The Surrealists saw Clovis Trouille as one of their own--André Breton called him "the grand master of anything goes." He painted entirely for his own pleasure, utterly rejecting commercialism. Only a handful of his paintings and collages are labeled dreams; it's ambiguous what he means here by "rêve claustral" (Cloister Dream). Does he mean the two nuns dream of coming out of the closet (dangerous in 1962 France) or is it his dream about them? If so, was he a mere fly-on-the-wall, or was he the third nun spying on them (below, to left) or was he one of the lovers? So far I haven't been able to get a book on Trouille that'd tell me. But for now, let's accept it as a dream; so the artist calls it.

Rêve claustral, 1962

I write these notes in San Francisco, June 2026, just as the Pride March is happening downtown--in massive defiance of Trump and his cronies on the Supreme Court, still determined to roll the clock back to, say... 1962.

WEEKS LATER

Interlibrary loan sent me Clovis Trouille, 1972, with comments by Raymond Charmet and Trouille himself on some of his paintings. He writes "This title is that of the poem by Germain Nouveau which inspired the scene." So, not a dream. Sigh! But I think I'll leave it in.

SOURCES: Surrealism.website, Wikiart and various auction houses (for higher-res images), plus Clovis Trouille, Paris 1972, Editions Filipacchi, pp 56-7.

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