Surreal Lives: The Surrealists 1917-1945 - Softcover

Brandon, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0333681568 ISBN 13: 9780333681565

Publisher: Macmillan, 2000

Synopsis

An entertaining and masterly 'group biography' of the leaders of the Surrealist MovementIn the years following the First World War the way we perceive the world was turned upside down by a small group of writers, painters and film-makers: the surrealists. Their aim was to revolutionise the arts, and through them everything else. In 'Surreal Lives' Ruth Brandon follows the growth of the surrealist movement with all the energy, verve and spirit that the subject demands. The story is built around its central characters, enigmatic Marcel Duchamp, Andre Breton in all his seriousness, the eager Louis Aragon, and the outrageous Salvador Dali. They are the core of this entertaining and challenging book as their dilemmas, struggles and achievements came to mirror the way the world changed between the wars."In this gripping account, Ruth Brandon uncovers the explosively tense network of relationships on which Surrealism was built; traces the development of its furious ambitions and its uneasy association with the Communist Party; and catches its rich vein of eccentricity." Frances Spalding, Daily Telegraph"This is a wonderful book, full of masterly set-pieces" John Banville, Irish Times

About this title

Review:

Playful, amusing, frivolous and bizarre; as Ruth Brandon points out in the preface to her marvellous Surreal Lives: The Surrealists 1917-1945, Surrealism has passed into everyday life as a byword for the strange but also the peripheral. However, as this wonderfully exhaustive book point outs, the intellectual and political drive behind the movement was in fact highly revolutionary. What Brandon proceeds to unfold is a kaleidoscopic cultural history of the movement, which by 1924 had self-consciously adopted the title "Surrealism", from its emergence in the midst of the ashes of interwar Zurich Dada to its enforced relocation to New York in the 1940s. Along the way Surreal Lives deftly weaves a fascinating account of the cultural, artistic, political, personal and sexual dynamics of the men and women who defined the movement from the 1920s onward. The personal and artistic connections between the usual suspects of Apollinaire, Picabia, Man Ray, Aragon, Duchamp, Eluard, Soupault, Bunuel and Dali are all traced in extensive and highly entertaining detail, while at the book's centre lies the pompous, autocratic, charismatic figure of Andre Breton and his creative but highly volatile relations with the entire cast, from his feuds with Tristan Tzara to his ultimate disillusion with Dali. Following Breton's enigmatic career, Surreal Lives moves beautifully between the revolutionary aspirations of the movement and the endemic literary squabbles that often blunted its radicalism. Brandon is particularly successful at uncovering the importance of the various women who had such a decisive impact upon the development of Surrealism, as well as offering a range of salacious and often wonderfully incongruous encounters, such as the aged Erik Satie's involvement in the creation of Marcel Duchamp's The Gift. How surreal! --Jerry Brotton

Synopsis:

"Surreal Lives" follows the growth of the surrealist movement through a group biography of the central characters: enigmatic Marcel Duchamp, Andre Breton in all his seriousness, the eager Louis Aragon and the outrageous Salvador Dali.

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0333681568
• ISBN 13: 9780333681565
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544