Books in the Studies in Surrealism series

The first monograph on a groundbreaking Surrealist masterpiece, Reading Claude Cahun's Disavowals offers a comprehensive account of Cahun's most important published work, Aveux non avenus (Disavowals). This study pays careful attention to the complex interrelationship between the photomontages and writings of Aveux non avenus.

Based on the author's disseration (doctoral)--Linkeoping University, 2012.

Shedding new light on the literary oeuvre of non-French writers who worked both within and against a Surrealist framework, this book proposes a new way of re-evaluating aspects of international Surrealism by means of the category of divin fou, and consequently deploys theories of sacred ecstasy as developed by the College de Sociologie.

Surrealism and Photography in Czechoslovakia sheds much-needed light on the location of the single greatest concentration of Surrealist photography-the Czech Republic-and examines the culture and tradition of Surrealist photography that has taken root and flourished there. This volume explores a rich and important artistic output.

Focusing on Joseph Cornell's evocative and profound references to children and their stories, this title studies the relationship between the artist's work on childhood and his search for a transfigured concept of time. It also situates Cornell and his art in the broader context of the transatlantic avant-garde of the 1930s and 40s.

This study reconsiders Surrealist theatre specifically from the perspective of ludics-a poetics of play and games-an ideal approach to the Surrealists, whose games blur the boundaries between the 'playful' and the 'serious.' Beginning with the Surrealists' 'one-into-another' game and its illustration of Breton's ludic dramatic theory.

Taking its departure point from the 1933 surrealist photographs of ’involuntary sculptures’ by Brassaï and Dalí, Found Sculpture and Photography from Surrealism to Contemporary Art offers fresh perspectives on the sculptural object by relating it to both surrealist concerns with chance and the crucial role of photography in framing the everyday. This collection of essays questions the nature of sculptural practice, looking to forms of production and reproduction that blur the boundaries between things that are made and things that are found. One of the book’s central themes is the interplay of presence and absence in sculpture, as it is highlighted, disrupted, or multiplied through photography’s indexical nature. The essays examine the surrealist three-dimensional object, its relation to and transformation through photographs, as well as the enduring legacies of such concerns for the artwork’s materiality and temporality in performance and conceptual practices from the 1960s through the present. Found Sculpture and Photography sheds new light on the shifts in status of the art object, challenging the specificity of visual practices, pursuing a radical interrogation of agency in modern and contemporary practices, and exploring the boundaries between art and everyday life.

Taking its name and its departure point from the 1933 Surrealist photographs of Brassai and Dali, Found Sculpture and Photography from Surrealism to Contemporary Art brings a unique Surrealist inflection to the rethinking of the sculptural object. This collection of essays questions the nature of sculptural practice.