Book Review
André Breton After the Surrealist Manifesto
In the French poet’s later writings, now available in an English translation, his ideas about the movement he founded begin to mingle with our own.
André Breton
Art
TikTok Goes Surrealist With “Exquisite Corpse” Videos
Users are stitching videos together in the style of the beloved “cadavre exquis” game.
Books
How Surrealism’s Playful Aesthetic Was Deeply Political
The Surrealists’ insistence on irrationality was not a sport, but an attempt to engage in the political debates of their time.
Art
Isidore Isou's Radical Quest to Reinvent Language
A sweeping retrospective at the Centre Pompidou surveys the work of the Romanian-born artist who founded the avant-garde Letterism movement in 1940s France.
In Brief
France Declares 120 Days of Sodom Manuscript a National Treasure, Saving It from Auction
The French government has declared the original manuscript of the Marquis de Sade's notorious novel a national treasure and forbidden its removal from France.
Art
Two Thousand Years of Inuit Art Goes on Display at the Frieze Masters Art Fair
Dozens of objects make up Donald Ellis Gallery's exhibition of art by the indigenous people of North America's arctic region.
Books
The Idiosyncratic Writings of Leonora Carrington, a Reluctant Surrealist
Three books by Leonora Carrington, including her memoir of her time at an insane asylum, reveal the artist's specific vision of the world, which strayed from and defied Surrealism.
Books
A French Surrealist's Eclectic Remembrances of His Cohort, Finally in English
Phillipe Soupault delights in humanizing the celebrated with intimate particularization and paeanizing the obscure with encomium.
Art
The Pompidou's Permanent Collection, Reinstalled Along the Lines of Art Theory
PARIS — Where the newness of art comes from (when it comes) is something of a conundrum.
Art
The Revolutionary Postcolonial Imagination of Surrealism
In 1945, Andre Breton traveled to the Haitian capital of Port au Prince to deliver a lecture on “Surrealism and Haiti."
Art
Blowing Smoke: Robert Wilson Agog Over Gaga in Louvre Show
PARIS — I was lucky enough, and I am old enough, to have been in the audience of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach in 1976 at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, and then again at The Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1984.
Performance
Surrealism's Fistfights and Adversarial Culture
An evening Dada revue organized by Tristan Tzara, July 6, 1923's Soirée du Coeur à Barbe (Night of the Bearded Heart) was the site of an infamous altercation between Tzara's associates and Surrealist don André Breton at the Théâtre Michel in Paris.