him on
the left, his eyes open and his eyes closed, on the right, as if he looked both in the past at the
real world and at the future, at the inner world.We will see that we are already not so far
from the reasons for the surrealists' interest in Celticism.

1. Reevaluation of Gallic coinage

4It is not so much the Celtic statuary, evoked with the work of Masson, which seduces André
Breton that the Gallic currency through the publication in 1954 of a book, Gallic art in
medals 8 , by Lancelot Lengyel 9 . It is a large format box containing a 59-page book which is
followed by a series of 48 plates reproducing with great finesse, in black and white, nearly
600 photographs of Gallic currencies 10 , some considerably enlarged so as to appreciate, if
not reveal, all the details. Let's not forget that these are supports that hardly exceed 15 to 20
millimeters in diameter. If it is from the reading of this book that Breton starts a
collection 11comprising Celtic coins, gold staters and a Gallo-Roman bronze on the wall of his
studio 12 , it is not in simple numismatics that Breton analyzes the scope of this book. Gallic
art in the medals is indeed a

an interest which overflows in all directions that which the layman would expect to lend
him. It would be deplorable that his title [...] kept away anyone who has remained foreign to
numismatics so far.

It is confusing to observe that Gallic art, as it is profusely expressed in coins, is up to the last
few years incomparably less well known than pre-Columbian art, for example, or art of the
South Islands. One does not avoid questioning the reasons which prompted the Western man
to dismiss, as if he considered them extremely embarrassing, these menus, yet so suggestive
witnesses of his past.

Everything shows that we are dealing with a process of repression of exceptional tenacity. 13 .

5To attempt to measure the mechanisms of this repression in "Triumph of Gallic Art" first
published in Arts in August 1954, Breton leads a real historiographical work aimed at revealing
an evolution of the critical reception of Gallic currencies since early XVIII thcentury. These were
long perceived as simple copies of Greek and Roman coins whose evolution would be, in fact,
only a gradual degeneration since their initial models, in other words, a copy copy, the Gallic
coinage would have subjected as many successive deformations to the original model to
completely denature it. They would then be only vulgar imitations, clumsy in their execution,
revealing the ignorance of the Celtic people of the springs of Greco-Roman iconography. It is
true that the beginnings of coinage in Gaul - during the first decades of the third century
BC. AD - repeat fairly faithfully the prototype of the golden stater of Philip II of
Macedonia 14(whose reign extends from 359 BC to 336 BC) or afterwards, to a lesser extent,
draw inspiration from the coins of Marseilles and Taranto. The organization of the
Macedonian gold stater, appearing on the right, laureate head of Apollo and, on the reverse,
a bige is thus very often preserved.Resuming an already existing monetary system, the Gauls
could have contented themselves with reproducing, in the same way, or almost according to
their skill of execution, the models of origin; on the contrary, they could have radically broken
with this iconography foreign to their culture to show a new imagery closer to their political
and religious concerns. Lengyel's genius is to demonstrate that they did not choose either of
these two solutions but that they knew how to intimately mix the two. In this way, very far
from the vision of a degenerate art, they have gradually created new images derived from
elements taken from the initial models. According to the periods and the territories, we note
well regional groups of currencies obeying the same style and the same iconography
suggesting that the conception of this coinage is not a matter of chance or a weakness of
execution15 .

6Lengyel is not the first to take a fresh look at the Gallic currencies. Before him, Georges
Bataille 16 brought a new stone to the building. In April 1929, he published in the first issue
of the magazine Documents , an article entitled "The academic horse" 17 where he compares
the representation of equines on the reverse of the Gallic currencies with their Macedonian
model. Fearful of traditional reading, he sees Gaulish deformations as a voluntary act, if not
"a positive extravagance" 18. The form of the representation would reflect a thought and a
culture diametrically opposed to those of the Greek civilization based, according to Bataille,
on the order, the reason, the measure and the harmony. The horse, in its representation,
would be the vehicle and the expression of this "ideal perfection" 19 as well determined by a
conception of the world as by a conception of the social order. Quite antinomic, the Gallic
figuration acts in this way:

by degrees, the dislocation of the classical horse, which finally came to frenzy of forms,
transgressed the rule and succeeded in realizing the exact expression of the monstrous
mentality of these peoples living at the mercy of suggestions. The despicable apes and gorillas
equine Gauls, animals and the unspeakable ugliness attic manners, however grandiose
appearances, stunning wonders, and represented a definitive answer to the human night
burlesque and ugly, with platitudes and arrogance idealistic 20 .

