Now available in paperback, this book remains the definitive survey of the life and work of Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington (1917-2011). Carrington burst onto the Surrealist scene in 1936, when, as a precocious nineteen-year-old debutante, she escaped the stultifying demands of her wealthy English family by running away to Paris with her lover Max Ernst. She was immediately championed by Andre Breton, who responded enthusiastically to her fantastical, dark and satirical writing style and her interest in fairy tales and the occult. Her stories were included in Surrealist publications, and her paintings in the Surrealists' exhibitions. After the dramas and tragic separations of the Second World War, Carrington ended up in the 1940s as part of the circle of Surrealist European emigres living in Mexico City. Close friends with Luis Bunuel, Benjamin Peret, Octavio Paz and a host of both expatriate Surrealists and Mexican modernists, Carrington was at the centre of Mexican cultural life, while still maintaining her European connections. Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art provides a fascinating overview of this intriguing artist's rich body of work. The author considers Carrington's preoccupation with alchemy and the occult, and explores the influence of indigenous Mexican culture and beliefs on her production.

In 2006 journalist Joanna Moorhead discovered that her father's cousin, Prim, who had disappeared many decades earlier, was now a famous artist in Mexico. Although rarely spoken of in her own family (regarded as a black sheep, a wild child; someone they were better off without) in the meantime Leonora Carrington had become a national treasure in Mexico, where she now lived, while her paintings are fetching ever-higher prices at auction today. Intrigued by her story, Joanna set off to Mexico City to find her lost relation. Later she was to return to Mexico ten times more between then and Leonora's death in 2011, sometimes staying for months at a time and subsequently travelling around Britain and through Europe in search of the loose ends of her tale. They spent days talking and reading together, drinking tea and tequila, going for walks and to parties and eating take away pizzas or dining out in her local restaurants as Leonora told Joanna the wild and amazing truth about a life that had taken her from the suffocating existence of a debutante in London via war-torn France with her lover, Max Ernst, to incarceration in an asylum and finally to the life of a recluse in Mexico City. Leonora was one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1930s, a founding member of the Women's Liberation Movement in Mexico during the 1970s and a woman whose reputation will survive not only as a muse but as a novelist and a great artist. This book is the extraordinary story of Leonora Carrington's life, and of the friendship between two women, related by blood but previously unknown to one another, whose encounters were to change both their lives.

The third edition of this classic study, a thorough introduction to one of the most popular and recognizable artists of the 20th century. Salvador Dali was, and remains, among the most universally recognizable artists of the twentieth century. What accounts for this popularity? His excellence as an artist? Or his genius as a self-publicist? In this searching text, partly based on interviews with the artist and fully revised, extended and updated for this edition, Dawn Ades considers the Dali phenomenon. From his early years, his artistic friendships and the development of his technique and style, to his relationship with the Surrealists and exploitation of Freudian ideas, and on to his post-war paintings, this essential study places Dali in social, historical and artistic context, and casts new light on the full range of his creativity.

From its foundation in 1957 to its self-dissolution in 1972, the Situationist International established itself as one of the most radical revolutionary organisations of the twentieth century. This book brings together leading researchers on the SI to provide a comprehensive critical analysis of the group's key concepts and contexts, from its relationship to earlier artistic avant-gardes, romanticism, Hegelianism, the history of the workers' movement and May '68 to the concepts and practices of 'spectacle', 'constructed situations', 'everyday life' and 'detournement'. The volume also considers historically underexamined areas of the SI, including the situation of women in the group and its opposition to colonialism and racism. With contributions from a broad range of thinkers including Anselm Jappe and Michael Loewy, this account takes a fresh look at the complex workings of a group that has come to define radical politics and culture in the post-war period.

