Images of Medieval Art in the French Surrealist Periodicals Documents ( 1929 – 31 ) and Minotaure ( 1933 – 39 )

One notable aspect of surrealism’s self-construction as a movement is its frequent and intensive engagement with historical periods and objects, including the Middle Ages and medieval art and artists. Contributing to the wider discussion about surrealist medievalism and proceeding from the view that surrealist periodicals provide a tangible expression of its discourse, this article presents a case-study of the illustrations of medieval art in two of French surrealism’s most prominent periodicals: Documents (1929–31; fifteen issues) and Minotaure (1933–39; thirteen issues). It provides a comparative overview of the medieval illustrations in these reviews, which both showcase a sustained interest in medieval art in a variety of forms. Observations are also made on the positioning of the images, as in both cases the editors frequently placed images of medieval art, individually as well as sequentially, in juxtapositions with art from other periods or other cultures. Documents and Minotaure reproduced medieval art in part to rival Cahiers d’Art as all-encompassing art reviews, yet as earlier and related surrealist periodicals published very little to no medieval art in their pages, they still introduced it prominently into the surrealist discourse. In line with its anti-classical agenda, Documents primarily featured art from the margins of Europe, ranging from manuscript illuminations to jewellery and vessels, and dating from the early to the High Middle Ages. Minotaure, a more luxury art review featuring colour inserts, mainly showed painting by late-medieval Germanic and Italian artists. The first sought to broaden the canon; the second to align late-medieval art with surrealism.

For the surrealists, periodicals were an important channel of communication. They established, edited, published in, and produced a great number and variety, in France as much as internationally.1 A vibrant surrealist periodical culture persisted well into the 1970s and arguably even to this day. Scholars have often turned to surrealist periodicals, among other things, to understand the fragmentation of (Parisian) surrealism into groups (including their internal struggles); the political ambitions, projects, interests, and fascinations of individual surrealists; and how the surrealists communicated internally and how they presented themselves to the outside world. In other words, surrealist periodicals, as a tangible manifestation of that somewhat elusive mode we call 'discourse', provide a convenient starting point for tracing 'the ways that surrealism constituted itself as a collective movement and negotiated its position in society '.2 This article is directed towards a specific aspect of that discourse as shaped in periodicals, namely surrealist medievalism. One aspect of surrealism's self-construction is its frequent and intensive engagement with history. The surrealists found many sources of inspiration in the past and purposefully claimed historic figures as 'ancestors'. As Kristen Strom has noted, by adopting historical figures as 'pre-surrealists', the surrealists positioned themselves as part of a long-standing phenomenon. Surrealism was accordingly defined as not merely an artistic style but as a state of mind that had -apparentlyprevailed throughout the ages.3 Several surrealists were drawn to the Middle Ages in particular. Studies have explored medieval texts, tropes, and themes in surrealist thought and writing.4 Less studied is the role of medieval art in surrealist discourse; that is to say, the visual presence of medieval art in surrealist sources and periodicals specifically. Contributing to the wider discussion about surrealist medievalism, this article presents a case-study of the illustrations of medieval art in two of French surrealism's most prominent periodicals, Documents (1929-31; fifteen issues) and Minotaure (1933-39; thirteen issues).
The development of surrealism's medievalism in some of its periodicals has already been noted, especially with regards to Documents. Yet while scholars have studied specific texts and art works in Documents,5 this has been done at the expense of a more overarching focus on illustrations of medieval art. Nor has there been much discussion of the different (and similar) ways in which illustrations of medieval art appear in a range of surrealist periodicals. Merely by reproducing medieval art, reviews such as Documents and Minotaure actively introduced the art of this period to surrealist discourse as well as to surrealist artists. Since Documents and Minotaure were circulated also outside of 1 The seminal source for the study of dada and surrealist periodicals is Dawn Ades, Dada and Surrealism Reviewed (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978). 2 Raymond Spiteri, '"What can the surrealists do?" Littérature ; La Révolution surréaliste ; Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution    and minotaure  surrealist milieus, they can be said to have introduced medieval art into the discourse about surrealism as well. These two periodicals form the primary source material and have been selected for several reasons. For one, they are associated with competing surrealist leaders: Documents with George Bataille  and Minotaure with André Breton (1896-1966. As such they represent two sides of the French surrealist discourse. Both brought together a diverse group of editors, contributors, and authors from a variety of backgrounds. Published between 1929 (first issue of Documents) and 1939 (last issue of Minotaure), these periodicals are associated with surrealism's second decade, the 1930s, a time when the movement rose to prominence both in France and internationally, and the impact of these periodicals extended far beyond surrealist circles. As both are primarily art reviews, they also testify to the growing prominence of the visual arts within surrealism, and to the movement's interaction with the discourse of art criticism and art history.6 Furthermore, in its own way, each periodical aimed to compete with the already wellestablished review Cahiers d' Art (1926-60).
