Where did Apollinaire publish?

March 1, 2011 8:57 AM

Who might want my essay about Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia, and the illusion of a differentiated universe?

I have no professional writing portfolio, but I have an old essay that I was encouraged to "work up and publish" by a professor who I trust would only say such a thing sincerely. It's not exactly history-scholarly and it's not exactly criticism and I'm not exactly up on the current state of postmodern art writing. So, who might I send it to (and how?)?

posted by cmoj to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

Forgive me, but I think maybe "it's not exactly criticism and I'm not exactly up on the current state of postmodern art writing" is going to be a problem here — since the obvious response to the question is a list of scholarly and semi-scholarly journals that publish pieces on the Surrealists, but those outlets are going to have peer reviewers and/or editors who'll want your piece to be well-informed and footnoted. Rather than just what it's not, could you tell us what the piece is, and why do you want to publish it? Can you describe the essay in a little bit more detail? Is it essayistic, argumentative, exploratory? Does it (or could it) have footnotes referring to other relevant discussions of Surrealist thought? (That's roughly what "work up" means — fill in the missing footnotes with more context by researching the existing criticism around your subject.)
posted by RogerB at 9:20 AM on March 1, 2011

Depending on the style and tone of the piece, it sounds like something a literary magazine might publish. So that's an option if you want to take it in a more artsy and less academic direction.

As RogerB said, it's hard to give specific suggestions without knowing more about the essay.
posted by Hypocrite_Lecteur at 9:25 AM on March 1, 2011

You could see if the professor who suggested it has ideas in mind of possible magazines. Otherwise make a list of potential magazines that may be interested in that type of essay and send it out to all of them.
posted by JJ86 at 9:37 AM on March 1, 2011

If it's interesting enough, and accessible to an average intellectual-ish reader, you could try one of the quirkier essay magazines like Cabinet or even The Believer. I can picture an essay like yours in one of those.
posted by chowflap at 10:10 AM on March 1, 2011

If you're going for the academic market, possibly Representations.
posted by googly at 10:23 AM on March 1, 2011

Here is a list of places you might consider. I think an arts-minded or literary-minded journal like Fence Magazine, the Believer, Georgia Review, or a fanzine is a better bet than a scholarly journal.
posted by The Emperor of Ice Cream at 11:23 AM on March 1, 2011

Response by poster: Yeah, I meant to make it more clear that this is almost certainly not appropriate for a scholarly journal. My writing about art is heavily influenced by Apollinaire's in that it's heavily exploratory and sort of talks about art using artistic thought and writing. It starts out ostensibly as an analysis of Rrose Selavy, but ends up talking about stuff like the perceived misogyny of Picabia, chess, the influence of Freud, and homosexuality in the early 20th century.

And why? Why not? I have no idea how much if any money I should expect to make off of such a thing, if that's what you're asking.
posted by cmoj at 12:50 PM on March 1, 2011