In Surrealist sabotage and the war on work, art historian Abigail Susik uncovers the expansive parameters of the international surrealist movement's ongoing engagement with an aesthetics of sabotage between the 1920s and the 1970s, demonstrating how surrealists unceasingly sought to transform the work of art into a form of unmanageable anti-work. In four case studies devoted to surrealism's transatlantic war on work, Susik analyses how artworks and texts by Man Ray, Andre Breton, Simone Breton, Andre Thirion, Oscar Dominguez, Konrad Klapheck, and the Chicago surrealists, among others, were pivotally impacted by the intransigent surrealist concepts of principled work refusal, permanent strike, and autonomous pleasure. Underscoring surrealism's profound relevance for readers engaged in ongoing debates about gendered labour and the wage gap, endemic over-work and exploitation, and the vicissitudes of knowledge work and the gig economy, Surrealist sabotage and the war on work reveals that surrealism's creative work refusal retains immense relevance in our wired world. -- .

This is the first volume to focus on the diverse permutations of international surrealist cinema after the canonical interwar period. The collection features eleven original contributions by prominent scholars such as Tom Gunning, Michael Loewy, Gavin Parkinson and Michael Richardson, alongside other leading and emerging researchers. An introductory chapter offers a historical overview as well as a theoretical framework for specific methodological approaches. The collection demonstrates that renowned figures such as Leonora Carrington, Maya Deren, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Jan Svankmajer took part in shaping a vibrant and distinctive surrealist film culture following the Second World War. Addressing highly influential films and directors related to international surrealism during the second half of the twentieth century, it expands the purview of both surrealism and film studies by situating surrealism as a major force in postwar cinema. -- .

This is a critical edition of the art writings of the painter Paul Nash (1889-1946). Alongside the very different Wyndham Lewis, Nash was the only major British artist of his generation who was also a regular critic of, and essayist on, art. He knew and read the leading critics of his day, and evolved a distinctive position in relation to them. His relationship to British modernism and the mutual stimulus of art and criticism, the opening up of his criticism and that of others to poetic and literary influences under the influence of Surrealism is discussed by Andrew Causey.

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was an English surrealist artist and writer who emigrated to Mexico after the Second World War. This volume approaches Carrington as a major international figure in modern and contemporary art, literature and thought. It offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the intellectual, literary and artistic currents that animate her contribution to experimental art movements throughout the Western Hemisphere, including surrealism and magical realism. The book contains nine chapters from scholars of modern literature and art, each focusing on a major feature in Carrington's career. It also features a visual essay drawn from the 2015 Tate Liverpool exhibition Leonora Carrington: Transgressing Discipline, and two experimental essays by the novelist Chloe Aridjis and the scholar Gabriel Weisz, Carrington's son. This collection offers a resource for students, researchers and readers interested in Carrington's works. -- .

David Hopkins analyses the extensive network of shared concerns and images in the work of Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst, the greatest names associated with Dada and Surrealist art. This book covers a broad period from c.1912 to the mid-1940s, during which the emergence of Dada and Surrealism in Europe and the United States challenged earlier movements such as Cubism and Expressionism, creating scope for the expression of the unconscious fears and desires of artists acutely sensitive to the troubled nature of their times. Examining Duchamp's and Ernst's subversion and manipulation of religious and hermetic beliefs such as Catholicism, Rosicrucianism and Masonry, David Hopkins demonstrates the ways in which these esoteric concerns intersect with themes of peculiarly contemporary relevance, including the social construction of gender and notions of ordering and taxonomy. This detailed comparison of components of Duchamp's and Ernst's work reveals fascinating structural patterns, enabling the reader to discover an entirely new way of understanding the mechanisms underlying Dada and Surrealist iconography.

Duplessis provides a historical introduction to surrealism and examines its techniques and its use in poetry, painting, architecture, and theatre.