7The deformations imposed on the academic horse would be a way for the Celts to reclaim
the Greek model so that it is able to account for the mentality of a people opposite to that of
the Greeks.

It is indeed a fundamental discovery: the dislocation of the form opens to another vision,
produces a "reversal", but of Copernican type. The Gallic representation is primarily a
disfigurement, as if to break the image allowed to see what she hides while pretending to
represent 21 .

8From this comparison between Celtic representation and Greek representation of the horse,
Bataille wants to explain that the motor of human history wouldultimately be a constant
oscillation between these two extremes that are weighted and excessive.

9Although Bataille seeks to show that the iconography of the Gaul coinage carries a thought,
Breton rightly points out the "misunderstanding" 22 that he maintains by corroborating
until the excessive aesthetic judgment that will not withstand further consideration, resulting
today to be right, to take just enough against the foot of these findings 23 .

10It is true that a little connoisseur of batailliennes theories player could be hastily tried to
believe that the author would rank the Greek side by stigmatizing the Celts of all the
derogatory connotations inherent barbarians.But it would be to forget that Bataille -
emblematic figure of a black surrealism - is the author, a few months before the publication
of this communication, ofL'histoire de l'œil ; as it would be to forget the objectives of the
review Paperswhose Bataille is the main animator:

The most irritating works of art, not yet classified, and some heterogeneous productions,
neglected until now, will be the subject of rather rigorous studies, as scientific as those of
archaeologists. [...] In general, we are considering the most disturbing facts, those whose
consequences are not yet defined. In these various investigations, the sometimes absurd
nature of results or methods, far from being concealed, as always happens in accordance with
the laws of propriety, will deliberately stressed by both hate the flatness by humor 24 .

11In this vein, Documents publishes "The big toe" which, with the foot, defines man and
characterizes the attachment of humanity to the earth despite its idealistic inclinations 25 . An
article that is accompanied by three close-up photographs, by Boiffard, of toers as absurd as
monstrous. Although "The academic horse" is not unambiguous, we understand which side
tends to lean the sensitivity of its author. There is in him a refusal of the Greco-Latin
inheritance which we will find, in other forms, in Breton, anxious to establish the history of a
surrealism which, even before the advent of the movement, would progress under rock..

12But Breton, like Lengyel, wishes to salute the approach of André Malraux as announcer of
the Gallic art in the medals. His first essay at the very end of the Absolute Money 26 , third
volume of Psychology of Art , published in 1950, then taken and amended to include Voice of
the Silence published in 1951 27 .It gives the Gallic coins a real status of masterpieces:

Did the Gallic artists transform the elements of the Mediterranean currencies because they
did not know their meaning, or because this meaning did not interest them? [...] Rarely did
the artist show, as much as in these small engraved surfaces, his ability to dress in such a living
form, rather than another, the obscure and indestructible skeleton of his style [...] 28 .

13The Gauls, according to him, voluntarily disfigured and decomposed the initial images to
better recompose, ie the Gallic coins are evidence of a genius "recreation" 29 .

