- Hardcover: 816 pages
- Publisher: University of Chicago Press (13 May 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0226174115
- ISBN-13: 978-0226174112
- Product Dimensions: 28.7 x 22.6 x 5.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,046,725 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"A fundamental text, History of the Surrealist Movement transmits the urgency of the Surrealists' engagement on every front, poetry as well as politics. Durozol's concentration on Surrealism's intellectual and artistic life produces a clear account of a movement which intersected with the major political, as well as creative, debates of the twentieth century. At every point there is a lucid explanation of key Surrealist ideas and positions, and the summaries of the key publications are incisive and extremely readable." - Dawn Ades, University of Essex
Product Description
From Dada to the Automatists, and from Max Ernst to Andre Breton, Gerard Durozoi provides the most comprehensive and fascinating history of the Surrealist movement to date. Tracing the movement from its origins in the 1920s to its decline in the 1950s and 1960s, Durozoi tells the history of Surrealism through its activities, publications and reviews, demonstrating its close ties to some of the most explosive political, as well as creative, debates of the 20th century. Unlike other histories, which focus mainly on the pre-World War II years of the movement in Paris, Durozoi covers a wider chronological and geographic range, treating in detail the postwar years and Surrealism's colonization of Latin America, the United States, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Italy and North Africa. Drawing on a staggering amount of documentary and visual evidence - including more than 1,000 illustrations, many of them in colour - he illuminates all the intellectual and artistic aspects of the movement, from literature and philosophy to painting, photography and film. All the Surrealist stars and their most important works are here - Aragon, Borges, Breton, Bunuel, Cocteau, Crevel, Dali, Desnos, Ernst, Man Ray, Soupault and many more - for all of whom Durozoi has provided brief biographical notes in addition to featuring them in the main text. For anyone who wants to know more about practically any aspect of Surrealism, from its vexed relations with communism to its exquisite corpses, Durozoi's "History of the Surrealist Movement" should be a valuable reference.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
this book, dealing with the marvellous, is a marvel in itself.
it covers the history of surrealism carefully and comprehensively from its moving away from dada to the gradual tailing off of its power from the 50s onward.
i discovered information about many figures and facts i had not come across before, and the book is particularly good at covering the relationship with the communist party and the split between breton and aragon for example.
if the last part of the book is less enthralling than the rest, it is probably because surrealism itself had lost some of its edge by then.
the greatest delights of the book are its illustrations.
there are beautiful colour reproductions of many paintings - a lot of which were unfamiliar to me, and there is a wealth of photographic illustration too - of drawings and artists and pamphlets and art events and objects.
the book is almost a surrealist object in itself, being so heavy that it is quite hard to read comfortably at times - but that just makes it all the better.
it showed what passion and principal there was in the surrealist movement at a time when art wasn't quite so dominated by the dead hand of the market as it is today.
i loved it.
it covers the history of surrealism carefully and comprehensively from its moving away from dada to the gradual tailing off of its power from the 50s onward.
i discovered information about many figures and facts i had not come across before, and the book is particularly good at covering the relationship with the communist party and the split between breton and aragon for example.
if the last part of the book is less enthralling than the rest, it is probably because surrealism itself had lost some of its edge by then.
the greatest delights of the book are its illustrations.
there are beautiful colour reproductions of many paintings - a lot of which were unfamiliar to me, and there is a wealth of photographic illustration too - of drawings and artists and pamphlets and art events and objects.
the book is almost a surrealist object in itself, being so heavy that it is quite hard to read comfortably at times - but that just makes it all the better.
it showed what passion and principal there was in the surrealist movement at a time when art wasn't quite so dominated by the dead hand of the market as it is today.
i loved it.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
38 of 40 people found the following review helpful
Astonishing and thorough history of Surrealism
2 April 2002
Format:Hardcover
This book is awesome. I've purchased histories of Surrealism before--all of which are now desperately out-dated and out of print besides...including the great Abrams book on Dada and Surrealism. This book beats them all. For one, it covers not just the Surrealists in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s, but examines the spread of the movement to the US, Africa, Japan, India, and South America during the 1940s-1960s. For two, it deals with all media: painting, sculpture, poetry, philosophy, fiction, film, etc. For three, it features biographies of all the major stars, and also of all the minor players in their orbits. For four, it includes 1000 illustrations--many of them documentary and never published before this book was originally released in the French edition, as well as many many color plates scattered throughout the text. A beautiful production, and a terrific text by Durozoi, who was linked to the Surrealists in the 1950s and 1960s by virtue of his involvement with philosophy.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Big, Heavy, Heady Brick of a Book
17 May 2009
Format:Paperback
I'm keeping this simple -- here's an art book where the text and editorial content matches the illustrations in terms of quality and awesome-osity. And the illustrations in this book are AWESOME.
Over 790 pp with something like over 800 illustrations and about 40% of them are in color. Great appendices, too: 50 pp of "Notes on Principal Surrealists and Some of Their Close Followers," a 25 p Bibliography, Index of Names, and Index of Periodicals.
Over 790 pp with something like over 800 illustrations and about 40% of them are in color. Great appendices, too: 50 pp of "Notes on Principal Surrealists and Some of Their Close Followers," a 25 p Bibliography, Index of Names, and Index of Periodicals.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
This is THE BOOK for surrealist history
19 Jan 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is a translation of a French history of the surrealist movement, and the author has done the homework. It is divided into detailed sections so that the reader knows what happened and when, and the substance of the contradictions and conflicts that made up surrealism in its heyday. Of course much of the good reading comes from Breton's activities, which defined many of these debates. What it doesn't do is to delve into rhetoric, theory or the philosophy of surrealist practice--instead it is pure art history, sticking to the core of surrealist development. There is much material on Breton's conflict with the left which is very useful, and much which isn't detailed--such as some of the controversy surrounding Chirico and Dali, which one would expect to be there. This change of emphasis reflects a very academic view of surrealism, one that does not necessarily get caught up in some of the more famous surrealist troubles, and instead wants to take us inside Breton's world and reconstruct what was significant for his inner circle.
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