Pailthorpe's important contributions to the development of psychoanalysis are largely overlooked now * Many of her key writings are published here for the first time * Her work ties into the contemporary interest in links between psychoanalysis and creative endeavour

Pailthorpe's important contributions to the development of psychoanalysis are largely overlooked now * Many of her key writings are published here for the first time * Her work ties into the contemporary interest in links between psychoanalysis and creative endeavour

This book provides a conceptual and global overview of the field of Surrealist studies. Methodologically, the companion considers Surrealism's many achievements, but also its historical shortcomings, to illuminate its connections to the historical and cultural moment(s) from which it originated and to assess both the ways in which it still shapes our world in inspiring ways and the ways in which it might appear problematic as we look back at it from a twenty-first-century vantage point. Contributions from experienced scholars will enable professors to teach the subject more broadly, by opening their eyes to aspects of the field that are on the margins of their expertise, and it will enable scholars to identify new areas of study in their own work, by indicating lines of research at a tangent to their own. The companion will reflect the interdisciplinarity of Surrealism by incorporating discussions pertaining to the visual arts, as well as literature, film, and political and intellectual history.

No other art movement in history has contained two artists as different as Magritte and Miro. This is because Surrealism was not in origin an art movement, but a philosophical strategy. It was a way of life - a rebellion against the establishment that had given the world the hideous slaughter of the First World War. Instead of trying to analyse the work of the Surrealists, bestselling author and Surrealist artist Desmond Morris concentrates on them as people - as remarkable individuals. What were their personalities, their predilections, their character strengths and flaws? Did they enjoy a social life or were they loners? Were they bold eccentrics or timid recluses? Drawing on the author's personal knowledge of the Surrealists, this book captures their life histories, idiosyncrasies and often-complex love lives, vividly illustrated with images of the artists and their works. The arts of Surrealism were both spectacular and international, shaped by the darkest, most irrational workings of the unconscious. Shocking, witty and always entertaining, Morris's tales illuminate the striking variation in approaches to the Surrealist philosophy, both in the artists' work and in their lives. With 72 illustrations

The Surrealist Movement is an international intellectual movement that has led a sustained questioning of the basis of human experience under twentieth- and twenty-first century modernity since its founding in the early 1920s. Influenced by the psychoanalytical teachings of Sigmund Freud, Surrealism emerged among the generation that had witnessed the insanity and horror of the First World War, and was conceived of as a framework for investigating the little-understood phenomena of dreams and the unconscious. In these territories the surrealists recognized an alternative axis of human experience that did not align with the rational, workaday rhythms of modern life, and which instead revealed the extent to which individual subjectivity had been constrained by post-Enlightenment rationalism and by the economic forces governing the post-industrial world. Against these trends, the Surrealist Movement has sought to re-evaluate the foundations of modern society and reassert the primacy of the imagination for almost a century to-date. This book offers focused introductions to numerous writers, poets, artists, filmmakers, precursors, groups, movements, events, concepts, cultures, nations and publications connected to Surrealism, providing orientation for students and casual readers alike. Historical Dictionary of Surrealism, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 200 cross-referenced entries on the Surrealist Movement's engagement with the realms of politics, philosophy, science, poetry, art and cinema, and charts the international surrealist community's diverse explorations of specific thematic territories such as magic, occultism, mythology, eroticism and gothicism. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about surrealism.

Lee Miller: Photography, surrealism, and beyond offers a major new critical discussion of the work of one of the most significant twentieth-century photographers. Applying art-theoretical analyses and insights afforded by previously unseen material in archives and collections, Patricia Allmer undertakes revisionary readings of many of Miller's works, including Portrait of Space, Severed Breast from Radical Mastectomy and the famous series of war photographs produced for Vogue. At the same time she sheds new light on Miller's relations with surrealist groups and American avant-gardes, on her experiences in Paris, Egypt and World War II Europe and on her critically neglected post-war activities. Above all, Lee Miller: Photography, surrealism, and beyond focuses critical attention on the works themselves. As a result it will be of great interest to students and scholars of twentieth-century photography, modernism and surrealism. -- .