Illustrations form a key aspect of Documents and Minotaure. At both reviews, the editors positioned images in specific ways on the page, with the creation of particular visual effects in mind. It should be noted that the editors included a wide array of art, primarily contemporary art and non-Western art. European medieval art forms a subset but is an interesting aspect nonetheless. While Documents and Minotaure partly followed in the footsteps of Cahiers d'Art -which reviewed old, modern, contemporary, and tribal art -Minotaure and Documents also paid sustained attention to objects of contemporary visual culture not regularly considered art or of artistic interest, such as graffiti, nineteenth-century postcards, and photographs of street life.
This article aims to shed light on the medieval art reproduced in these reviews by providing part of the groundwork: it gives an overview of the medieval illustrations included in each periodical, as well as observations on the layout and positioning of images. The analysis is based on a dataset compiled by locating and indexing all illustrations of medieval material in Documents and Minotaure, as well as -for comparative purposes -a survey of closely associated French surrealist journals, La Révolution surréaliste ; Le Surréalisme au service de la revolution ; and the two journals' main competitor, Cahiers d'Art.7

Documents
Documents was founded in 1929. It is primarily associated with writer and philosopher George Bataille, who considered himself surrealism's 'old enemy from within'. Scholarship has consistently treated him as the main surrealist challenger of André Breton, author of the two surrealist manifestoes of 1924 and 1929.8 Although it did end up an important mouthpiece for Bataille and his group of dissident surrealists, Documents was originally conceived by two of Bataille's colleagues at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Jean Babelon (1889Babelon ( -1978 and Pierre d'Espezel (1893-1959) (they all worked as numismatists). The initial editorial board further comprised the art dealer 6 Kim Grant, Surrealism and the Visual Arts: Theory and Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), especially part 3. 7 The periodicals have been indexed for visual material that may be qualified as Western medieval, with attention paid to positioning, captions, and whether the images are accompanied by text, as well as other potentially relevant data. Note: from the French surrealist perspective, medieval art extends to and includes work of artists qualified, in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century art discourses, as 'primitifs'. Hence, quattrocento and cinquecento Italian art, and fifteenth and sixteenth-century North-Western European art have been included in the survey. 8 Ades, p. 229. Georges Wildenstein (1892-1963, curator of ethnographic art George-Henri Rivière , and German art historian and critic Carl Einstein .9 Bataille was 'secrétaire général' from the sixth issue onwards, at which point other surrealists, including the poet Robert Desnos , entered the editorial team.10 Documents published scholarly and philosophical articles, many illustrated, and in-depth studies as well as shorter, essayistic, and more poetic pieces. Images and illustrations are interspersed throughout the text, sometimes full-page. All in all, a third of its pages feature images, often of high quality.11 Documents was initially subtitled 'Doctrines Archéologie Beaux-Arts Ethnographie', but by the fourth issue doctrine were dropped for 'Variétés', emphasizing popular culture at the expense of ideology. The broad cultural spectrum covered by these subtitles indicates how Documents was a mix of opposing trends, paradoxes, and widely diverging interests.12 On the other hand, the already established Cahiers d'Art also boasted a much-encompassing subtitle: 'peinture, sculpture, architecture, art ancient, ethnographie, cinéma'. So while much of Documents's content may have been distinctive, the periodical was hardly unique in its aim to address such a variety of subjects.13 Underlying its omnivorous appearance were several unifying aims, among which are found a stringent anti-classicism and desire to explore more broadly manifestations of the non-classical in art and culture.14 Documents is characterized as 'one of the most important, distinctive, and highly influential avant-garde journals of the twentieth century', and its radical essays by prominent contributors and the disruptive views it promulgated are often remarked upon.15 The roster of academics and scholars publishing in Documents is notable, including Carl Einstein, whose widely influential Negerplastik (1915) was one of the first European studies to discuss African sculpture as art.16 The art reproduced in Documents is positioned