Surrealism : desire unbound / edited by Jennifer Mundy ; consultant editor, Dawn Ades ; special adviser, Vincent Gille.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Mundy, Jennifer.

Gille, Vincent.

Ades, Dawn.

Tate Modern (Gallery)

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Surrealism--Exhibitions.

Surrealism.

Desire in art--Exhibitions.

Desire in art.

Genre:

Exhibition catalogs.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

349 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 29 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press ; London : Tate, 2001.

Summary:

The surrealist leader Andre Breton described desire as the "only master that man must recognize." One of surrealism's defining themes, desire was expressed variously in Salvador Dalf's charged landscapes, Joan Miro's lyric abstractions, and Hans Bellmer's unsettling nudes. Influenced by Sigmund Freud, the surrealists saw sexual desire as a path to self-knowledge -- "a theatre of provocations and prohibitions in which life's profound urges confront one another."

Published to accompany a major transatlantic exhibition of international surrealism, this lavishly illustrated catalogue explores desire in surrealist art in both words and images. Key works by such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, Dali, Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Giacometti, Bellmer, Meret Oppenheim and Claude Cahun are illustrated and discussed, as are surrealist films and photographs by Man Ray, Brassai, and others. The volume also features some of the rare and beautiful books produced by the surrealists in their celebration of love, as well as a selection of fascinating manuscripts, letters, and documentary photographs that reveal the personal contexts of the group's exploration of desire. Essays by leading scholars show how the theme of desire was implicated in almost all aspects of surrealist activity -- not only its art and writings, but also its political struggles and its ethical stances on issues involving individual liberty and the social control of sexuality.

This attractive and provocative volume illustrates a vision of desire that embraces both sublime exaltation and dark carnality. It shows the unprecedented intensity with which the surrealists extolled love and the extent to which they depicted desire as implicated in every thought, action, event, and encounter. A major contribution to surrealist studies, this volume is edited by Jennifer Mundy and has contributions from Dawn Ades, Katharine Conley, Neil Cox, Carolyn J. Dean, Hal Foster, Vincent Gille, Jean-Michel Goutier, David Hopkins, Radovan Ivsic, Julia Kelly, Annie Le Brun, David Lomas, and Alyce Mahon.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Letters of Desire / Jennifer Mundy 10

Chapter 2 The Omnipotence of Desire: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis and Hysteria / David Lomas 55

Chapter 3 'Priere de Froler': The Touch in Surrealism / Julia Kelly 79

Chapter 4 Anamorphic Love: the Surrealist Poetry of Desire / Katharine Conley 101

Chapter 5 Books of Love - Love Books / Vincent Gille 125

Chapter 6 Lives and Loves / Vincent Gille 136

Chapter 7 Surrealism, Male-Female / Dawn Ades 171

Chapter 8 Violation and Veiling in Surrealist Photography: Woman as Fetish, as Shattered Object, as Phallus / Hal Foster 203

Chapter 9 History, Pornography and the Social Body / Carolyn J. Dean 227

Chapter 10 Critique of Pure Desire, or When the Surrealists were Right / Neil Cox 245

Chapter 11 Staging Desire / Alyce Mahon 277

Chapter 12 Desire - A Surrealist 'Invention' / Annie Le Brun 299.

Notes:

Tate Modern exhibition, Sept. 20-2001-Jan. 1, 2002, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Feb. 6, 2002-May 12, 2002.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 315-325) and index.

ISBN:

0691090645

OCLC:

46809974