Surrealism was one of the most influential cultural movements of the twentieth century. Subverting the dogmas of modernism and rationalism in art and literature, it also had a profound impact on the world of design. From Dali's Mae West Lips sofa to Schiaparelli's 'shocking pink' haute couture, Surrealism championed the power of the unconscious, of dreams and hidden desires - and liberated design from convention and functionalism. Published to accompany the exhibition Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924 - Today, this book celebrates Surrealism's enduring legacy. It features groundbreaking fashion by Mary Katrantzou and Dior, as well as British artists and designers, including Tim Walker, Jonathan Trayte and Vince Fraser. Alongside essays by leading experts, such as Ghislaine Wood and Alyce Mahon, are interviews with practitioners who are carrying the torch of Surrealism today, including Viviane Sassen, Dunne & Raby and the Campana Brothers. The book concludes with a glimpse into some of the recent forms of art and resistance the movement has inspired, such as Afro-Surrealism, as well as the surprising connections between Surrealist thinking and one of the most contentious technological developments of our time: artificial intelligence. Contributors: Glenn Adamson, Yasmina Atta, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Susanna Brown, Campana Brothers, Dunne & Raby, Alyce Mahon, Justin McGuirk, Priya Khanchandani, Viviane Sassen, Ayoola Solarin, Ghislaine Wood, Najla El Zein

With 101 "Life" magazine covers to his credit, Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) was one of the leading portrait photographers of his time. In addition to his distinguished career in photojournalism, Halsman was one of the great pioneers of experimental photography, motivated by a profound desire to push this youngest of art forms toward new frontiers by using innovative and unorthodox photographic techniques.
One of Halsman's favorite subjects was Salvarod Dali, the glittering and controversial painter and theorist with whom the photographer shared a unique friendship and extraordinary professional collaboration that spanned over thirty years. Whenever Dali imagined a photograph so strange that its production seemed impossible, Halsman tried to find the solution, and invariably succeeded.
As Halsman explains in his postface, "Dali's Mustache" is the fruit of this marriage of the minds. The jointly conceived and seemingly nonsensical questions and answers reveal the gleeful humor and assumed cynicism for which Dali is famous, while the marvelous and inspired images of Dali's mustache brilliantly display Halsman's consummate skill and extraordinary inventiveness as a photographer.
This combination of wit, absurdity, and the offhandedly profound is irresistible and has contributed to the enduring fascination inspired by this unique photographic interview, which has become a cult classic and valuable collector's item since its original publication in 1954. The present volume faithfully reproduces the first edition and will introduce a new generation to the irreverent humor and imaginative genius of two great artists.

Anarchism and the Advent of Paris Dada sheds new light on Paris Dada's role in developing the anarchist and individualist philosophies that helped shape the cultural dialogue in France following the First World War. Drawing on such surviving documentation as correspondence, criticism, periodicals, pamphlets, and manifestoes, this book argues that, contrary to received wisdom, Dada was driven by a vision of social change through radical cultural upheaval. The first book-length study to interrogate the Paris Dadaists' complex and often contested position in the postwar groundswell of anarcho-individualism, Anarchism and the Advent of Paris Dada offers an unprecedented analysis of Paris Dada literature and art in relation to anarchism, and also revives a variety of little known anarcho-individualist texts and periodicals. In doing so, it reveals the general ideological diversity of the postwar French avant-garde and identifies its anarchist concerns; in addition, it challenges the accepted paradigm that postwar cultural politics were monolithically nationalist. By positioning Paris Dada in its anarchist context, this volume addresses a long-ignored lacuna in Dada scholarship and, more broadly, takes its place alongside the numerous studies that over the past two decades have problematized the politics of modern art, literature, and culture.

