In the thick of the Second World War, the Cairo-based Surrealist collective Art et Liberte were pioneering new art forms and mounting subversive exhibitions that sent shockwaves across local artistic circles. Born with the publication of their Manifesto Long Live Degenerate Art on December 22nd, 1938, the group rejected the convergence of art and nationalism, aligning themselves with a complex, international and evolving Surrealist movement spanning cities such as Paris, London, Mexico City, New York, Beirut and Tokyo. Art and Liberty created a distinct reworking of Surrealism, which provided a generation of disillusioned Egyptian and non-Egyptian artists and writers, men and women alike, with a platform for cultural reform and anti-Fascist protest. Surrealism in Egypt is the first comprehensive analysis of Art and Liberty's artworks, literature and critical writings on Surrealism. By addressing the group's long-lost and often misconstrued legacy, and drawing on a substantial body of previously unpublished primary documents and more than 200 field interviews, the author charts Art and Liberty's significant contribution towards a new definition of Surrealism.Moving beyond the polarizing dichotomies of Saidian Orientalism, this book rewrites the history of Surrealism itself - advocating for a new definition of the movement that reflects an inclusive vision of art history.

This publication accompanies the first exhibition dedicated to the manifestation of the Surrealist movement in Egypt. With images of over 200 works, it offers the reader a first-hand look at this artistic world. Through various visual (painting, drawing, photography) and literary media, this catalogue provides visitors with an indispensable companion for understanding the effervescent artistic context of 1930s-40s Egypt. More than example of aesthetic research, the creation of the movement was stimulated by a real revolutionary impetus. It stood against the opinions and conventions of the time. Works from the most important artists are represented, including visual artists Abdel Hadi El Gazzar, Kamel El Telmissany, Fouad Kamel, Ida Kar, Amy Nimr, and Ramsès Younan, as well as poets and writers Albert Cossery,Georges Henein, and Edmond Jabès.

Surrealism Beyond Borders challenges conventional narratives of a revolutionary artistic, literary, and philosophical movement. Tracing Surrealism's influence and legacy from the 1920s to the late 1970s in places as geographically diverse as Colombia, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Philippines, Romania, Syria, Thailand, and Turkey, this publication includes more than 300 works of art in a variety of media by well-known figures—including Dalí, Ernst, Kahlo, Magritte, and Miró—as well as numerous artists who are less widely known. Contributions from more than forty distinguished international scholars explore the network of Surrealist exchange and collaboration, artists' responses to the challenges of social and political unrest, and the experience of displacement and exile in the twentieth century. The multiple narratives addressed in this expansive book move beyond the borders of history, geography, and nationality to provocatively redraw the map of Surrealism.

Following a spectacular surge in interest for Egyptian masters, Modern Art in Egypt fills the void in Egyptian art history, chronicling the lives and legacies of six pioneering artists working under the British occupation. Using Western-style academic art as a starting point, these artists championed cultural progress, re-appropriating Egyptian visual culture from European orientalists to found a neo-Pharaonic School of Realism. Modern Art in Egypt charts the years from Muhammad Ali's educational reforms to the mass influx of foreigners during the nineteenth-century. With a focus on the al-Nahda thought movement, this book provides an overview of the key policy-makers, reformists and feminists who founded the first School of Fine Arts in Egypt, as well as cultural salons, museums and arts collectives. By combining political and aesthetic histories, Fatenn Mostafa breaks the prevailing understanding that has preferred to see non-Western art as derivatives of Western art movements. Modern Art in Egypt re-establishes Egypt's presence within the global Modernist canon.

What if Cinderella never tried on the glass slipper? Unable to prove that she's the missing princess, and unable to bear life under Lady Tremaine any longer, Cinderella attempts a fresh start, looking for work at the palace as a seamstress. But when the Grand Duke appoints her to serve under the king's visiting sister, Cinderella becomes witness to a grand conspiracy to take the king—and the prince—out of power, as well as a longstanding prejudice against fairies, including Cinderella's own Fairy Godmother. Faced with questions of love and loyalty to the kingdom, Cinderella must find a way to stop the villains of past and present . . . before it's too late.

