Victor Brauner: Surrealist Hyroglyphics - Hardcover

Epley, Bradford; Montagne, Margaret; Semin, Didier; The Menil Collection

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9783775710886: Victor Brauner: Surrealist Hyroglyphics

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3775710884 ISBN 13: 9783775710886

Publisher: Hatje Cantz, 2001

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Born in 1903 in Romania, Victor Brauner was an active member of the first wave of Romanian avant-garde artists whose concerns anticipated those of Western European Surrealism by 20 years. As such, his paintings are distinguished by their wealth of occult notations and an eclectic use of diverse religious symbolism. Brauner's work attests to a unique integration of his Eastern European roots into more flamboyant Western modernism. Despite his many years living in Paris he retained his Romanian identity as evidenced in his choice of titles, his palette, and primarily his choice of imagery, reverting over and over again to his childhood memories and anxieties, to the Balkan landscape, and to the magic and spiritual symbols of his upbringing. This book demonstrates how Brauner's work differs from that of his famous Surrealist counterparts, de Chirico, Ernst, and Tanguy for example, extending our idea of Surrealism itself through his use of poetry, both direct and analogical, his highly narrative depictions of personal and social relations, and his extraordinarily colorful palette.

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Synopsis:

As an early adherent of the Surrealist movement, Victor Brauner actively explored the realm of dreams and the unconscious, with an emphasis on the occult and mystical. Both in content and in style, his art represents a remarkably fertile fusion of wide-ranging world cultures, mythologies, and religious beliefs, from Egyptian to Aztec, Native American to Oceanic, Jewish to Hindu, to name only a few. In "Victor Brauner: Surrealist Hieroglyphs", Didier Semin, a pre-eminent Brauner scholar, clarifies Brauner's involvement with Surrealism and his sui generis interpretation of the movement. Margaret Montagne, author of the forthcoming Brauner catalogue raisonne, addresses the artist's use of psychoanalytical and arcane references to explore the motif of the double. Conservator Bradford Epley publishes his research on Brauner's revolutionary use of wax as a medium. Susan Davidson's introduction provides an insightful history of John and Dominique de Menils' patronage of Brauner and the reception of his art in America.

In addition, the little-known, first critical English text on Brauner (1949) by the innovative poet and critic Parker Tyler is again published as the foreword to this monograph. This text features the work and life of Victor Brauner, an artist who blended ideas from his Romanian homeland with forms and shapes of the Western avant-garde. The book places his "ouevre" into the context of famous artist colleagues such as Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy.

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