The History Of Surrealism

Tracing the movement from its origins in the 1920s to its decline in the 1950s and 1960s, Durozoi tells the history of Surrealism through its activities, publications, and reviews, demonstrating its close ties to some of the most explosive political, as well as creative, debates of the twentieth century. Unlike other histories, which focus mainly on the pre-World War II years of the movement in Paris, Durozoi covers both a wider chronological and geographic range, treating in detail the postwar years and Surrealism's colonization of Latin America, the United States, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Italy, and North Africa. Drawing on documentary and visual evidence--including 1,000 photos, many of them in color--he illuminates all the intellectual and artistic aspects of the movement, from literature and philosophy to painting, photography, and film. All the Surrealist stars and their most important works are here--Aragon, Borges, Breton, Buñuel, Cocteau, Crevel, Dalí, Desnos, Ernst, Man Ray, Soupault, and many more--for all of whom Durozoi has provided brief biographical notes in addition to featuring them in the main text.

This book is a new account of the surrealist movement in France between the two world wars. It examines the uses that surrealist artists and writers made of ideas and images associated with the French Revolution, describing a complex relationship between surrealism's avant-garde revolt and its powerful sense of history and heritage. Focusing on both texts and images by key figures such as Louis Aragon, Georges Bataille, Jacques-André Boiffard, André Breton, Robert Desnos, Max Ernst, Max Morise, and Man Ray, this book situates surrealist material in the wider context of the literary and visual arts of the period through the theme of revolution. It raises important questions about the politics of representing French history, literary and political memorial spaces, monumental representations of the past and critical responses to them, imaginary portraiture and revolutionary spectatorship. The study shows that a full understanding of surrealism requires a detailed account of its attitude to revolution, and that understanding this surrealist concept of revolution means accounting for the complex historical imagination at its heart.

The classic Photofile series brings together the best work of the world's greatest photographers in an attractive format and at a reasonable price. Handsome and collectible, the books each contain reproductions in color and/or duotone, plus a critical introduction and a bibliography. Paris in the early 1920s saw the growth of a new art form called surrealism. Both a formal movement and a spiritual orientation, surrealism embraced ethics and politics as well as the arts. Surrealists sought to create a medium that liberated the subconscious mind, and many artists and photographers captured this revolution through photographic images. This new survey includes works by Max Ernst, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, René Magritte, Meret Oppenheim, and more.

Despite surrealism's celebration of the subconscious and eschewal of reason, the movement was nevertheless concerned with definitions. Andre Breton included a dictionary-style entry for surrealisme in his 1924 Manifeste du surrealisme and later explored juxtapositions of the absurd and the mundane in the 1938 Dictionnaire abrege du surrealisme. To the mountain of literature that seeks to organize the far-reaching intellectual movement, Aspley (honorary fellow, Univ. of Edinburgh) adds this handy volume that organizes the breadth of surrealism into concise entries on artists, writers, artworks, and themes. A chronology highlights events that sparked the surrealist imagination, activities of formal surrealist groups, and exhibitions. An introductory essay and extensive bibliography are included. One of the few English-language reference sources about surrealism published in the last decade, Aspley's dictionary is useful for quick access to key terms and biographies. For a book devoted to a movement characterized by arresting visual imagery, the lack of illustrations is annoying. Even Rene Passeron's 1978 Phaidon Encyclopedia of Surrealism (CH, May'79) reprints artworks in color. For a richly illustrated and comprehensive history, see Gerard Durozi's History of the Surrealist Movement (CH, Nov'02, 40-1316). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through graduate students. Lower-division Undergraduates; Upper-division Undergraduates; Graduate Students. Reviewed by A. H. Simmons.

Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith A down and dirty survey of the Surrealist movement written in 1970 by the leading Situationist theorist of the time. Locating Surrealism's 'original sin' in its ideological nature, Vaneigem clearly identifies the 'radioactive fragment of radicalism' that the movement never quite managed to shed, and provides an unequivocal answer to the question 'What was alive and what was dead in Surrealism?' The Situationists attitudes both positive and negative, towards their Surrealist predecessors are revealed in full.