Surrealist Sorcery Objects, Theories and Practices of Magic in the Surrealist Movement
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Will Atkin is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Art History at the University of Nottingham, UKA work of extreme erudition, Atkin’s book and its transnational framework contributes powerfully to long-standing debates on modernist primitivism and ethnographic forms of Surrealism. Slowly but surely, an underground Surrealism emerges, drawing the reader especially into the catastrophic war years and their aftermath.
George Baker, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, UCLA, USA
Illuminating a compelling archive spanning the 1920s through to the 1970s, and covering a wide range of international sources, this book demonstrates that surrealist art had a significant investment in magical practices as a means of reanimating and redeeming certain aspects of modern existence.
Abigail Susik, author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (2021), and Associate Professor of Art History, Willamette University, USA
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.
Introduction
List of Figures
List of Colour Plates
1. Of Gold, Meteors, Stones and Crystals: Alchemy and the Object in the works of André Breton, Salvador Dalí, and Ithell Colquhoun, 1929-1949
2. Satanic Sorcery: Black Magic, Demons and Vampires in the Objects and Writings of Gherasim Luca, 1939-1945
3. Cosmic Magic: Talismans and Ciphers in the Objects of Victor Brauner, 1940-1946
4. Primordial Myth and Magic in the Writings of André Breton and Benjamin Péret, 1942-1959
5. Ritual Magic in the Masks and Fetishes of Mimi Parent and Jean Benoît, 1959-1976
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Exploring all aspects of the Surrealist movement since its establishment in Europe in the 1920s, this series places particular emphasis on the international scope of the movement and on the long history of Surrealism, extending up to the present day. ‘Transnational Surrealism’ is a venue for scholars from multiple fields to engage with Surrealist history, with a particular focus on themes and concepts from the 1940s onwards, or on the activities of Surrealist groups in areas of the world that lie beyond the usual reach of studies of Surrealism such as Africa, China, Japan, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe and the USA. In tracing connections between diverse global contexts, the series aims to question ideas of national forms of expression. Monographic studies of individual groups, artists and writers are welcome, especially those that promise to uncover new or relatively overlooked areas of Surrealist activity. Proposals that promote gender and racial diversity in Surrealism studies are particularly encouraged given the fundamental aims of the series.
Editors
Abigail Susik, Willamette University, USA
Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Norwich University of the Arts, UK
Advisory Board
Raymond Spiteri, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand
Catherine L. Hansen, The University of Tokyo, Japan
María Clara Bernal, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Fabrice Flahutez, Université Jean Monnet de Saint-Étienne, France
Natalya Lusty, University of Melbourne, Australia
Ambra D’Antone, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Italy and the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florenz, Italy
Gavin Parkinson, The Courtauld Institute of Art, UK
Kristoffer Noheden, Stockholm University, Sweden
Michael Richardson, joint editor of The Surrealism Reader (2015), and Visiting Fellow (honorary) at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK