Transnational Surrealism – serie

Often regarded as an artistic movement of interwar Paris, Surrealism comprised an international community of artists, writers, and intellectuals who have aspired to change the conditions of life itself over the course of the past century. Consisting of a wide range of dedicated case studies from the 1920s to the 1970s, this book highlights the international dimensions of the Surrealist Movement, and the radical chains of thought that linked its followers across the globe: from France to Romania, and from Canada to the former Czechoslovakia. From very early on, the surrealists approached magic as a means of bypassing, discrediting, and combatting rationalism, capitalism, and other institutionalized systems and values that they saw to be constraining influences upon modern life. Surrealist Sorcery maps out how this interest in magic developed into a major area of surrealist research that led not only to theoretical but also practical explorations of the subject. Taking an international perspective, Atkin surveys this important quality of the movement and how it's remained an important element in the surrealist project and its ongoing legacy.

Often regarded as an artistic movement of interwar Paris, Surrealism comprised an international community of artists, writers, and intellectuals who have aspired to change the conditions of life itself over the course of the past century. Consisting of a wide range of dedicated case studies from the 1920s to the 1970s, this book highlights the international dimensions of the Surrealist Movement, and the radical chains of thought that linked its followers across the globe: from France to Romania, and from Canada to the former Czechoslovakia. From very early on, the surrealists approached magic as a means of bypassing, discrediting, and combatting rationalism, capitalism, and other institutionalized systems and values that they saw to be constraining influences upon modern life. Surrealist Sorcery maps out how this interest in magic developed into a major area of surrealist research that led not only to theoretical but also practical explorations of the subject. Taking an international perspective, Atkin surveys this important quality of the movement and how it's remained an important element in the surrealist project and its ongoing legacy.

Marcel Duchamp is today considered one of the most significant 20th century artists worldwide. His far-reaching influence is visible within a variety of areas of creative production and critical inquiry, extending far beyond the world of art. Duchamp Accelerated: Contemporary Perspectives examines Duchamp and his reception through a series of essays that explore the ongoing impacts of his life, ideas and practice on innumerable fields of research, practice and study. Contributors include art historians, curators, artists and writers who offer histories and approaches that actively challenge dominant narratives on Duchamp, discussing his influences from a multitude of different disciplinary and cultural perspectives. Written in the specific context of the 21st century, this volume situates the artist firmly in a global context and highlights the numerous influences – from theories of perception and the writings of Georges Bataille, to travels in Argentina – that shaped his ideas and art.This volume pushes current understandings of Duchamp beyond existing limits by accelerating the histories, encounters, dialogues and interpretations of his practice, with a focus on contemporary perspectives. The 'accelerated' Duchamp that emerges from this analysis is one who not only speeds up notions of art in relation to cultural and political histories, but one whose practice is actively informing future developments in the worlds of art and material culture today.

Marcel Duchamp is today considered one of the most significant 20th century artists worldwide. His far-reaching influence is visible within a variety of areas of creative production and critical inquiry, extending far beyond the world of art. Duchamp Accelerated: Contemporary Perspectives examines Duchamp and his reception through a series of essays that explore the ongoing impacts of his life, ideas and practice on innumerable fields of research, practice and study. Contributors include art historians, curators, artists and writers who offer histories and approaches that actively challenge dominant narratives on Duchamp, discussing his influences from a multitude of different disciplinary and cultural perspectives. Written in the specific context of the 21st century, this volume situates the artist firmly in a global context and highlights the numerous influences – from theories of perception and the writings of Georges Bataille, to travels in Argentina – that shaped his ideas and art.This volume pushes current understandings of Duchamp beyond existing limits by accelerating the histories, encounters, dialogues and interpretations of his practice, with a focus on contemporary perspectives. The 'accelerated' Duchamp that emerges from this analysis is one who not only speeds up notions of art in relation to cultural and political histories, but one whose practice is actively informing future developments in the worlds of art and material culture today.

