Books on Surrealism & Abstract Artists
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Here is the history of Surrealism from its beginnings to the present time. Patrick Waldberg sensibly gives the bulk of his space to the actual documents of the movement: the manifestos, the editorials, the outcries. Breton, Desnos, Eluard, Aragon, Ernst - these and others are represented. The pictorial documentation is even more lavish - here are all the major figures connected with the movement, taken from the life, often by the perceptive camera of Man Ray. 197 illustrations, 8 in color.
Surrealism was born to affirm unlimited faith in the genius of youth." - André Breton Literary surrealism begins with the death of dada in 1924; a movement to liberate expressive form, to release the world of the subconscious, of dreams and nightmares, paranoia, suppressed eroticism, and the dark side of the mind. Humor, extravagance, cruelty and anguish "outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations" recur in the art of Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux, Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Jean (Hans) Arp, Henry Moore and Man Ray among others.
Maurice Nadeau's History of Surrealism, first published in French in 1944 and in English in 1965, has become a classic. It is both lucid and authoritative--by far the best overall account of this complex movement. Nadeau traces the evolution of Surrealism, bringing to life its many internal debates about politics and art. He relates the movement to its intellectual and artistic environment. And he provides the statements and manifestos of Breton, Aragon, Tzara, and others.
Rings of seahorses that seem to rotate on the page. Butterflies that transform right before your eyes into two warriors with their horses. A mosaic portrait of oceanographer Jacques Cousteau made from seashells. From Escher's famous and elaborate "Waterfall" to Shigeo Fukuda's "Mary Poppins," where a heap of bottles, glasses, shakers, and openers somehow turn into the image of a Belle Epoque woman when the spotlight hits them, these works of genius will provide endless enjoyment.
This first volume of the definitive four-volume biography by one of the world's leading Picasso experts. This first volume takes Picasso from his earliest years in Catalonia through his beginning as an artist to his discovery of Cubism and his involvement with the artistic and literary life of Paris. As he magnificently combines meticulous scholarship with irresistible narrative appeal, Richardson draws on his close friendship with Picasso, his own diaries, the collaboration of Picasso's widow Jacqueline, and unprecedented access to Picasso's studio and papers to arrive at a profound understanding of the artist and his work. 800 photos.
This second volume in Richardson's exhaustive and intense biography of Picasso covers the ten years from 1907, where volume one ended its epic story of youthful Bohemian struggle. Picasso was then 26; the decade covered here displays a journey to adulthood through astonishing artistic innovation, a growing renown, and the artist's turbulent sexual relations. Richardson details Picasso's public career, including the impact of Cubism, and his complex personal life, notably the artist's passionate and callous treatment of his wives and mistresses. Through perceptive analysis of Picasso's paintings, Richardson also offers a deep understanding of the inner demons that shaped his remarkable outer life.
Here is Picasso at the height of his powers in Rome and Naples, producing the sets and costumes with Cocteau for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and visiting Pompei where the antique statuary fuel his obsession with classicism; in Paris, creating some of his most important sculpture and painting as part of a group that included Braque, Apollinaire, Miró, and Breton; spending summers in the South of France in the company of Gerald and Sara Murphy, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald. These are the years of his marriage to the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova - the mother of his only legitimate child, Paulo - and of his passionate affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter, who was, as well, his model and muse. A groundbreaking contribution to our understanding of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.
Art critic and scholar Philippe Dagen approaches Picasso as a subject through a series of questions. What does it mean to be an artist in the twentieth century? What does it mean to be an artist in the time of newspapers and museums, in a time when the art market has expanded to reach the entire western world? Is modern civilization so different that it gives an artist a new attitude and causes him to redefine his role for the public, the market, and, therefore, to invent entirely new artistic practices? Dagen's original exploration of his techniques, materials, and images shows how the artist both allowed modernity to infiltrate his work and at the same time to react against it. Picasso moved between acceptance and rejection, a perpetual confrontation that is, perhaps, the most satisfying explanation of his will to create change that drove him to leave the most varied and diverse body of work in the entire history of art.
Writings of the best-known leader of the Surrealist movement in literature and the arts. "An excellent, if partisan, introduction to surrealism .... A valuable study of surrealism and its aims with respect to life and language, the likes of which were previously not available in English .... A useful glossary, separate indexes of the two parts and a selected bibliography of Breton's work completes the book. Recommended for college and graduate school libraries." --Choice
First published to great acclaim in 1996, New Yorker writer and art critic Calvin Tomkins' biography of the influential artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) has been out of print for many years. Now, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, is publishing a new and revised edition of the landmark biography. Duchamp is widely considered one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, yet his personal life remained an enigma throughout his avidly scrutinized career. Tomkins presents a piercing portrait of Duchamp, adeptly analyzing his art and career while also recounting his personal life, influences and relationships. This thoroughly researched, eminently readable book is by far the most authoritative Duchamp biography.
Man Ray was a photographer, painter, and creator of objects, experimental films, and images which were at times enigmatic. This catalog, which presents more than 200 works and compares and contrasts images with biographical details, is divided into three main sections: Man Ray's formative years spent between New York and an artists' colony in Ridgefield, New Jersey; the Paris period; and the period spent between Hollywood and Paris, France-the city he ultimately chose to adopt as his home. The publication describes the creation of some of his most famous pieces and the motifs that inspired the works. Man Ray's life was marked by a succession of love affairs with famous and intriguing women, and this catalog dedicates several sections to this topic. The book also deals with the themes permeating Man Ray's work throughout the years, such as his passion for chess, the relationship between reality and illusion, and experimental photography and film.
This monograph provides an ideal introduction to the joyful visual world of Joan Miró, one of the twentieth century's greatest and most beloved artists, whose pictorial language - for once the right term - was appropriated by a gamut of modernist causes and avant-gardes, from Art Brut and the espousers of children's art to Surrealism (André Breton called him "the most Surrealist of us all" ), practitioners of automatism and even Color Field painting. In over 100 color plates, this book surveys not only the paintings for which Miró is most famed, but also his equally innovative experiments in other realms, such as ceramics, sculpture, editions, printmaking, tapestry (including the "World Trade Center Tapestry" which was sadly destroyed on September 11) and stage design for Diaghilev, among others. Miró's contagious sense of play and pleasure in materials is perfectly represented in this introductory volume.
Through shock and paradox, Rene Magritte sets out to reveal the mysterious nature of thought. His paintings, with their unexpected juxtaposition of objects, are a deliberate defiance of common sense. In this classic study, Suzi Gablik explains how Magritte was never involved in the experimental techniques and stylistic innovations of the other Surrealists, and how, as a result, his work has proved to hold more options for the future. 228 illustrations, 19 in color.
This stimulating introductory survey traces the origins and development of these two roughly parallel revolutionary twentieth-century art movements, exploring the full range of artistic production, including film, photography, collage, painting, graphics and object making. Matthew Gale skillfully places the art within a context of ideas ranging from the disillusionment and questioning of accepted values that resulted from the senseless destruction of World War I to the use of the creative forces of the unconscious to undermine convention.
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