For many artists and intellectuals in East Germany, daily life had an undeniably surreal aspect, from the numbing repetition of Communist Party jargon to the fear and paranoia engendered by the Stasi. Echoes of Surrealism surveys the ways in which a sense of the surreal infused literature and art across the lifespan of the GDR, focusing on individual authors, visual artists, directors, musicians, and other figures who have employed surrealist techniques in their work. It provides a new framework for understanding East German culture, exploring aesthetic practices that offered an alternative to rigid government policies and questioned and confronted the status quo.

For many artists and intellectuals in East Germany, daily life had an undeniably surreal aspect, from the numbing repetition of Communist Party jargon to the fear and paranoia engendered by the Stasi. Echoes of Surrealism surveys the ways in which a sense of the surreal infused literature and art across the lifespan of the GDR, focusing on individual authors, visual artists, directors, musicians, and other figures who have employed surrealist techniques in their work. It provides a new framework for understanding East German culture, exploring aesthetic practices that offered an alternative to rigid government policies and questioned and confronted the status quo.

While Surrealism was becoming out of fashion in Europe in the 1930s, it enjoyed a growing popularity on the other side of the Atlantic. This text traces the history of this movement in the United States from about 1930 to 1950 by examining its manifestations throughout the country.

Drawing, often considered a minor art form, was central to surrealism from its very beginnings. Automatic drawing, exquisite corpses, and frottage are just a few of the techniques invented by surrealists to tap into the subconscious realm. Drawing Surrealism recognizes the medium as a fundamental form of surrealist expression and explores its impact on other media. Works of collage, photography, and even painting are presented in the context of drawing as a metaphor for innovation and experimentation. This volume, in addition to brilliant reproductions of drawings and other works by approximately one hundred artists, includes a substantial historical essay and illustrated chronology by the exhibition's curator, Leslie Jones, as well as informative essays by leading scholars Isabelle Dervaux and Susan Laxton. It also encompasses the contributions of a wide array of artists on a global scale - from the great figures in surrealist history to lesser-known surrealists from Japan, central Europe, and the Americas, where the movement had profound and lasting effects on the arts. Drawing Surrealism, which will become a definitive resource on the subject, offers a deep understanding of the techniques and concerns that made surrealism such an intimate perceptual revolution.

A comprehensive survey of the 20th-century's longest lasting art movement.

Introduction with 30 photographs plus a timeline of the most important political, cultural, scientific and sporting events that took place during the movement; 35 most important works and artists included.

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.

A select anthology of the Dada movement focusing mainly on visual artists features prose, poetry, and polemics from such notables as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Tristan Tzara, Hanna Hèoch, George Grosz, and Jean Cocteau.

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.