Surrealist Art and Thought in the 1930s: Art, Politics, and the Psyche

Description

Surrealist Art and Thought in the 1930s examines the intersection of Hegelian aesthetics, experimental art and poetry, Marxism and psychoanalysis in the theory and practice of the Surrealist movement. Locating Surrealist art and thought between modernist art and revolutionary politics, Steven Harris investigates the consequences of the Surrealists' efforts to synthesize these diverse concerns, through the invention, in 1931, of the object and in the recasting of their activities as a mode of revolutionary science. Providing a context for the cultural and political debates in France and the Soviet Union during the 1930s, he also analyzes the debate on proletarian literature, the Surrealists' reaction to the Popular Front, and their eventual defense of an experimental modern art following their break with the French Communist Party in 1935.

'Harris's study achieves a bold synthesis of the debating cultural, political, and theoretical positions occupied by the surrealists and their fellow leftist intellectuals in 1930s Paris, and articulates an important new direction for the study of surrealism.' Modernism/Modernity '... a detailed and dependable account of the concepts, contradictions and attempted resolutions of this moment of intense cultural debate through a coherent narrative and with a clarity of language that will render it a valuable guide to students and stimulating companion to the specialist.' The Art Book '... an impressive first book with potential longevity.' Art History