Surrealism

Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1974. Cloth, large 8vo, 33 cm,. 144 pp, 115 illustrations, including 41 plates in full colour. From the blurb: "The art of the surrealists offers some of the most evocative imagery ever created. It delves into the unexplored regions of the psyche, opening windows onto landscapes of the unconscious and subconscious, casting a bright light on dark corners of the mind, revealing realms ruled by the demons of madness, dreams, and hallucination. Surrealism by Uwe M. Schneede provides a richly illustrated and thoroughly readable exploration of what many critics consider the most stimulating art movement of our century. The volume traces Surrealism from its first stirrings - its emergence from Dada, and the Surrealist manifesto promulgated by Andre Breton in Paris in 1924 - to its full flowering in the late 1920s and its "official" dissolution at the outbreak of World War II in 1939. The subsequent developments in Surrealism on both sides of the Atlantic, from the 1940s to the present, are also explored here, as are the social and political factors that influenced the movement and the psychological investigations of Freud and Jung that inspired much of its pictorial repertory. The author is Director of the Wurttembergischer Kunstverein. He brilliantly analyzes the symbology, imagery, and underlying technical processes and aesthetics of Surrealism, and sees in its "accidental" or spontaneous elements the roots of Tachism and Abstract Expressionism. The Introductory essay is illustrated with more than 70 black-and-white reproductions that include key paintings and drawings, objects, photographs of the leading figures in the movement, documents, and manifestos. The 41 stunning color plates that follow constitute, in effect, a retrospective exhibition of major Surrealist canvases. Each plate is accompanied by an informative commentary providing an analysis of the painting as well as its position in the Surrealist canon. The plates begin with the proto-Surrealist Metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico dating from 1911 to 19T6 and culminate with a canvas completed by Matta in 1946. Between lie the varied universes of Max Ernst, from his Dada Elephant Celebes to the richly textured dream-visions of the mid-1930s and early 1940s; a pair of deliciously witty, almost calligraphic paintings by Miro; three of Tanguy's well-known otherworldly "landscapes"; works by Masson and Delvaux representing obsessive explorations in the tenebrous world of the psyche, Dali, of course, is here too; the six canvases by the master of the paranoiac-critical method cover every phase of his dazziingly virtuosic art, including the most famous Surrealist painting in the world. The Persistence of Memory, with its unforgettable soft watches. Here also are the unsettling juxtapositions of Rene Magritte and representative works by Man Ray, Oscar Dominguez, Pierre Roy, Dorothea Tanning, Richard Oelze, Hans Bellmer, Wols, and even two Picassos that represent the master's brief flirtation with Surrealist idioms. A documentary chronology from 1924 to the 1970s, a selected bibliography, and an index round out the volume. Name on front free endpaper, otherwise near Very Good in slightly yellowed dustwrapper.