2. Resonance of Lengyel's writings with surrealism

14It is in the wake of this approach that Lengyel greatly extends and renews the modern vision
of Gallic numismatics with Breton's interest, which is so much the more interesting that he
places his reflection in order to find echoes in the contemporary creation, as if common
concerns Gallic coin and current artists could build a bridge across the ages revealing
"underground instincts remained mysteriously alive" 30. What, in Lengyel's interpretation,
could seduce the surrealists and, first and foremost, André Breton? First, no doubt, the
negation of the Greco-Latin heritage, manifested by the fiduciary imagery, is honored by the
surrealists, as an expression of a Celtic art and spirit, by "disgust and in definitive refusal of
the "occupation" by the Roman invader, which has lasted for two thousand years, of the land
we are plowing over and the clouds that once crowned it " 31. It refuses an ancient culture -
irreparably condemned as anthropocentric - whose legacy is particularly felt since the
Renaissance and, Breton understands, of which the Christian Church is the moral
extension. This rejection implies both idealism in Western culture and the claims of
rationalism to champion an objective truth. All this encourages the surrealists to find
resonance, if not filiation, in the concerns of the Celts. From the long list of precursors and
ancestors that the surrealist movement unveils outside the beaten paths of academic history,
the Gauls would be, chronologically, among the first.

15Lengyel shows how the Gauls express a specific cosmogony and pantheon through the
recomposition of the formal elements taken in particular to the Macedonian stater while
making stylistic choices pertaining to a singular aesthetic.

Instead of talking about deformation and regression of an art, we must follow, from birth, the
development of Gallic rhythm, as a plastic medium, as the expression of the structure of a
universe. To discern the creative sense of this rhythm, only the play of forms can guide
us; they reveal the mind and optic 32 .

16It should be noted that Lengyel is committed to presenting the Celtic pantheon as
structured by a dualism of forces, night and day, winter and summer, the moon and the sun,
which are both opposed and complementary. The struggle constantly renewed between the
gods of the Light and the gods of the Darkness engenders the dynamic vision of this universe
when a contrario the Olympian order is forever established.

In Greece, form is the expression of a static world, that of solid bodies, restricted to the limits
of human experience. The Celtic rhythm, innovation in world art, represents itself and
represents the dynamic universe, with its space in motion, in which man has ceased to occupy
a privileged place. [...] Celtic art, he springs from a vision of the infinite which dissolves the
concrete and leads to the abstraction of the visible 33 .

17By its conventions, Greek iconography freezes the human figure as Celtic imagery seeks,
beyond representation, to reflect the movement of the same powers of the world. By focusing
on cosmic movements, the Gauls would seek to represent the founding principle of their
pantheon. The surrealist painter Adrien Dax perceives the approach that animates the Gallic
coiners as inscribed in "the sense of a true liberation of the sensibility" 34 where "finds to be
specified a poetic reconstruction of the forms which affirms, by the rhythm of the natural
forces , a transcendent meaning of the visible " 35. By decomposing the profile of an Apollo
and focusing their attention on small details, the Gauls bring forth solar wheels, esses, spirals
and triskeles, where there was only a single hair harmoniously surrounded by a laurel
wreath.Sometimes the face seems to be nothing more than a mask wrapped in arabesques
and beaded garlands or girdles. The outlines of a profile, those of the nose, or those of the
eye, can be literally exploded, then recomposed again, until one can guess the sun and the
moon mingled so as to represent a cyclopean cosmic look or until more to let see than a forest
of signs. Through this process, the subject's humanity totally dissolves or his figure is rejected
out of sight to give free rein to forms that are at the limit of abstraction. In this case, it is not
the representation of the man that matters but the figuration of the dynamic dualism of a
pantheon in the image of the order of the cosmos.
18This "expressive rhythm" 36 makes it possible to tear the veil of appearances to capture
the thrill of the world. Very far from the Greek mimesis , which ultimately aims only at the
imitation of an idealized real - and thus frozen -, the Celts seem to touch something close to
the concept of the interior model, developed by Breton from Surrealism and painting 37when
their power of imagination allows them to subvert and overthrow the already-of-sight. Once
reappropriated, and freed from their straitjacket, the Greco-Roman prototypes, they, the
servile copy or, worse, the idealized copy of the world around us, Gallic coiners have indeed
"no longer experienced the need to look elsewhere, if not in them " 38 so as to discover in
these initial models" what is the '' raw material '' for alchemy " 39. Embarking on the
iconography and formal treatment of these currencies would be exemplary of the possibilities
offered by the use of elements borrowed from the real to arouse dream images breaking with
the eternal imitations of the external model. Through a process of transmutation of the
elements of the real, it is a question of drawing from the lead of reality to obtain the surrealist
gold and to reveal the marvel of an imaginary. All in all, the Gaulish approach of numismatics
would find the mechanisms of creation of surrealist painting.

