This work reflects the search for proof of the existence of a mind that may be accurately called surrealist. Concentrating on painting and poetry, it shows how the surrealists envisaged, reacted to, and practiced art as a creative activity.

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.

This book examines post-war surrealist cinema in relation to surrealism’s change in direction towards myth and magic following World War II. Intermedial and interdisciplinary, the book unites cinema studies with art history and the study of Western esotericism, closely engaging with a wide range of primary sources, including surrealist journals, art, exhibitions, and writings. Kristoffer Noheden looks to the Danish surrealist artist Wilhelm Freddie’s forays into the experimental short film, the French poet Benjamin Péret’s contribution to the documentary film L’Invention du monde, the Argentinean-born filmmaker Nelly Kaplan’s feature films, and the Czech animator Jan Svankmajer’s work in short and feature films. The book traces a continuous engagement with myth and magic throughout these films, uncovering a previously unknown strain of occult imagery in surrealist cinema. It broadens the scope of the study of not only surrealist cinema, but of surrealism across the art forms. Surrealism, Cinema, and the Search for a New Myth will appeal to film scholars, art historians, and those interested in the impact of occultism on modern culture, film, and the arts.

This volume examines the relationship between occultism and Surrealism, specifically exploring the reception and appropriation of occult thought, motifs, tropes and techniques by Surrealist artists and writers in Europe and the Americas, from the 1920s through the 1960s. Its central focus is the specific use of occultism as a site of political and social resistance, ideological contestation, subversion and revolution. Additional focus is placed on the ways occultism was implicated in Surrealist discourses on identity, gender, sexuality, utopianism and radicalism.

aka Marcel Duchamp is an anthology of recent essays by leading scholars on Marcel Duchamp, arguably the most influential artist of the twentieth century. With scholarship addressing the full range of Duchamp's career, these papers examine how Duchamp's influence grew and impressed itself upon his contemporaries and subsequent generations of artists. Duchamp provides an illuminating model of the dynamics of play in construction of artistic identity and legacy, which includes both personal volition and contributions made by fellow artists, critics, and historians. This volume is not only important for its contributions to Duchamp studies and the light it sheds on the larger impact of Duchamp's art and career on modern and contemporary art, but also for what it reveals about how the history of art itself is shaped over time by shifting agendas, evolving methodologies, and new discoveries.

Re-viewing surrealism in Charles Henri Ford's Poem posters (1964-5) -- Encountering surrealism : Nadja (1928) and autobiographical beat writing -- Blackening surrealism : Ted Joans' ethnographic surrealist historiography -- Turning on surrealism : queer psychedelia -- Hystericising surrealism : the marvelous in popular culture.

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.

Surrealism is widely thought of as an artistic movement that flourished in Europe between the two world wars. However, during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, diverse radical affinity groups, underground subcultures, and student protest movements proclaimed their connections to surrealism. Radical Dreams argues that surrealism was more than an avant-garde art movement; it was a living current of anti-authoritarian resistance. Featuring perspectives from scholars across the humanities and, distinctively, from contemporary surrealist practitioners, this volume examines surrealism’s role in postwar oppositional cultures. It demonstrates how surrealism’s committed engagement extends beyond the parameters of an artistic style or historical period, with chapters devoted to Afrosurrealism, Ted Joans, punk, the Situationist International, the student protests of May ’68, and other topics. Privileging interdisciplinary, transhistorical, and material culture approaches, contributors address surrealism’s interaction with New Left politics, protest movements, the sexual revolution, psychedelia, and other subcultural trends around the globe. A revelatory work, Radical Dreams definitively shows that the surrealist movement was synonymous with cultural and political radicalism. It will be especially valuable to those interested in the avant-garde, contemporary art, and radical social movements. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Jonathan P. Eburne, David Hopkins, Claire Howard, Michael Löwy, Alyce Mahon, Gavin Parkinson, Grégory Pierrot, Penelope Rosemont, Ron Sakolsky, Marie Arleth Skov, Ryan Standfest, and Sandra Zalman.

This Biographical Dictionary describes the lives, works and aspirations of more than 150 women and men who were active in, or part of, women’s movements and feminisms in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Thus, it challenges the widely held belief that there was no historical feminism in this part of Europe. These innovative and often moving biographical portraits not only show that feminists existed here, but also that they were widespread and diverse, and included Romanian princesses, Serbian philosophers and peasants, Latvian and Slovakian novelists, Albanian teachers, Hungarian Christian social workers and activists of the Catholic women’s movement, Austrian factory workers, Bulgarian feminist scientists and socialist feminists, Russian radicals, philanthropists, militant suffragists and Bolshevik activists, prominent writers and philosophers of the Ottoman era, as well as Turkish republican leftist political activists and nationalists, internationally recognized Greek feminist leaders, Estonian pharmacologists and science historians, Slovenian ‘literary feminists,’ Czech avant-garde painters, Ukrainian feminist scholars, Polish and Czech Senate Members, and many more. Their stories together constitute a rich tapestry of feminist activity and redress a serious imbalance in the historiography of women’s movements and feminisms.