Surrealist masculinities : gender anxiety and the aesthetics of post-World War I reconstruction in France / Amy Lyford.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lyford, Amy, 1963-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Masculinity in art.

Human figure in art.

Surrealism--France.

Surrealism.

Arts.

France.

Arts--France--Paris.

World War, 1914-1918--Psychological aspects.

World War, 1914-1918.

Psychological aspects.

France--Paris.

Physical Description:

xiv, 237 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2007]

Summary:

" Surrealist Masculinities " offers a fresh exploration of how surrealist visual production was shaped by constructions of gender and sexuality, particularly masculinity, in the 1920s and early 1930s. Amy Lyford builds on feminist critical approaches to surrealism, which have viewed the female body in surrealism as symptomatic of male misogyny; yet she also departs from such work by arguing that representations of an anxious, ambivalent, or perverse masculinity were integral to the movement's critique of France's "return to order" in the years following World War I. This book analyzes surrealist work in relation to the history of surrealism and investigates how surrealist artists and writers appropriated contemporary medical science, advertising, and sexology in their quest to undermine the status quo.

Contents:

Introduction

Anxiety and perversion in postwar Paris

The aesthetics of dismemberment

The advertisement of emasculation

Man Ray, Lee Miller, and the photography of surrealist sexuality

The lessons of Barbette

Conclusion: on masculinity and reconstruction.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-223) and index.

ISBN:

9780520246409

0520246403

OCLC:

69028069

Online:

Publisher description

Contributor biographical information