3. The exhibition Durability of Gallic Art

19This way of understanding reality and its representation is a prime example for the
surrealist artists, opportunities to link abstraction and figuration. The exhibition Pérennité de
l'art Gaulois 40 organized at the Pedagogical Museum, from February to March 1955, is
precisely the occasion to make a dialogue between contemporary creation and Gallic
numismatics. Intended mainly for high school students and students, this exhibition first
wants to break with the clichés about our famous ancestors the Gauls. By drawing on
the origins of French art 41The preface to the catalog tends to show that the history of
Western art is crossed by two distinct currents; one would be nourished by the classicism of
ancient Greece while the other, expression of a certain primitivism, would find expression
from Celtic art to surrealism through flamboyant Gothic, Baroque, Rococo , art Nouveau, and
even not without confusion negro art, cubism and Futurism 42 . The exhibition is organized
in two distinct parts. Led by specialists, such as Paul-Marie Duval and André Varagnac, the
first, under the title Gallic Art: Pre-French art, focuses on an overall study of Celtic art even
beyond the geographical limits of Gaul to highlight the influences and originality of Gallic
art. An important place is thus given to the currencies with one hundred and thirty-six among
the three hundred and four objects presented.

20The second part, from the Gallic art to modern art , is our largest eyes since it is organized
by Breton, Charles Estienne and Lengyel 43. This part of the exhibition stretches a breadcrumb
through the history of western art to try to show a survival of a Celtic spirit in artistic creation
through characteristics, all vague enough, at least open like the sumptuousness, the light, the
color and the technical means, even if the rhythm seems nevertheless to remain the
preponderant element in the establishment of a corpus of nearly two hundred works. Each
of these features is explained with the help of a group of works bringing together objects and
paintings from the medieval period to the contemporary period, pell-mell. Popular art also
holds a special place as a witness to a history "drawing on a pure source kept by a long
tradition" 44.Then come, alongside a handful of sculptures among which we find works by
Brancusi or Giacometti, fifty contemporary paintings by surrealist painters or all, in any way,
surrealism. This set includes the very end of XIX th century, for example, works by Gauguin,
Redon and Seurat to young contemporary creation of gestural abstraction represented by
Degottex, Hartung Messagier, Soulages or Loubchansky 45. Surrealism is of course in good
stead with works by Brauner, Ernst, Hantaï, Matta or Miró. In addition to naive artists like the
Douanier Rousseau or, those we could arrange today on the side of the art brut, Seraphine of
Senlis and Crepin, we find works of Chagall, Duchamp or Kandinsky.

21The variety of this set find all its cohesion and coherence, by studying the photographic
enlargements of Gallic coins. On this point the catalog is not very clear. When it is certain that
Lengyel provided a considerable amount of photographic documentation , 46 nothing clearly
indicates how his presentation was organized. It seems clear that photographs accompany
the medals presented in the first part of the exhibition but nothing confirms, nor confirms,
clearly that a selection of these photographs comes to support the hanging of the second
part. The harsh account of René de Solier, partly supporting his attacks on the "dangers of
photographic enlargement" 47as a fallacious means of introducing a kinship between Gaulish
coinage and contemporary creation, lets us believe - as some allusions to the catalog - to a
scenography of the second part of the exhibition mixing works and clichés. In this case, it
would have been interesting to know precisely which currencies were chosen to appear, by
means of reproduction, alongside contemporary creation in order to better understand the
sources of the established dialogue.

