Surrealist Art and Thought in the 1930s
Art, Politics, and the Psyche

This book examines the cultural context and theory behind the art and political activity of the Surrealist movement.

Steven Harris (Author)

9780521823876, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 January 2004

342 pages, 35 b/w illus.
24.4 x 17 x 2.1 cm, 0.88 kg

'… an impressive first book with potential longevity.' Art History

Surrealist Art and Thought in the 1930s examines the intersection of Hegelian aesthetics, experimental art and poetry, Marxism and psychoanalysis in the theory and practice of the Surrealist movement. Locating Surrealist art and thought between modernist art and revolutionary politics, Steven Harris investigates the consequences of the Surrealists' efforts to synthesize these diverse concerns, through the invention, in 1931, of the object and in the recasting of their activities as a mode of revolutionary science. Providing a context for the cultural and political debates in France and the Soviet Union during the 1930s, he also analyzes the debate on proletarian literature, the Surrealists' reaction to the Popular Front, and their eventual defense of an experimental modern art following their break with the French Communist Party in 1935.

1. L'Au-delà de la peinture
2. L'en deçà de la politique
3. A delay in glass
4. Avant-Garde and Front Populaire
5. Beware of domestic objects: vocation and equivocation in 1936.

Subject Areas: History of art & design styles: from c 1900 - [ACX]