Art Review
The Whitney’s Surrealism Show Is a Mindfuck
I wish Sixties Surreal focused more on destabilizing the concept of “real” than reifying it.
Surrealism
Interview
Take a Musical Trip Through Sixties Surrealism
Curator Dan Nadel talks about creating a playlist for the Whitney Museum's latest exhibition, inspired by a time when history was inextricable from its soundtrack.
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.
Book Review
The Small Magazines That Birthed Surrealism
Surrealism through Its Journals reminds us that the movement began with, and cannot be understood without, the written word.
Book Review
The Story of Surrealism Isn’t Whole Without Gala Dalí
In Surreal, Michèle Gerber Klein asks us to confront the unjust eclipse of Gala’s legacy by that of her husband, Salvador, whose career she brought to fruition.
Art
Surrealism’s Legacy of Antifascist Activism
A show at Munich’s Lenbachhaus museum is an urgent study in the meaningful art-political networks that stressed solidarity and unity over isolation.
Books
Eileen Agar’s Surrealist Sea
“Surrealism for me draws its inspiration from nature,” writes Eileen Agar in her memoir A Look at My Life.
Film
Man Ray’s Beguiling and Bemusing Filmscapes
Man Ray’s Return to Reason film series anticipated the extent to which the motion picture would inform how we curate and call up memory.
Art
A Mid-Century Painter Showed a World Out of Kilter
In the Luigi Zuccheri’s pastoral scenes, a menagerie of oversized creatures, plants, fruits, and vegetables dwarf the humans with whom they share the canvas.
Art
Scholar Mary Ann Caws on Women Surrealists and André Breton’s Ass
If you can name more than two or three women surrealists without using Google, the 90-year-old art historian has probably helped make that happen.
Books
The Spellbinding Totality of Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy’s Love
A new monograph hones in on the artist-couple’s collaboration.
Film
The Surreal Realism of Buñuel’s Mexican Films
Luis Buñuel believed that surreal moments were necessary to achieve a true documentary style, as they reflect the fantastical, mysterious nature of everyday reality.