22The idea behind this part of the exhibition is ultimately quite simple. By this confrontation,
it's about getting

the telluric key we were missing. What makes it a marvelous key is that at once it elucidates
the meaning of an ancestral message that was until then intercepted and it allows us not to
let ourselves be locked into certain dilemmas, such as that by which we want at all costs to
make us opt today, in the plastic arts, for figurative or non-figurative example 48 .

23As implied by Breton's polysemy of the "present" for the title of his text, the Gallic
currencies make it possible to understand in a whole new light a whole section of the history
of Western art, just as they make it possible to to answer current questions. The world of the
post-war arts is traversed by a quarrel opposing, schematically, the proponents of figuration
against the defenders of abstraction. If Breton has already signified the futility of such a
debate, 49 he proposes a dialectical surpassing which, here, supports his legitimacy over the
wealth of Gaulish minting:

two regions, such as western and eastern Gaul, have furnished solutions that are at the most
convergent, although they can not be dissimilar outside. A medal of the Osismii, where the
"figurative" is carried to the limits of the "sumptuous", does not answer less to a will of total
abstraction than a piece of the Nervii or that of another one of the Eastern Gaul of which a
side offers a network of lines inextricably entangled. To want to abolish one of these answers
is absolutely abusive whereas it is established that two thousand years ago one and the other
could be admitted without reserves and coexist harmoniously 50 .

24The reconciliation of opposites that Breton seeks to assert in the paint also reflects his
willingness to put the debate beyond simple visual considerations.Far from the retinal
painting denounced by Duchamp 51 , surrealism places pictorial explorations well on the side
of the quest for a marvelous one resolving the dichotomy established between dream and
reality.

Conclusion

25Concurrently with this attraction to Celtic art, the Surrealist group demonstrated a serious
interest in Celtic culture at large. Besides Lengyel, we shall confine ourselves to the
rapprochement with surrealist Jean Markale 52with whom he participated in the fourth issue
of the magazine medium where several articles are devoted to Celtism 53 . The following year,
he publishedThe Great Welsh Bards 54 , anthology prefaced by Breton 55 . It is nevertheless
true that the Gallic coinage seems to concentrate all attention.With him and the renewal of
his approach allowed by the Gallic art in the medalsit is a new antiquity that becomes the
reference very far from the clichés of the Mediterranean culture of which Breton perceives
the inheritance as that imposed by an army of occupation 56 . Cosmogony and the Celtic
pantheon allow the eyes of the Group to consolidate the break with anthropocentrism, as
Breton had already said in the myth of the Great Transparencies 57 .

26He also replace the rediscovery of Celtism in the broader context of the concerns that drive
the postwar surrealism. Between the international exhibition of surrealism of 1947, the
Maeght gallery, built as a real initiatory journey and the publication of Magic Art 58 by Breton
and Legrand, the Gallic coins are a milestone in the surrealist reflection. If these are also
mentioned in the last great work of Breton 59 , they are immediately linked to a questioning
on esotericism and alchemy that does not fail to identify the mechanisms of an analog
thought.

27Finally, it is not so much the style, moreover very different according to the regions and the
times, of these currencies that would directly inspire certain surrealist artists than the overall
approach of their creation. The scholarly game, enabled by the attachment to the expressive
rhythm, between abstraction and figuration has something to seduce them. But perhaps they
also want to recognize in the capacity of the Celts to use elements borrowed from the real,
to give to see a very personal thought formulating a dynamic world in constant movement, a
kinship with the surrealist approach which consists in particular to seek plastic means capable
of reconciling the subjectivity of the internal model with a questioning of the pictorial material
or, more simply, able to bring together physical perception and mental
representation? Beyond appearances, it is the expression of an imaginary that must be
released.