as 'part of an academic discussion', methodologically treated by 'well-established art historians and other specialists', and contextualized by broader (theoretical and aesthetic) issues, as Ines Lindner has noted.17 This is not to imply that Documents should be considered a conventional academic arts periodical. Although scholarly methodology, rhetoric, and style were adopted, these were 'polemically turned […] against the established academic rules'. Documents broke the rules both textually and visually by the montage-like practices that formed the bases of its visual communication and image positioning.18 The anti-classical agenda is also apparent in the contributions by various foreign medievalists and their contra-nationalist emphasis on cultural exchange and artistic influences from the margins and outside of Europe.19 This made the periodical   and minotaure  a podium for rather unconventional medievalist (and other) art historical thinking. These academics also provided a plethora of just as unconventional and diverse visual material. Since three of its initial editors worked at the Bibliothèque Nationale, a good amount of the medieval art reproduced in Document derives from the library's extensive medieval collections, such as illuminated manuscripts and late-antique and earlymedieval coins. An example is the eleventh-century Apocalypse of Saint-Sever that Bataille discussed in Documents 1.2 (1929), complete with six reproduced illuminations of scenes from the Book of Revelation.20 Typical for Bataille is that the more bizarre and violent scenes have been selected for reproduction in Documents. The editors also looked further afield. For instance, panels from the bronze doors of the church of San Zeno (eleventh-to thirteenth-century) in Verona, Italy, feature in Documents 1.7 (1929), illustrating an anonymous essay by either Bataille or Einstein. 21 With regards to the illustrations, the aim of the editors of Documents was to let the images speak for themselves.22 Thus the captions are often rather minimal. Many illustrations are reproduced relatively large, half or even full-page, and images from or relating to the same artwork or artist are frequently reproduced in sequence. The images are often positioned to produce maximum effect. Unfortunately, there is not much certainty about the exact trajectory of editorial processes at Documents. However, overall, Desnos is thought to have been responsible for layout, with Bataille extending a strong influence over the selection and organization of articles and illustrations.23 Bataille's selection of material for Documents -often with strange or violent iconographybespeaks his fascination for sacrifice and the horrific and savage. 24 When taken together, the variety of Documents's medieval material is quite notable. It includes elevation and ground plans of Romanesque churches; photographs of the eight-century Viking Oseberg Ship excavated in 1904-05, including the treasures found in it; illustrations of Ottonian metalwork; images of early medieval vessels from the treasure of Nagyszentmiklós; gothic murals from Sicily (Figs 1 and 2); as well as several images from early medieval (eight to twelfth-century) manuscripts, such as portraits of evangelists: a detail of an angel, a Majestas Domini, and an initial.25 As this list shows, the diversity of represented mediums -churches, ships, jewellery, sculpture, tableware, frescoes, and manuscript illuminations -is remarkable. Looking at the geographical locations of places of origin (or excavation) of the art, the range is extensive as well, stretching from Scandinavia to Spain, Sicily, and Russia. Additionally, a considerable span of centuries is covered, from the fourth century well into the renaissance, with attention being paid to Italian quattrocento and (late)  Besides this diversity, another notable aspect of the medieval illustrations in Documents is their positioning within each issue's pages. Indeed, Documents functioned as site not only of controversy but also aesthetic dialogue, and much of this was enacted through visual strategies, especially the positioning of the pictures, in a practice that has Images of Medieval Art in the French Surrealist Periodicals Documents  and minotaure  been described as 'montage-like'.27 Images are placed in a juxtaposition that frequently invites visual correspondence between art which is not necessarily related. For instance, in the fifth issue a reproduction of the painting Clown (1929) by German Bauhaus artist and surrealist Paul Klee (1879-1940) is positioned alongside a tenth-century crucifixion page from an Irish manuscript; on the overleaf, another Klee painting is reproduced alongside the imprints of the front and back of a coin or medal of 'indeterminate periodicity' from the 'south of Russia' (Fig. 3).28 