This book was originally published in 1999, and is the first comprehensive study of the British surrealist movement and its achievements. Lavishly illustrated, the book provides a year-by-year narrative of the development of surrealism among artists, writers, critics and theorists in Britain. Surrealism was imported into Britain from France by pioneering little magazines. The 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London, put together by Herbert Read and Roland Penrose, marked the first attempt to introduce the concept to a wider public. Relations with the Soviet Union, the Spanish Civil War and World War Two fractured the nascent movement as writers and artists worked out their individual responses and struggled to earn a living in wartime. The book follows the story right through to the present day. Michael Remy draws on 20 years of studying British surrealism to provide this authoritative and biographically rich account, a major contribution to the understanding of the achievements of the artists and writers involved and their allegiance to this key twentieth-century movement.

Baroque between the Wars is a fascinating and new account of the arts in the twenties and thirties. We often think of this time as being dominated by modernism, yet the period saw a dialogue between modern baroque - eclectic, playful, camp, open to influence from popular culture yet in dialogue with the past, and unafraid of the grotesque or surreal - and modernism, which was theory-driven, didactic, exclusive, and essentially neo-classical. Jane Stevenson argues that both baroque and classical forms were equally valid responses to the challenge of modernity, by setting painting and literature in the context of 'minor arts' such as interior design, photography, fashion, ballet, and flower arranging, and by highlighting the social context and sexual politics of creative production. Accessibly written and generously illustrated, the volume focuses on artists, artefacts, clients, places, and publicists to demonstrate how baroque offered a whole way of being modern which was actively subversive of the tenets of modernism and practised by the people modernism habitually defined as not worth listening to, particularly women and homosexuals.

First published in 2006, this volume provides the first in-depth analysis of the place of visual representations within the process of decolonisation during the period 1945 to 1970. The chapters trace the way in which different visual genres - art, film, advertising, photography, news reports and ephemera - represented and contributed to the political and social struggles over Empire and decolonisation during the mid-Twentieth century. The book examines both the direct visual representation of imperial retreat after 1945 as well as the reworkings of imperial and 'racial' ideologies within the context of a transformed imperialism. While the book engages with the dominant archive of artists, exhibitions, newsreels and films, it also explores the private images of the family album as well as examining the visual culture of anti-colonial resistance.

Surrealism and the Exotic is the story of the obsessive relationship between surrealist and non-western culture. Describing the travels across Africa, Oceania, Mexico and the Caribbean made by wealthy aesthetes, it combines an insight into the mentality of early twentieth century collectors with an overview of the artistic heritage at stake in these adventures. Featuring more than 70 photographs of artefacts, exhibitions and expeditions-in-progress, it brings to life the climate of hedonism enjoyed by Breton, Ernst, Durkheim, and Mauss, It is an unparalleled introduction to the Surrealist movement and to French thought and culture in the 1920s and 1930s.

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As John Cage once recalled, there were four musicians in the early '50s who, because of their deep interest in art, associated closely with the New York School of painters: Edgard Varèse, Stefan Wolpe, Morton Feldman, and Cage himself. This book explores the interaction and influences of the visual arts on these four seminal composers. Even though each composer stressed that his aesthetic derived mainly from the visual arts, the actual transference of an aesthetic form from one medium to another took many forms, reflecting the individual sensibilities and concerns of the artists involved. The theories of performance and composition that they evolved are still controversial; taking a new and unique perspective, Johnson and his collaborators give fresh insights into the music of our time.

As John Cage once recalled, there were four musicians in the early '50s who, because of their deep interest in art, associated closely with the New York School of painters: Edgard Varèse, Stefan Wolpe, Morton Feldman, and Cage himself. This book explores the interaction and influences of the visual arts on these four seminal composers. Even though each composer stressed that his aesthetic derived mainly from the visual arts, the actual transference of an aesthetic form from one medium to another took many forms, reflecting the individual sensibilities and concerns of the artists involved. The theories of performance and composition that they evolved are still controversial; taking a new and unique perspective, Johnson and his collaborators give fresh insights into the music of our time.

