Product Description

In 1951 Robert Motherwell published a collection of writings called The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology. Conceived as a sequel to that volume, Surrealist Painters and Poets: An Anthology does for Surrealism what Motherwell's book did for Dadaism. The concept and contents were discussed with Robert Motherwell and met with his enthusiastic approval.The essays, manifestos, poems, and texts in this anthology offer a composite picture of the Surrealists -- their convictions, styles, and spirit -- from the movement's beginnings in France just after World War I to its second flowering in America after World War II. The book includes writers and artists from Belgium, Chile, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Guyana, Italy, Martinique, Mauritius, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, Senegal, Uruguay, and the United States. Caws's main criterion for inclusion was that the works be the best and most representative of the different forms of Surrealism. Among others, the artists and writers include Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Selavy, Max Ernst, Mina Loy, Francis Picabia, and Tristan Tzara.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #689132 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-23
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.29" h x 6.94" w x 9.06" l, 2.65 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 564 pages

From Publishers Weekly
While the lessons of surrealism have been pretty well assimilated by contemporary artists, the encyclopedic inclusivity of this selection, along with its global perspective and attention to women artists, provides plenty of surprises and new perspectives on this unconscious-driven movement. Renowned scholar and translator of French modernism Caws (The Eye of the Text, etc.), whose anthology Manifesto: A Century of Isms has just appeared (Forecasts, Feb. 19), makes her first, necessary act here to ignore what the rather dictatorial Andr‚ Bretonfounder, primary theorist and tireless proselyte of the movementdeemed "surrealist" in his time, and to include work that is not just "automatic writing" or collaborative in nature, the two types of writing Breton championed most. Memoirs, poems, fables, manifestos, games and collaborative works, as well as photomontages, paintings, drawings and odd, scandalous objects, are included by artists well-known and not: Giorgio de Chirico, Man Ray, Philippe Soupault, Hans Bellmer, Kay Boyle, the founders of "negritude" Aim‚ C‚saire and L‚opold S‚dar Senghor, Salvador Dal¡, Duchamp, Frida Kahlo, Michel Leiris, the underrecognized painter Dorothea Tanning (wife of Max Ernst), Mina Loy, Antonin Artaud, Leonora Carrington and Joseph Cornell make their appearances among many others. Because it leans more toward the painterlyi.e., imagistic and spasmodically creativeside of the movement and less toward the exacting political and philosophical side, the book can seem unfocused, and the lack of scholarly material, such as chronologies or biographic introductions, may leave one in the dark about the minor figures and how they fit in. But Caws's goal (as with Manifesto) is to present an active constellation of work beyond the canonizing and historicizing of the academy, placing the work back in the lap of the creative reader, in the here and now of the culture today. On that level, this anthology succeeds richly.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Surrealism, that wonderful and strange 20th-century arts movement spurred by Andr? Breton's pen, continues to influence artists, writers, and the makers of popular culture of our time. Inspired by Robert Motherwell's definitive anthology of Dadaist works, The Dada Painters and Poets (1989. reprint), Caws conceived this book at a companion to her more personal study of the movement, The Surrealist Look: An Erotics of Encounter (1997). Here she collects seminal and complementary materials produced by self-defined surrealists, from memoirs, dreams, and manifestos to games, journal entries, and many representative texts. Over 100 illustrations paintings and photographs of key people and other artworks give the volume a visual touchstone. Although Penelope Rosemont's Surrealist Women (LJ 9/15/98 ) gathers many women writers not found here, and the catalog to the Guggenheim show of the same name, Surrealism: Two Private Eyes (LJ 12/99) offers a more complete visual introduction to the movement, this will make an excellent addition to surrealism collections, as it offers an affordable but comprehensive overview of what in its multiple forms Breton considered poetry, the results of surrealism's "lyric behavior." Rebecca Miller, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Rising from the despairing rubble of post-World War I Europe, surrealism was an engaging movement, which utilized painting, film, photography, and poetry to emphasize the unifying subconscious of humanity. Sometimes shocking and irreverent, other times puzzling and incoherent, these artists sought meaning in a broken world, healing from the devastating effects of nationalism and trench warfare. Many are familiar with the dreamy paintings of Magritte, Miro, and Dali, but few have encountered their texts. This anthology is a wide-ranging sampler of surrealist poetry, short prose, essays, and other imaginative musings. To liberate surrealism from the strict, confining dictums of Andre Breton, Caws has carefully chosen examples from his select troupe as well as from those who greatly influenced the movement from the outside. Contributors include Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Picasso, Antonin Artaud, Paul Eluard, Guillaume Appolinaire, Hans Arp, and Meret Oppenheim. Intentionally serving as a sequel to Robert Motherwell's 1951 anthology The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, this volume provides the essential textual soundtrack to one of the twentieth century's most influential and controversial art movements. Jeff Snowbarger
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