As others have already pointed out, the positioning of the Klee paintings alongside the Psalter crucifixion and the coin, respectively, invite the reader to compare the images on the basis of form and style, which indeed -supported by Documents's sustained (aesthetic) discussion about forms of primitivism in both contemporary and medieval or ancient art -appear analogous.29 A game with the process of representation is being played here: by presenting unrelated images as if somehow connected, even if only by reproducing works next to each other, the concept of resemblance is undermined.30 Bataille rejected the scientific categorisation of reality, considering 'reality' not as static but as continuously in motion, wherefore form and meaning cannot be stable.31

Images of Medieval Art in the French Surrealist Periodicals Documents
The visual juxtapositions that can be found in several issues of Documents are certainly not limited to medieval art, and were more often applied to modern European and (undated) art from outside the West. In such instances too the intention was for readers to perceive them as analogous.32 In several cases, the medieval works are not overtly juxtaposed but part of a sequence relating to the same subject. Even so, they often stand out stylistically or iconographically, as with the Saint Sever illustrations. Moreover, the potential for entering into a visual dialogue with other -often unrelated -images is played up by repeating layout patterns, such as reproducing distinctly different and otherwise unrelated images in the same size, on the same side of the page. For instance, the full-page illustration of an eleventh-century Majestas Domini from an Ottonian manuscript is followed by a full-page reproduction of Sunflowers (1888) by Vincent van Gogh on the overleaf page (Figs 4 and 5), offering a striking and provoking contrast.32

Minotaure
In the early 1930s, Breton was approached by the Swiss publisher of high-end art books Albert Skira  to participate in a new, highly luxurious art review entitled Minotaure. Greek-French art critic Stratis Eleftheriades, publishing as Tériade  and formerly co-editor of Cahiers d'Art, was the artistic director. In Minotaure, Skira and Tériade sought for a combination of the glamourous appearance and broad appeal of Cahiers d'Art and the intellectual, even scholarly, nature of Documents.33 27 As analysed in Lindner, especially pp. 33, 36, and 40-42. 28 Documents, 1.5 (1929) The first two issues of Minotaure came out in June 1933; eight hundred readers had already subscribed.34 Targeting the high-end market, it featured custom-designed covers by well-known artists (the first by Pablo Picasso, for instance) and high-quality, full-page colour inserts. This immediately set it apart from Documents, which sported austere text-only covers and images in black and white. Initially starting off at fifteen francs, the price of an issue doubled to thirty francs by 1937, limiting Minotaure to an affluent audience. In comparison, Documents had sold for fifteen francs. On the other hand, issues of Cahiers d'Art cost thirty francs in 1932 and forty-five in the late 1930s.35 34 Its overall circulation was 3,000 and later 2,000 copies. Ades,and Spiteri,     and minotaure  Over the 1930s, surrealism became increasingly visible. Cahiers d'Art, for one, had been discussing surrealism and reproducing surrealist art since the late 1920s.36 This may have helped to make surrealism respectable enough for Minotaure -after all, it was a luxurious art glossy clearly targeted at a readership of art enthusiasts rather than the small group of surrealists and avant-garde artists and writers to whom earlier surrealist periodicals had catered. In fact, Skira and Tériade seem to have aimed to compete directly with Cahiers d'Art by allying with surrealism. 37 Minotaure was first and foremost an art periodical in which politics took a backseat, a requirement Skira had stipulated when he initially asked the surrealists to come on board -perhaps a lesson taken from Documents, where Bataille's political agenda and radical views had set the tone early on and had eventually alienated the other editors. Nonetheless, in tone, subject choice, and layout Minotaure can be considered surrealist. Skira acknowledged the considerable -even 'the greatest' ('la plus grande') -influence of the surrealists on the periodical on several occasions.38 In addition, it should be noted that Minotaure was a far cry from an easily accessible magazine and remained 'very avant-garde', as Skira also remarked.39 Tériade ceded editorial directorship to Breton and a varying editorial committee of surrealists after the ninth issue. Several surrealists were also regular contributors, in addition to an international group of authors and specialists, some from academia.
