History of the Surrealist Movement Gérard Durozoi University of Chicago Press, 2002 This massive work, originally published in France in 1997, is actually a history of surrealism as it manifested itself in the visual arts—painting, sculpture, and film. The movement’s core literary expression receives short shrift in the book’s 800-plus pages. The political battles of […]
Tag Archives: Surrealism
The first issue of the re-launched academic journal Dada/Surrealism—“Wonderful Things”: Surrealism and Egypt—is now available. All of the journal’s articles are open source and freely available as PDF files. Of particular interest is Michael Richardson’s “The Foolishness of Living: Georges Henein Between Worlds”. Richardson is the co-editor (with Krzysztof Fijalkowski) of the valuable collection Surrealism […]
Penelope Rosemont will discuss her new essay “Lost Worlds, Forgotten Futures, Undreamed Ecstasies: Some Thoughts on the Relationship of Surrealism to the Mayan Millennium” at Chicago’s Alternative Press Center , 2040 N. Milwaukee Ave, 2nd Floor on Saturday, Dec. 1 at 3:00 p.m. Rosemont is a co-founder of the Chicago Surrealist group and is the […]
Three new titles of interest: The Great Camouflage: Writings of Dissent (1941-1945) by Suzanne Césaire (Wesleyan University Press) Writings from the pathbreaking journal Tropiques, edited by Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, poets of Martinique. • • • Lost Worlds, Forgotten Futures, Undreamed Ecstatsies: Some Thoughts On The Relationship of Surrealism To The Mayan Millennium & To Each His Own Pluriverse by […]
Dada/Surrealism was the sole academic journal to devote itself to the study of these two related currents in the U.S. The scholarly study of Surrealism emerged here just slightly later than it did in France, with the publication of Anna Balakian’s Literary Origins of Surrealism in 1947. Dada/Surrealism‘s first issue appeared in 1971 and it […]
To mark André Breton’s birthday—February 19, 1896—Criticism &c. presents here an excerpt from an essay by Julien Gracq, author of The Castle of Argol and Balcony in the Forest, which was written on the 100th anniversary of Breton’s birth and was printed in Le Monde. This English translation appeared in the journal L’Esprit Createur. • • • […]
The Big Game Benjamin Péret ; translated with an introduction by Marilyn Kallet. Black Widow Press, 357 pages. Black Widow Press has released a translation (by Marilyn Kallet) of The Big Game, a 1928 work by Surrealist Benjamin Péret. In addition to being André Breton’s most committed Surrealist co-thinker, Péret was the the Surrealist most […]
Surrealist Leonora Carrington, an accomplished painter and writer, passed away in Mexico City on May 25. She was the author of (among other books) The House of Fear: Notes from Down Below. The New York Times ran an obituary on May 26, describing her as “one of the last living links to the world of […]
Wakefield Press of Cambridge, Massachusetts will publish in April The Leg of Lamb: Its Life and Works, a collection of works by Benjamin Perét, one of the most committed of Surrealists and an important participant in the international Trotskyist movement (he helped found the Trotskyist movement in Brazil). Unfortunately, Perét is not widely translated into […]
The regime of Muammar el-Qaddafi is richly deserving of a definitive overthrow and Criticism &c. is in firm sympathy with the Libyans who are attempting—against long odds—to achieve one. The pathetic intervention of Britain, France, Italy (Libya’s fomer colonial master and present neo-colonial patron) and the U.S., with the blessing of the sclerotic Arab League, […]
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