Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst are two of the greatest names associated with Dada and Surrealism, the iconoclastic art movements of the early part of the twentieth century. This detailed study brings their work into close proximity for the first time, examining the structural interaction of "ready-made" belief systems in their productions (Catholicism, masculinism, hermeticism). These artists are revealed as precursors of our postmodern obsessions with male and female identity and cultural fragmentation.
Albers in Mexico reveals the profound link between the magnificent art and architecture of ancient Mesoamerica and Albers's abstract works on canvas and paper. 'Mexico is truly the promised land of abstract art', Josef Albers once wrote to Vassily Kandinsky. Albers in Mexico reveals the profound link between the magnificent art and architecture of ancient Mesoamerica and Albers's abstract works on canvas and paper. With his wife, the artist Anni Albers, he visited Mexico and other Latin American countries more than a dozen times from 1935 to 1968, where he toured pre-Columbian archeological sites and monuments. On each visit, Albers took blackand- white photographs of the pyramids, shrines, sanctuaries and landscapes in and around these ancient sites, often grouping multiple images printed at various scales onto 8 x 10 inch sheets. The result was nearly 200 photo-collages that illustrate formal characteristics of the pre-Columbian aesthetic. Albers in Mexico brings together rarely exhibited photographs, photo-collages, prints and significant paintings from the Homage to the Square and Variants/Adobe series from the Guggenheim Museum collection and the Anni and Josef Albers Foundation. This catalogue includes two scholarly essays, Albers's poetry from the period and an illustrated map, as well as rich colour reproductions of paintings and works on paper.
"Describes with plenty of colour how surrealism, from Rene Magritte's bowler hats to Salvador Dali's watches, was born and developed." - The Times (UK) As she did for the Modernists In Montmartre, noted art historian and biographer Sue Roe now tells the story of the Surrealists in Montparnasse. In Montparnasse begins on the eve of the First World War and ends with the 1936 unveiling of Dalí’s Lobster Telephone. As those extraordinary years unfolded, the Surrealists found ever more innovative ways of exploring the interior life, and asking new questions about how to define art. In Montparnasse recounts how this artistic revolution came to be amidst the salons and cafés of that vibrant neighborhood. Sue Roe is both an incisive art critic of these pieces and a beguiling biographer with a fingertip feel for this compelling world. Beginning with Duchamp, Roe then takes us through the rise of the Dada movement, the birth of Surrealist photography with Man Ray, the creation of key works by Ernst, Cocteau, and others, through the arrival of Dalí. On canvas and in their readymades and other works these artists juxtaposed objects never before seen together to make the viewer marvel at the ordinary—and at the workings of the subconscious. We see both how this art came to be and how the artists of Montparnasse lived. Roe puts us with Gertrude Stein in her box seat at the opening of The Rite of Spring; with Duchamp as he installs his famous urinal; at a Cocteau theatrical with Picasso and Coco Chanel; with Breton at a session with Freud; and with Man Ray as he romances Kiki de Montparnasse. Stein said it best when she noted that the Surrealists still saw in the common ways of the 19th century, but they complicated things with the bold new vision of the 20th. Their words mark an enormously important watershed in the history of art—and they forever changed the way we all see the world.
Presents a collection of essays, manifestos, and illustrations that provide an overview of the Dada movement in art, describing its convictions, antics, and spirit, through the words and art of its principal practitioners.
In 1916 a meeting of artists, writers, émigrés and opposition figures took place in the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. Under the shadow of the First World War, this was the starting point for the dissemination of the artistic and literary style known as Dadaism.
A select anthology of the Dada movement focusing mainly on visual artists features prose, poetry, and polemics from such notables as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Tristan Tzara, Hanna Hèoch, George Grosz, and Jean Cocteau.
While Surrealism was becoming out of fashion in Europe in the 1930s, it enjoyed a growing popularity on the other side of the Atlantic. This text traces the history of this movement in the United States from about 1930 to 1950 by examining its manifestations throughout the country.
