A close analysis of Bunuel's and the Order of Toledo's making of iconoclastic public art. In 1923, Luis Bunuel established the Order of Toledo, a parody order of knights whose members included Salvador Dali, Garcia Lorca, and Rafael Alberti. Together, they often visited the ancient Spanish capital to stroll through itslabyrinthine streets. But these excursions on the part of Bunuel and the Brotherhood were more than simple episodes of cultural sightseeing; they were happenings, public interventions in space. This book explores the anti-artistic aspect of these activities and urban perambulations. Are these practices similar to the flanerie of the Dadaists and French Surrealists? Taking into account their liberal, Spanish context, what was new about them, and what did they mean? Does their aesthetic experimentation make for ideological radicalism? And what impact do these first steps have on Bunuel's subsequent work and his later ideological trajectory? Maria Soledad Fernandez Utrera is Associate Professor of Spanish at The University of British Columbia.

This book, written in Spanish, focuses on the literary and artistic works of such avant-garde figures as Ram n G mez de la Serna, Benjam n Jarn s, Antonio de Obreg n, Juan Chab s, Rosa Chacel, Claudio de la Torre, Almada Negreiros, Maruja Mallo, Mauricio Amster, Manuel Reinoso, Diego Rivera, and Angeles Santos y Victorio Macho. It identifies the attempt to integrate conflicting epistemological, ethical, and sociopolitical categories as the organizational principle driving the avant-garde novel and art. Seen as a means of escaping the Cartesian dualism of mind and matter, the conflict between ethical institutionism and utilitarianism, and the opposition of liberalism by socialism, this "middle path" manifests itself in the avant-garde on various levels: the theory of representation, the development of the protagonist, and the concept of history.