Contents:
Contents Preface Looking Forward, Looking Back: 1985-1999 1.The Critical Debate and Its Origins 2.History: Representation and Misrepresentation - The Case of Abstract Expressionism: Revisionism in the 1970s and early 1980s 3.Revisionism Revisited Anna Chave, T J Clark, Eva Cockroft, David Craven, Michael Fried, Anne Gibson, Clement Greenberg, Serge Guilbaut, Michael Kimmelman, Max Kozloff, Rosalind Krauss, Michael Leja, Jane de Hart Mathews, Fred Orton, Griselda Pollock, Dierdre Robson, David and Cecile Shapiro.

Many of the greatest avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century were Ukrainians or came from Ukraine. Whether living in Paris, St. Petersburg or Kyiv, they made major contributions to painting, sculpture, theatre, and film-making. Because their connection to Ukraine has seldom been explored, English-language readers are often unaware that figures such as Archipenko, Burliuk, Malevich, and Exter were inspired both by their country of origin and their links to compatriots. This book traces the avant-garde development from its pre-war years in Paris to the end of the 1920s in Kyiv. It includes chapters on the political dilemmas faced by this generation, the contribution of Jewish artists, and the work of several emblematic figures: Mykhailo Boichuk, David Burliuk, Kazimir Malevich, Vadym Meller, Ivan Kavaleridze, and Dziga Vertov.

A distinguished list of contributors explores a variety of perspectives on the artistic culture of France and surrounding countries during the period 1870 to 1914. Aspects of dance, cinema, theater, poetry, prose, painting, social and political science, history, and medicine are covered in interdisciplinary essays that are both useful to researchers and accessible to students.

The first part of the book, which concentrates on France, assembles essays on the prose, poetry, and painting of Symbolism and Decadence, in particular Mallarme and Moreau; on avant-garde dance and performance; on women's writing; and on early cinema from Lumiere, Villiers, and Verne.

The second part explores the relations between France and several cultures. These cross-cultural investigations range from studies of the Anglo-Celtic "Rhymers' Club" to the Italian Crepusculari and include discussions of Belgian Symbolism and the Franco-Anglo-American Axis. The essays consistently point beyond the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth as they explore the multiple beginnings -- as well as the false starts -- that characterize the period.

Rudolph Ihlee (1883-1968) was a prize-winning student at the Slade where his contemporaries included Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, Maxwell Gordon Lightfoot, C.R.W. Nevinson and Edward Wadsworth. Turning his back on a flourishing career in London, he relocated to the southern French town of Collioure, where the Mediterranean light had mesmerised artists such as Derain and Matisse before him. Exploring for the first time Ihlee's impressive oeuvre in the context of a fascinating biography, this book provides a lively account of the career of an accomplished but under-appreciated artist, who found creative freedom and personal contentment on the inspirational Catalan coast.

"It was sheer chance that I encountered David Bohm's writing in 1958 ... I knew nothing about him. What struck me about his work and prompted my initial letter was his underlying effort to seek for some larger sense of reality, which seemed a very humanized search." - Charles Biederman, from the foreword of the book
This book marks the beginning of a four thousand page correspondence between Charles Biederman, founder of Constructivism in the 1930s, and David Bohm the prestigious physicist known for his interpretation of quantum theory. Available for the first time, we are given a rare opportunity to read through and engage in a remarkable transatlantic, intellectual discussion on art and science, creativity and theory.

The historic encounter around 1911 between the composer Arnold Schonberg and the painter Wassily Kandinsky occurred at a moment when the first wild revolts against traditional art - Dada and Futurism - had just manifested themselves. This volume is a collection of the papers presented at the conference on Schonberg and Kandinsky at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in January 1993. The conference focused on the varying aspects of the avant-garde from 1910 to 1913, when both Schonberg and Kandinsky formulated their far-reaching views on the ways in which music and painting should develop, and discussed their common interest in new theatrical forms of presentation.