Artist, poet, traveller and 20th-century surrealist visionary, Valentine Penrose was highly regarded as a poet and artist during her lifetime, but is yet to receive the critical attention given to her surrealist peers. Bringing to life the artist in her own right, this is the first English-language book dedicated to Penrose’s genre-defying oeuvre and its poetic quest to understand the shifting world of the 20th century from multiple perspectives. This volume explores Penrose's accomplished visual and literary work, relating it to her creative, often unconventional, philosophical ideas. It shows how her work emerged from encounters with global cultures and political issues: she travelled widely (frequently solo) through India, the Canary Islands, Africa, and across Europe - protesting against the Spanish Civil War, driving British soldiers during the London Blitz, and stationed in Algiers during the Second World War. The contributors highlight a range of unique motifs throughout Penrose’s work, covering ecology, spiritualism, folklore, mythology, lesbianism, the Gothic, the occult, and life during war. Reflecting on Penrose’s practice during a time of immense global change, the chapters provide insight into the bold practice of a female artist working against patriarchal, heteronormative, and capitalist power structures. Bringing these unpublished archival materials as well as Penrose’s published works into dialogue with works by better-known artists such as Eileen Agar and Alice Rahon, the volume offers new and creative ways of thinking through feminism, female collaboration, and queerness in surrealism. Introducing a dynamic personality to the modernist canon, it will be a vital addition to studies on British, French, and non-Western surrealisms, and to scholarship on female surrealism.

From Betty Boop to Donald Duck, Tex Avery to Walt Disney, collage animation to Japanese anime, and Claymation to 3D animation, Surrealism and Animation is the first book to identify correspondences between the art of animation and the International Surrealist Movement.Sharing a deep commitment to a reanimation of everyday life, surrealist artists and animators sought a marvellous, living form of art. Cartoons and trick films by pioneers such as Georges Méliès were influential for Salvador Dalí and André Breton, among others; many other surrealists and their associates such as Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell, Hans Richter, Len Lye, Roland Topor, Jan Švankmajer, and Lawrence Jordan turned to animated cinema and theories of animacy to express their surrealist visions.Surrealism and Animation is the first book devoted to surrealism’s vivid engagement with the history, theory, and medium of animation on a transnational basis. Featuring seventeen essays by leading and emerging scholars, as well as interviews with contemporary artists Penny Slinger and Jacolby Satterwhite, this collection investigates a shimmering range of topics on animated surrealism, including black humour, queer subjectivities, ecofeminism, Black surrealisms, and more.

From Betty Boop to Donald Duck, Tex Avery to Walt Disney, collage animation to Japanese anime, and Claymation to 3D animation, Surrealism and Animation is the first book to identify correspondences between the art of animation and the International Surrealist Movement.Sharing a deep commitment to a reanimation of everyday life, surrealist artists and animators sought a marvellous, living form of art. Cartoons and trick films by pioneers such as Georges Méliès were influential for Salvador Dalí and André Breton, among others; many other surrealists and their associates such as Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell, Hans Richter, Len Lye, Roland Topor, Jan Švankmajer, and Lawrence Jordan turned to animated cinema and theories of animacy to express their surrealist visions.Surrealism and Animation is the first book devoted to surrealism’s vivid engagement with the history, theory, and medium of animation on a transnational basis. Featuring seventeen essays by leading and emerging scholars, as well as interviews with contemporary artists Penny Slinger and Jacolby Satterwhite, this collection investigates a shimmering range of topics on animated surrealism, including black humour, queer subjectivities, ecofeminism, Black surrealisms, and more.

The art of Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) is usually viewed as quite distinct from Surrealism, a movement which the artist himself displayed some hostility towards. However, Rauschenberg had a very positive reception among Surrealists, particularly across the period 1959-69.In the face of Rauschenberg’s avowals of his own ‘literalism’ and insistence on his art as ‘facts,’ this book gathers generous evidence of the poetic, metaphorical, allusive, associative and connotative dimensions of the artist's oeuvre as identified by Surrealists, and thus extrapolates new readings from Rauschenberg's key works on that basis. By viewing Rauschenberg’s art against the expansion of the cultural influence of the United States in Europe in the period after the Second World War and the increasingly politicized activities of the Surrealists in the era of the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62), Robert Rauschenberg and Surrealism shows how poetic inference of the artist’s work was turned towards political interpretation. By analysing Rauschenberg’s art in the context of Surrealism, and drawing from it new interpretations and perspectives, this volume simultaneously situates the Surrealist movement in 1960s American art criticism and history.