An interrogation of the notion of space in Surrealist theory and philosophy, this study analyzes the manifestations of space in the paintings and writings done in the framework of the Surrealist Movement. Haim Finkelstein introduces the 'screen' as an important spatial paradigm that clarifies and extends the understanding of Surrealism as it unfolds in the 1920s, exploring the screen and layered depth as fundamental structuring principles associated with the representation of the mental space and of the internal processes that eventually came to be linked with the Surrealist concept of psychic automatism. Extending the discussion of the concepts at stake for Surrealist visual art into the context of film, literature and criticism, this study sheds new light on the way 'film thinking' permeates Surrealist thought and aesthetics. In early chapters, Finkelstein looks at the concept of the screen as emblematic of a strand of spatial apprehension that informs the work of young writers in the 1920s, such as Robert Desnos and Louis Aragon. He goes on to explore the way the spatial character of the serial films of Louis Feuillade intimated to the Surrealists a related mode of vision, associated with perception of the mystery and the Marvelous lurking behind the surfaces of quotidian reality. The dialectics informing Surrealist thought with regard to the surfaces of the real (with walls, doors and windows as controlling images), are shown to be at the basis of Andre Breton's notion of the picture as a window. Contrary to the traditional sense of this metaphor, Breton's 'window' is informed by the screen paradigm, with its surface serving as a locus of a dialectics of transparency and opacity, permeability and reflectivity. The main aesthetic and conceptual issues that come up in the consideration of Breton's window metaphor lay the groundwork for an analysis of the work of Giorgio de Chirico, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, and Joan Miro. The concluding chapter considers several issues that dominate the Surrealist spatiality in the 1930s. Derived from the various spatial concepts associated with the screen paradigm, at times in contradistinction to them, these issues, as the author argues, reflect a gradual eclipse of the screen paradigm in the early years of the decade.

Emerging from the disruption of the First World War, surrealism confronted the resulting 'crisis of consciousness' in a way that was arguably more profound than any other cultural movement of the time. The past few decades have seen an expansion of interest in surrealist writers, whose contribution to the history of ideas in the twentieth-century is only now being recognised. Surrealism: Key Concepts is the first book in English to present an overview of surrealism through the central ideas motivating the popular movement. An international team of contributors provide an accessible examination of the key concepts, emphasising their relevance to current debates in social and cultural theory. This book will be an invaluable guide for students studying a range of disciplines, including Philosophy, Anthropology, Sociology and Cultural Studies, and anyone who wishes to engage critically with surrealism for the first time. Contributors: Dawn Ades, Joyce Cheng, Jonathan P. Eburne, Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Guy Girard, Raihan Kadri, Michael Loewy, Jean-Michel Rabate, Michael Richardson, Donna Roberts, Bertrand Schmitt, Georges Sebbag, Raymond Spiteri, and Michael Stone-Richards.

Belgian artist Rene Magritte's biography is a key element of his art. His life is infused with bizarre moments: a surreal journey oscillating between fact and fiction that he always conducted as the straight-faced bowler-hatted man. The events of Magritte's childhood played an important part in creating the surrealist, but it was his popular culture borrowings from crime fiction, advertising and postcards that has made his work instantly recognizable. The often unreliable nature of Magritte's accounts of his own life have transformed his public image into a kind of fictional character rather than a 'real person'. He would shape his own life story to be its own surreal work of art.

In A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning's Chasm, Catriona McAra offers the first critical study of the literary work of the celebrated American painter and sculptor Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012). McAra fills a major gap in the scholarship, repositioning Tanning's writing at the centre of her entire creative oeuvre and focusing on a little-known short story "Abyss," a gothic-flavoured, desert adventure which Tanning worked on intermittently throughout her creative life, finally publishing it in 2004 as Chasm: A Weekend. McAra performs a major reassessment of the visual and literary principles upon which the surrealist movement was initially founded. Combining a groundbreaking methodological approach with reference to cultural theory and feminist aesthetics as well as Tanning's unpublished journals and notes, McAra reveals Tanning as a key player in contemporary art practice as well as in the historical surrealist milieu.