A decent amount of illustrations of (late-)medieval material appears in Minotaure. Overall, images are a very prominent part of Minotaure, more so than of Documents. Regarding the images, the editors seem to have taken a leaf from Documents's book to pay considerable attention to visual organisation of images and page-spread, minimising captions and otherwise eliminate intervening text as much as possible. Typical for Minotaure is that the illustrations are thematically organized over multiple pages and sometimes even entire issues, a remarkable and innovative visual strategy initially carried out by Tériade and later continued by the surrealists. 40 It should be noted that this explicit focus on visual material and its positioning throughout each issue, together with the inclusion of reproductions of medieval art, set both Documents and Minotaure apart from earlier surrealist periodicals such as La Révolution Surréaliste and Le Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution. The latter, already sparsely illustrated, published only contemporary visual material which was moreover relegated to a separate quire at the back of each issue. 41 In La Révolution Surréaliste the images are integrated into the text, usually inserted into page columns and accordingly generally of small size. It features only one medieval work of art: a detail of the second panel from Italian painter Paolo Uccello's Miracle of the Profaned Host (1467-69).42 Uccello (1397-1475) would prove an obsession which the Bretonian surrealists returned to in Minotaure a decade later, as we will see. Documents and Minotaure therefore stand out from this group of periodicals: by illustrating medieval art, at larger size and full-page, and even, in Minotaure, in colour.
Striking is that while northern renaissance art is nearly entirely absent from Documents, it is all the more visible in Minotaure.43 Minotaure, no. 9 (1936), for instance, includes several pages of reproductions of works by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), Cranach the Younger (1515-86), and Hans Holbein (1497-1543). These accompany two essays, one by the eminent French art critic (mainly of contemporary art) Maurice Raynal (1884Raynal ( -1954, the other by the surrealist patron Edward James (1907-84) (Fig.  6). In both cases -and in particular in Raynal's essay, where the actual text comes to only two pages while the images extend over several -the visual element dominates strongly; in effect, these are visual essays accompanied by text rather than the more conventional other way around.44 Also remarkable is the amount of works reproduced: nineteen paintings by both Lucas Cranach the Elder and the Younger, including some portraits -a sustained visual focus usually reserved for eminent contemporary artists such as Picasso. Two pages of reproductions of engravings by Swiss printmaker Urs Graf (c. 1485-c. 1528) in Minotaure, no. 6 -with six drawings and prints, one full-page (Figs 7 and 8) ', both in Minotaure, no. 9 (1936), 11-19 and 20-24 respectively. 45 Pierre Courthion, 'Le sadisme de Urs Graf ', Minotaure, no. 6 (1934-35), 35-37. The overt interest in artists such as these partly resulted from a countercultural interest in aspects of German culture on the part of leading surrealists such as Breton andMax Ernst (1891-1976), as further explored in Tessel M. Bauduin, 'Surrealist Medievalism: A Case Study', in Studies in Medievalism XVII, ed. by Karl Fugelso (Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 2018), 151-77 (pp. 172-75). 46 Minotaure, no. 6 (1934-35), between pp. 60 and 61.  and minotaure  Its caption notes that 'This reproduction is taken from the book LES TRÉSORS DE LA PEINTURE FRANCAISE' (emphasis original), a book project by Skira edited by Tériade. Advertisements for the first volume, Des primitifs au XVI siècle, can be found in several issues of Minotaure, with the label 'primitifs' indicating artists from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Tables of reproductions are listed in some of these ads and include artists and their works, such as 'Pol de Limbourg' and his Anatomical Zodiac Man (1411-16) (Fig. 9), and a page from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry now ascribed to the Limbourg brothers (active 1385-1416).47 The Anatomical Zodiac Man was included as a full-page colour insert in Minotaure, just as De Lyon's portrait: the review therefore not only advertised but prominently featured such apparent masterpieces of French art.48 This is not unique: Documents ran advertisements for Wildenstein's publishing project L'Art français, although without illustrations.49 Both periodicals associated with art publishing projects of members of their editorial teams, which aimed at providing (visual) overviews of French art for a broader audience.50 Minotaure's editorial team went the furthest by publishing (a selection of ) the reproductions Skira had obtained for Trésors. Late-medieval French art is therefore visually prominently present in this periodical. This aligns with the fact that art by French artists, albeit primarily contemporary art, also plays a much larger role in Minotaure than in Documents. In the latter, by contrast (and only with regards to medieval art), it is art from outside of France that sets the tone, in line with the periodical's objective to focus on the marginal, understudied, and anticlassical. Other medieval material in Minotaure includes a reproduction of an automaton (dated 1513), a full-page photo of the mid-twelfth-century sculpture of two shepherds (without the angel annunciating to them) from Chartres Cathedral (Fig. 10), and Images of Medieval Art in the French Surrealist Periodicals Documents  and minotaure  photographs of armour dated to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 51 In a rare pictorial overlap with Documents, Minotaure also paid attention to Piero di Cosimo. Documents's coverage of Cosimo had been topical, as the article was prompted by an exhibition. Of the six illustrations, three are full page, and all the paintings are reproduced in their entirety. 52 Minotaure,no. 11 reproduced ten paintings and details from paintings from between 1490 and 1510, accompanied by a brief essay by German art historian Georg Pudelko  on the artist.53 To Minotaure, no. 7, Pudelko had already contributed an article on Uccello that featured ten illustrations, six full-page.54