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Notes

1 André Breton, "Response to a survey of the literary Figaro ", OC III , p. 1104. Unless stated
otherwise, the use of the abbreviation " OC ", followed by a Roman numeral, refers to the
volumes of the complete works of the author published in the Library of the Pléiade. About
the discovery of the treasure of Vix, see the catalog of the recent exhibition, Félicie Fougère
(eds.), On the roads of the vase of Vix , Châtillon-sur-Seine, Châtillonais Country Museum -
Trésor de Vix, 2013, [21 p.].
2 In ancient writers, "Celts" and "Gauls", certainly derived from "Galatians", can be practically
synonymous, although the former retains a general character by the absence of spatial
connotation. Today, it would be better to use the term "Celts" to designate populations living
in Gaul before this geographical concept is defined by the Romans and to avoid any
equivocation likely to suggest a real unity of population on a territory of this magnitude. Like
many of their contemporaries, the surrealists do not care much about such terminological
precision, so sometimes we will sometimes use "Celts" and "Gauls" as quasisynonyms, while
keeping these nuances in mind. On the origin and use of the terms "Celts" and "Gauls", see
Wenceslas Kruta, The Celts , Paris, PUF, 2002, p. 4-5.

3 On the influences of the Celtic tradition in the work of Breton, especially through the
writings of Apollinaire, see Yves Vadé, "The shadow of Merlin: André Breton and the Celtic
thought", Full margin , December 2005, n o 42, p. 153-180.

4 André Breton, "Jacques Vaché", OC I , p. 229.

5 André Masson, Portrait of André Breton , February 5, 1941, India ink on paper, 46 × 62 cm,
Center Georges Pompidou, Mnam, Paris.

6 Janus or Hermes bicephalous , III e -V th century BC. AD, limestone with traces of painting,
height 20 cm, Marseille Archaeological Museum.

7 For a further development of this point, see Fabrice Flahutez, New world and new myth:
mutations of surrealism, from American exile to the "absolute gap" (1941-1965) , Paris, Les
presses du réel, 2007 , p. 239-244.

8 Lancelot Lengyel , Gallic Art in Medals , Montrouge-sur-Seine, Corvina Publishing, 1954, 59

pp-XLVIII pl. From the book, a thousand numbered copies as well as a hundred non-
commercial copies numbered from I to C have been printed.

9 Lancelot Lengyel: of Hungarian origin, he studied and photographed for many years the
coins of the Cabinet of Medals. In 1952, he has already published a book on Greek coinage. He
frequented the surrealist group until the early 1960s and he participated in journals
including Medium and Surrealism .

10 Photographic enlargements are essential tools for the revaluation of Gallic

currencies. Some critics of Lengyel's essay point to them as a reason for overinterpretation.

11 With the aid of specialized numismatic books, Breton keeps an inventory of his collection
- amounting to one hundred and forty-five medals - on two notebooks in which each coin is
reproduced by a rubbing accompanied by a scientific description.Étienne-Alain Hubert,
"Notes and Variants", André Breton, OC IV , p. 1361.

12 Henri Béhar (ed.), André Breton Dictionary , Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2012, p.193.
13 André Breton, "Triumph of Gallic Art", OC IV , p. 743.

14 Still according to Kruta, the golden stater of Philip II of Macedonia had a relatively long
period of circulation, the success of which among the Celts is largely linked to the
development of mercenaries and their necessary retribution. Wenceslas Kruta, The Celts ,
Paris, Robert Laffont, 2000, p. 735.

15 For an interpretation of Gallic coins and their iconography, see Paul-Marie Duval,Gallic
coins and Celtic myths , Paris, Hermann, 1987, 115 p.

16 Bataille was a librarian at the National Library's Department of Medals.

17 Georges Bataille, "The academic horse", OC I , p. 159-163. About the "Academic Horse"
and the influence of Battle on the work of Giacometti, see Yves Bonnefoy,Alberto Giacometti ,
Paris, Flammarion, 2012, p. 171-174.