The legendary poet and boxer Arthur Cravan, a fleeting figure on the periphery of early twentieth-century European avant-gardism, is frequently invoked as proto-Dada and Surrealist exemplar. Yet he remains an insubstantial phenomenon, not seen since 1918, lost through historical interstices, clouded in drifting untruths. This study processes philosophical positions into a practical recovery - from nineteenth-century Nietzsche to twentieth-century Deleuze - with thoughts on subjectivity, metaphor, representation and multiplicity. From fresh readings and new approaches - of Cravan's first published work as a manifesto of simulation; of contributors to his Paris review Maintenant as impostures for the Delaunays; and of the conjuring of Cravan in Picabia's elegiac film Entr'acte - The fictions of Arthur Cravan concludes with the absent poet-boxer's eventual casting off into a Surrealist legacy, and his becoming what metaphor is: a means to represent the world. -- .

The historic encounter around 1911 between the composer Arnold Schonberg and the painter Wassily Kandinsky occurred at a moment when the first wild revolts against traditional art, Dada and Futurism, had just manifested themselves. Independently of those sometimes spectacular activities, both Schonberg and Kandinsky had already concluded that the material and the compositional methods they had relied on in the past were exhausted and did not satisfy the development of their artistic ideas.
Both artists had already submitted their modes of production to a critical analysis which resulted in Schonberg's Theory of Harmony and Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art, both of 1911 - indeed the two artists had already been putting their self-criticism into practice for some time. In Schonberg's case this led to breaking with tonality; Kandinsky effected the transition to abstract painting.
This book is a collection of the papers presented at the conference on Schonberg and Kandin

This title was first published in 2003. Twenty-seven years after his death, Roger Hilton's reputation as a leading figure in British 'abstract expressionism' continues to rise. Following the major retrospective exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1993 and the drawings survey at the Tate St Ives in 1997, this lavishly illustrated account is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of the life and work of this important artist. Hilton's extraordinary career is discussed in all its phases, from the intriguing earliest explorations in paint to the inception of his first abstract pieces around 1950 and the complex and intriguing interchanges of imagery and form that mark his final works. Adrian Lewis explains the artist's mature works as both attracting the viewer and resisting easy reading, and discusses in detail the artist's debt to the Ecole de Paris and his relation to the notion of the 'act of painting' that pervaded post-war culture.

Mark Rothko's iconic paintings are some of the most profound works of twentieth-century Abstract Expressionism. This collection presents fifty large-scale artworks from the American master's colour field period (1949-1970) alongside essays by seminal modern art critic and Rothko biographer Dore Ashton and SFMOMA curator of painting and sculpture Janet Bishop. Featuring illuminating details about Rothko's life, influences, and legacy, and brimming with the emotional power and expressive colour of his groundbreaking canvases, this essential volume brings the renowned artist's luminous work to light for both longtime Rothko fans and those discovering his work for the very first time.

This title was first published in 2003. Problem pictures were very popular during the Edwardian period. These pictures invited multiple interpretations of modern life and were often slightly risque. Pamela Fletcher explores how these works of art engaged with questions of gender, sexuality and identity during their heyday.

This title was first published in 2003. Peter Lanyon stood at the forefront of landscape painting in Europe during the late 1950s and early 60s. A prominent St Ives artist, he was associated with Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo; his work also has affinities with abstract expressionism. Lanyon's career started just as the study of drawing was being liberated from 19th-century academic constrictions. His many drawings range from records of trips to the Netherlands and Italy to portrait sketches and abstract studies. Lanyon also used drawings extensively in the development of some of his most important paintings. In this study, Margaret Garlake explores Lanyon's theory and practice of drawing; the contribution of drawings to the evocation of place in paintings; his use of models and the metamorphosis of the human body into landscape images, as well as his use of three-dimensional constructions as equivalents to drawing.

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) has entered mainstream culture as one of the founding fathers of modern art. Despite his popularity, books on Duchamp often shroud his work in theoretical and critical writing. Here, instead, is a book exploring the artist's life and work in a thoroughly new and engaging manner, with short, alphabetical dictionary entries written in lively, jargon- free prose that at last allow Duchamp's work and influence to be accessible and enjoyable for a wide audience. The book features more than 200 entries on the most interesting and important artworks, relationships, people and ideas in Duchamp's life, from chess, puns, the fourth dimension, love and genius, to the Bicycle Wheel and Fountain, Walter and Louise Arensberg, Peggy Guggenheim, Katherine S. Dreier and Arturo Schwarz. A contextual introduction shows how the dictionary form has been an inspiration to artists and writers from Flaubert to the Surrealists. Underpinned by the latest scholarship and research, Thomas Girst's texts show how, in the words of contemporary artist Thomas Hirschhorn, Duchamp was 'the most intelligent mind of his time'.