"Art and cultural production in Egypt during much of the last hundred years has operated against a backdrop of political crisis and confrontation. Patrick Kane focuses on the turbulent changes of the 1920s to 1960s, when polemical discourse and artistic practice developed against the entrenched and co-opted conservatism of elite and state culture. Radical forms of cultural criticism and dissonance emerged, and this legacy continues to resonate through contemporary activism and dissent. Kane charts the rise of key art movements, like the Egyptian Surrealists and the Contemporary Art Group, and explores their resistance to the Nahda paradigm of elite culture, as well as Nasser's state authoritarianism and nationalist agenda. Through the work of artists and critics like Abd al-Hadi al-Gazzar and Gamal al-Sagini, Kane provides rare insight into the Egyptian cultural and aesthetic experience, and how it has been shaped within a context of political and social conflict."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

This issue of Yale French Studies on "Surrealism and Its Others"examines the works and theories of writers, artists, and thinkers who positioned themselves and their productions in dialogue with Breton's surrealism. Although surrealism always sought to distinguish itself from other movements and ideologies, its members often celebrated their commonality with many "others" outside of the official group with whom they shared their passions: Marxists, visual artists, filmmakers, psychiatrists, and ethnographers. Each of the writers, artists, and thinkers examined here were either temporarily associated with surrealism or were influenced by its collective and open spirit, even if in a primarily opposing or questioning role. In some cases, this outside perspective came from as close as Belgium and other European countries. In other cases, it came from farther away - from North Africa or North America - which reveals surrealism's engagement with non-European, formerly colonized cultures, reflects its staunchly anti-colonial stance, and confirms the movement as something more than an aesthetic phenomenon. Along with its aesthetic mission, surrealism was also, and perhaps more importantly, a powerful political and social reality. This issue examines works by artists, writers, and theorists who were all, in their own ways, located outside of yet close to surrealism and who provide us with a new perspective on this avant-garde and modernist movement. Martine Antle Surrealism and the Orient Adam Jolles The Tactile Turn: Envisioning a Post-Colonial Aesthetic in France Jonathan P. Eburne Automatism and Terror: Surrealism, Theory, and the Postwar Left Pierre Taminiaux Breton and Trotsky: The Revolutionary Memory of Surrealism Richard Stamelman Photography: The Marvelous Precipitate of Desire Robert Harvey Where's Duchamp?--Out Queering the Field Raphaelle Moine From Surrealist Cinema to Surrealism in the Cinema: Does a Surrealist Genre Exist in Film? Georgiana M. M. Colvile Between Surrealism and Magic Realism: The Early Feature Films of André Delvaux, 1926-2002--the Other Delvaux Katharine Conley Surrealism and Outsider Art: From the Automatic Message to André Breton's Collection

A fascinating examination of the ambitions and friendships of a talented group of midcentury women artists Farewell to the Muse documents what it meant to be young, ambitious, and female in the context of an avant-garde movement defined by celebrated men whose backgrounds were often quite different from those of their younger lovers and companions. Focusing on the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Whitney Chadwick charts five female friendships among the Surrealists to show how Surrealism, female friendship, and the experiences of war, loss, and trauma shaped individual women’s transitions from someone else’s muse to mature artists in their own right. Her vivid account includes the fascinating story of Claude Cahun and Suzanne Malherbe in occupied Jersey, as well as the experiences of Lee Miller and Valentine Penrose at the front line. Chadwick draws on personal correspondence between women, including the extraordinary letters between Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini during the months following the arrest and imprisonment of Carrington’s lover Max Ernst and the letter Frida Kahlo shared with her friend and lover Jacqueline Lamba years after it was written in the late 1930s. This history brings a new perspective to the political context of Surrealism as well as fresh insights on the vital importance of female friendship to its progress.

"An expansive and captivating history of an often overlooked traditional art"—Egyptian Streets In the crowded center of Historic Cairo lies a covered market lined with wonderful textiles sewn by hand in brilliant colors and intricate patterns. This is the Street of the Tentmakers, the home of the Egyptian appliqué art known as khayamiya. The Tentmakers of Cairo brings together the stories of the tentmakers and their extraordinary tents—from the huge tent pavilions, or suradeq, of the streets of Egypt, to the souvenirs of the First World War and textile artworks celebrated by quilters around the world. It traces the origins and aesthetics of the khayamiya textiles that enlivened the ceremonial tents of the Fatimid, Mamluk, and Ottoman dynasties, exploring the ways in which they challenged conventions under new patrons and technologies, inspired the paper cut-outs of Henri Matisse, and continue to preserve a legacy of skilled handcraft in an age of relentless mass production. Drawing on historical literature, interviews with tentmakers, and analysis of khayamiya from around the world, the authors reveal the stories of this unique and spectacular Egyptian textile art.