Further Comparison of Medieval Art Reproduced in Documents and Minotaure
Whereas academic specialists were amongst Documents's prominent contributors, certainly with regards to medieval art, in Minotaure art was discussed by diverse authors with differing expertise, including contemporary art critics such as Raynal, collectors such as James, and art historians of the renaissance such as Pudelko. As noted, the majority of medieval art reproduced in Minotaure is late-medieval, as opposed to art from the early and high Middle Ages in Documents; it is also more conventional than that in Documents, with the reproductions such as those taken from Skira's Trésors belonging to the canon of French art. There are also several parallels, such as the fact that both reviews employed an innovative organisation of visual features in an essentially discursive manner:55 images were arranged in ways intended to create a complex interplay between them and thereby prompting, at the very least, an association of art of one kind, type, or period with that of another, across borders of medium, style, iconography, and time. Moreover, already in Documents a play upon and with size of art works and enlarged details thereof was experimented with for effect, and this surrealist aesthetic strategy was developed further in Minotaure. Well known are Brassaï's photos of small, even tiny daily objects taken in the early 1930s -'sculptures involontaires' such as a rolled-up subway ticket, a lick of soap -that were blown up to huge proportions in Minotaure.56 Skira observed how Minotaure was about the rapport between consciousness and the unconscious, and about expressing the latent content of an age in addition to its manifest, or apparent, content. The organisation of images in Minotaure was accordingly designed so as to maximise opportunities for latent content to manifest in interactions between images.57 Rather than presenting individual objects or topics arranged one after the other, as done, for instance, in Cahiers d'Art as well as in several of the issues of Documents, individual issues of Minotaure were arranged with an overall thematic development in mind. This is most prominent when it comes to the illustrations, which are organised in and between articles in a manner so as to maximize their impact as such; their associative or analogical interaction with other images; and the cumulative impact of the images. The strong visual thematic overlap that is frequently created operates entirely independently from the textual content, and indeed transcends it: an intentional effect orchestrated by Tériade and continued by his successors.58 Such interplay between image and text, as well as between image and image, 'transforms the visual material in Minotaure from "illustration" to manifestation'.59 This is also where Minotaure's visual strategies differ from Documents's. In the latter, the images were similarly positioned and arranged for particular, often subversive, effect, but these montage practices operate primarily on the basis of groupings of images, and the associative connections within such groups, rather than across an issue as a whole. 60 Both Documents and Minotaure aimed to draw medieval art into dialogue with the contemporary by reproducing medieval art and contemporary art and culture side-by-side.61 In Documents, for instance, an illumination of the angel Gabriel from a twelfth-century manuscript is positioned immediately alongside two contemporary photographs on the same theme from theatre and cinema, one of actor Wesley Hill as Gabriel in a contemporary play and one showing American actress Bessie Love in angel costume.62 In a similar vein, the editors of Minotaure chose to reproduce a photograph of the two twelfth-century sculpted shepherds from Chartres alongside a collage of covers of surrealist manifests, books, and invitations (Fig. 10). But Minotaure takes another tack as well: it features modernist/avant-gardist works that explicitly reference or are inspired by medieval imagery. Picasso's suite of drawings after an altarpiece by the sixteenth-century artist Matthias Grünewald is one example which appeared in the first issue.63 The original work that inspired it, Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece (ca. 1510-15), is not reproduced, Images of Medieval Art in the French Surrealist Periodicals Documents  and minotaure  but without a doubt Picasso's drawings would have raised interest in it.64 Another instance is the painting entitled Hommage à Urs Graf (currently known as Heraldry, 1934) by the Swiss-American surrealist artist Kurt Seligmann , printed in Minotaure no. 6 alongside the reproductions of Graf 's work discussed above (Figs 7 and 8). Graf 's etches are clearly positioned as an important source of inspiration for Seligmann. Depicting these works side by side not only highlights Seligmann's interaction with and revision of Grafian themes and styles, it also brings a modern flavour to Graf 's etchings.65 Such visual framing of surrealist art by late-medieval/early-renaissance art, and medieval art by surrealist art, establishes a relation between surrealist and medieval art more direct than anything seen in Documents. 