This title was first published in 2001. An examination of art and patronage in Britain during the post-war years. It consists of five case studies, initially written as MA theses, that closely investigate aspects of the mechanisms of patronage outside the state institutions, while indicating structural links within it. The writers have sought to elucidate the relationship between patronage, the production of art and its dissemination. Without seeking to provide an inclusive account of patronage or art production in the early post-war years, their disparate and highly selective papers set up models for the structure of patronage under specific historical conditions. They assume an understanding that works of art are embedded in their social contexts, are products of the conditions under which they were produced, and that these contexts and conditions are complex, fluid and imbricated in one another.

Salvador Dali (1904-89) was one of the most controversial and paradoxical artists of the twentieth century. A painter of considerable virtuosity, he used a traditional illusionistic style to create disturbing images filled with references to violence, death, cannibalism and bizarre sexual practices, from the extraordinary limp watches in The Persistence of Memory to the gruesome monster in Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War and the fetishistic lobster in the famous Lobster Telephone. Born in Figueras, Spain, Dali was initially influenced by Impressionism and Cubism, but subsquently became involved with the Surrealists, the most revolutionary artists of the time. They regarded his paintings as revealing the normally hidden world of the unconscious. Indeed the Surrealists' leader, Andre Breton, remarked: "It is perhaps with Dali that for the first time the windows of the mind are opened fully wide". However, Breton later expelled him from the group for this right-wing sympathies and derided his commercial success in the United States, calling him 'Avida Dollars'. Dali's response was equally curt: " The difference between me and the Surrealists is that I am a Surrealist". Not restricting his interests to painting, Dali wrote three autobiographies, designed sets and costumes for a play by his friend Federico Garcia Lorca and collaborated with Luis Bunuel in the film Un Chien andalou, a medium which proved particularly apt for his provocative imagery.

Back in print, the most authoritative overview on the beloved Bauhaus Renaissance man and pioneer of abstraction, the first artist to take a line for a walk The many books on Paul Klee (1879-1940) published over the years should not obscure the fact that there has been no new, comprehensive Klee overview since Will Grohmann's oft-reprinted 1954 monograph. With Paul Klee: Life and Work, the Zentrum Paul Klee has set out to fill this gap, drawing on a wealth of new resources including the Klee family's archives, much of which is published here for the first time. Life and work are truly integrated in this massive, 344-page volume: Klee's vast body of work is surveyed chronologically, as the book narrates his life alongside the abundant reproductions of drawings, paintings, watercolors, sculptures, puppets and numerous archival documents and photographs (nearly 500 reproductions in total). The book divides Klee's career into eight periods: "Childhood and Youth"; "Munich and the Encounter with the Avant Garde"; "World War I and the Breakthrough to Success"; "At the Bauhaus in Weimar"; "Master of Modern Art"; "The Move to Dusseldorf and the Nazi Rise to Power"; "First Years of Emigration in Bern"; and "Final Years." The result of many years of research and labor, this magisterial publication demonstrates conclusively why Klee numbers among the most influential and best-loved artists of the past 100 years.

This first survey of Antonio Bernal's life and work, The Artist as Eyewitness features essays that assess his murals, situating them within the historical, political, and cultural frameworks of the Chicano movement. It also includes an analysis of Bernal's unpublished novel, Breaking the Silence; a biography of Bernal; reproductions of his artwork; and a selection of his writings. Drawing on personal correspondence and writings, photographs, and audiovisual materials that document Bernal's travels, artwork, and family history, this book offers an important contribution to Chicana/o studies and art history.

The Art of Fine Gifts: Twentieth-century painter, designer and wood engraver Eric Ravilious was responsible for a fascinating range of different works, from illustrations for books to designs for ceramics for the established Wedgwood pottery firm. This gorgeous new book features beautiful woodcut images of countryside life, watercolours of rolling landscapes and many of Ravilious' acute and profound war paintings.