18 Ibid. , p. 160.

19 Ibid. , p. 161.

20 Ibid. , p. 161-162.

21 Jean-Louis Brunaux, "Gallic art in the money", Archeology , No. 124, February-March 2013,
p. 15.

22 André Breton, "Triumph of Gallic Art", art. cit., p. 744.

23 Ibid. , p. 745.

24 Text presenting Documents , quoted in: Michel Leiris, "From Battle the Impossible to the
Impossible Documents ", Critique , No. 195-196, August-September 1963, p. 689. See also
Jean Jamin, " Documents revue, the cursed part of ethnography", L'Homme , n ° 151, 1999,
p. 257-266.

25 Georges Bataille, "The Big Toe", Documents , No. 6, November 1929, p. 297-302.

26 André Malraux, The Money of the Absolute , Geneva, Skira, 1950, p. 191-206.

27 André Malraux, "The Voice of Silence", OC IV , p. 335-350.

28 André Malraux, The Money of the Absolute , op. cit., , p. 199.

29 Jean-Louis Brunaux, "Gallic art in the currency", art. cit., p. 15.

30 Lancelot Lengyel, Gallic Art in Medals , op. cit., , p. 3.

31 André Breton, "Surrealism and tradition," OC IV , p. 946-947.

32 Ibid ., P. 25.

33 Ibid. , p. 4.

34 Adrien Dax, "Actuality of Celtic Art", Medium , No. 4, January 1955, p. 6.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

37 André Breton, "Surrealism and painting", OC IV , p. 352-353.

38 André Breton, "Triumph of Gallic Art", art. cit., p. 746.

39 Ibid. , p. 746-747.

40 Present of Gaul , Paris, Pedagogical Museum, 1955, 93 p.

41 Raymond Lantier and Jean Hubert, The origins of French art , Paris, Guy Le Prat, 1947,
p. 46.

42 Marie-Madeleine Kahan - Rabecq, "Preface", in Present des Gaules , op. cit., , p.12.

43 Critics remain quite reserved facing the programmatic line adopted for this second part:
René de Solier , "Sustainability of the Gallic art," Art , No. 28, 1 st April 1955, p. 726-729.

44 Durability of Gallic Art , op. cit., , p. 87.

45 On the influence of Gaulish art on Charles Estienne and lyrical abstraction in the 1950s,
see Steven Harris, "The Gaulish and the Feudal as Places of Memory in Post-War French
Abstraction," Journal of European Studies , 1 June 2005, vol. 35, No. 2, p.201-220.

46 Ibid. , p. 9.

47 René de Solier, "Sustainability of the Gallic art," New NRF , No. 28, 1 st April 1955, p. 729.
48 André Breton, "Present of Gaul", Durability of Gallic Art , op. cit. , p. 70.

49 See in particular André Breton, "Enrico Donati", OC IV , p. 586; André Breton, "Surreal
Comet", OC III , p. 754-755.

50 Ibid. , p. 72.

51 Alain Jouffroy, "Conversations with Marcel Duchamp", A Revolution of the Gaze , Paris,
Gallimard, 2008, p. 107-111. Interview first published in Arts , No. 491, November 24, 1954.

52 Jean Markale (1928-2008): by his real name Jean Bertrand, he is the author of about a
hundred books, the seriousness of which is often controversial, about Celticism and
Brittany. His first contacts with André Breton date from 1949.

53 Jean Markale, "Mysteries and Enchantments of Celtic Literatures", Medium , No. 4, 1955,
p. 7-10.

54 Jean Markale, The Great Welsh Bards , Paris, G. Fall, 1956, 117 p.

55 André Breton, "Kickstand at Keridwen", OC IV , p. 949-953.

56 See also, in this regard, the anecdote reported in Henri Béhar, André Breton: the great
junk , Paris, Fayard, 2005, p. 477.

57 André Breton, "Prolegomena to a third manifesto of surrealism or not," OC III , p. 14-15.

58 André Breton and Gérard Legrand, The Magic Art , Paris, French Book Club, 1957, 237 p.

59 André Breton and Gérard Legrand, "The Magic Art", OC IV , p. 110-112.