66 Both periodicals' editorial boards clearly considered it necessary to engage with medieval art -something earlier surrealist periodicals had not done at all -to establish themselves as serious art and literature reviews. In this, Documents and Minotaure followed in the footsteps of Cahiers d'Art, though, on the whole -in its choice of subject and reproductions -Documents adheres more closely than Minotaure to Cahiers d'Art's model. Medievalism was not one of Cahiers d'Art's main concerns, but medieval topics and illustrations did crop up in several issues.67 For instance, thirteen figures of art from and related to the Oseberg Ship (a topic also discussed in Documents) can be found in Cahiers d 'Art 5.3 (1930). Moreover, the subsequent issue of Cahiers d'Art presents twelve figures illustrating tenth and eleventh-century Armenian and Georgian churches and sculpture.68 Thus, reproducing medieval art and diagrams of medieval art was not unique to Documents or Minotaure; the particulars of positioning and engagement still make the periodicals stand out.69

Conclusion
As we have detailed here, both Documents and Minotaure, for all that their main focus was not art of the Middle Ages, did showcase a sustained interest in medieval art in a variety of forms. The difference between the periodicals when it comes to the number of issues published is slight (fifteen to thirteen), and overall Documents pays just a bit more attention to medieval art than Minotaure does. On the other hand, Minotaure dedicates more spreads of pages to it, as in the cases of the many paintings of Cranach the Elder and the Younger and of Uccello that were illustrated in it. Moreover, more pages are dedicated to illustrate details of artworks in Minotaure.
In its coverage of medieval topics, Documents could be described as eclectic, transdisciplinary, and more or less against the grain. It aimed to beat academia at its own game, which shows in its roster of contributors and images. The medieval art reproduced in it spans the entire chronological breadth of the Middle Ages and covers a whole variety of media, while in Minotaure it is chiefly limited to painting and sculpture. This suggests that Documents was interested in medieval art, whereas Minotaure was mainly focussed on late-medieval art and, moreover, primarily showed late-medieval artists, such as Cranach, Graf, Cosimo, and Uccello. Taking into account the overview of European medieval works reproduced in the periodical overall, Documents can be said to challenge the canon of art by presenting art from the margins of Europe and also providing a podium for art forms often called 'applied arts', such as jewellery, vessels, and precious silverware. Minotaure is less radical in its focus on painting by 'primitifs', but provokes in a different way by connecting late-medieval and surrealist art much more directly than Documents. In both reviews, illustrations were strategically positioned: in Documents to provocative effect, drawing parallels between very different kinds of art; in Minotaure, to draw art more emphatically into correspondence with surrealist art. Minotaure was certainly less academic than Documents in its approach, though it did publish some scholarly material. Its association with Skira's art publishing projects was more overt than was the case with Wildenstein's book series in Documents.
In both reviews, the medieval material was fully integrated into the periodical and an inherent part of its appearance and presentation, thereby -on a relatively minor scale but still pervasively -introducing the art of the European Middle Ages into surrealism and its discourse. In this article, we have deemed it important to point out the visual element and treat that on its own. For some readers, language obstacles may complicate the text in these periodicals, whereas the images are accessible to analysis independent of language -indeed, this is how some international artists familiarised themselves with surrealism and its interests. It was also common for artists to cut out images from the issues and post them on studio walls. Reproductions in these periodicals therefore operated discursively on their own. Scholars have started to trace the trajectory of some images from their original locations to Documents and Minotaure; however, the study of the trajectory from these periodicals into the work of artists and others is still in its infancy. With this overview and preliminary analysis of the medieval material, we have aimed to provide a starting point for further efforts. Julia W. Krikke is a graduate of the MA Arts of the Netherlands, a collaborative programme run jointly by the University of Amsterdam and Rijksmuseum that focusses on Dutch art from an international perspective. She specializes in the art and culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and her research interests include reception history, medievalism, nationalism, and mobility. She was a speaker at the symposium Surrealism as Art History at the University of Amsterdam (2019), where she presented a case-study on the surrealist reception of Dutch Golden Age artist Hercules Segers. As an intern at the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD), Julia