Patrick Waldberg (1913-1985) was a Franco-American art critic known for his profiles of Surrealist artists.

Biography

Born in Santa Monica, California, Waldberg moved to Paris as a child with his family. In 1932, and while still a student (age 19), he joined

Boris Souvarine Boris Souvarine (1 November 1895 – 1 November 1984), also known as Varine, was a French Marxist, communist activist, essayist and journalist. A founding member of the French Communist Party, Souvarine is noted for being the only non-Russian com ...

Democratic Communist Circle The Democratic Communist Circle ( French: ''Cercle communiste démocratique'', CCD; French pronunciation: εʀkl kɔmynist demɔkʀatik/small>) was a left-wing, political group founded by Boris Souvarine in February 1926 under the original name o ...

. There he met

Georges Bataille Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, ...

and his friends

Michel Leiris Julien Michel Leiris (; 20 April 1901 in Paris – 30 September 1990 in Saint-Hilaire, Essonne) was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer. Part of the Surrealist group in Paris, Leiris became a key member of the College of Sociology with G ...

and André Masson, and was initiated by them into a wild night life. Waldberg would chronicle those years in his novel ''La Clé de cendre'' (The key made of ashes), published posthumously in 1999.Patrick Waldberg, ''La clé de cendre'', Paris: Editions de la Différence, 1999. 1937 saw him back in California to take care of "family matters". However, a letter from Georges Bataille reached him there, urging him to return to Paris in order to take part in a Nietzschean secret society Bataille was then forming, called

Acéphale ''Acéphale'' is the name of a public review created by Georges Bataille (which numbered five issues, from 1936 to 1939) and a secret society formed by Bataille and others who had sworn to keep silent. Its name is derived from the Greek ἀκέ� ...

("headless"). Waldberg heeded the call in September 1938, and he says this permanently changed his life. From 1938 to 1940 Waldberg would serve as the secretary of Bataille's "official" group, the College of Sacred Sociology.Patrick Waldberg, "Acéphalogramme", in Marina Galletti, ed., ''L'Apprenti-sorcier'', Paris: Editions de la Différence, 1999. In the winter of 1939, Waldberg was invited by Georges Bataille to move in with him to his house in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a suburb of Paris. In the fall of that year he joined the French army to help repel the German invasion. In March 1940, Isabelle Farner gave birth to his son . After the French defeat Patrick and Isabelle fled to the USA where they took up residence in New York. In 1941 Patrick became a founder of the "Voice of America" radio broadcasts. It seems it was he who then attracted André Breton to also become an announcer on Voice of America.In 1942 Waldberg quit Voice of America to join the US army intelligence service, taking part in the African campaign and then the Normandy invasion. During this time Isabelle stayed in New York.Biography - Editions de la Différence
.José Pierre
« WALDBERG PATRICK - (1913-1985) »
''Encyclopædia Universalis'' (online), accessed 5 October 2016. In 1959 he left Paris to move to the French village of Seillans, where his second wife Line Jubelin was from. Max Ernst and his own second wife Dorothea Tanning joined him there. Their houses are now a Max Ernst museum and a Maison Waldberg museum. In 1964 Waldberg organized a major Surrealist exhibit at Gallerie Charpentier.

André Breton André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...

took umbrage at this however, due to Waldberg's defection in 1951. Breton and his group printed a declaration condemning the show, ""Face aux liquidateurs", and then a subsequent pamphlet, "Cramponnez-vous à la table (Petite Suite surréaliste à l'affaire du Bazar Charpentier)".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Waldberg, Patrick American art critics American emigrants to France Journalists from California People from Santa Monica, California Prix Sainte-Beuve winners