Surrealism in Exile & the Beginning of the New York School - Hardcover

Sawin, Martica

3.9

10 ratings by Goodreads

9780262193603: Surrealism in Exile & the Beginning of the New York School

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262193604 ISBN 13: 9780262193603

Publisher: MIT Press, 1995

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In this detailed account of what was happening within Surrealism during the crucial years 1938-1947, Martica Sawin documents the cultural transfer that took place when the greater part of the prewar Surrealist group was transplanted to the Western Hemisphere. Sawin's year-by-year narrative pieces together when and how the refugees arrived and their various points of contact with the future abstract expressionists. It documents conclusively the roots of the New York Scool - a hybrid of startling vigour that brought world attention to the new American art for the first time - the evolution of the artworks involved, and the last brilliant flowering of Surrealist art. Interwoven with the text are 250 photographs of people, places and artworks. Sawin details the lives and work of such key figures as Tanguy, Matta, Ernst, Masson, Breton and others, tracing events that culminated in a new mode of painting that emerged in New York by the mid-1940s particularly in the work of those artists who were in closest contact with the Surrealist emigres, painters such as Gorky, Motherwell and Pollock. An epilogue takes up the postwar fate of both the European refugees and the American artists, the well-known success stories as well as the tragic suicides.

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Review:

" Sawin's book... provides a constant stream of evocative details of life among the Surrealists. It's interesting to learn that Sylvia Makles, the sister of Andre Masson's wife Rose, was married to Georges Bataille but left him for psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan... An anonymous woman artist's comment about Breton -- 'making love to Andre was like taking a bath in molten steel' -- is worth any number of Surrealist manifestos... Sawin also provides new insight into the relationship between Breton and Duchamp." -- Pepe Karmel, Art in America & quot; Sawin's book... provides a constant stream of evocative details of life among the Surrealists. It's interesting to learn that Sylvia Makles, the sister of Andre Masson's wife Rose, was married to Georges Bataille but left him for psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan... An anonymous woman artist's comment about Breton -- 'making love to Andre was like taking a bath in molten steel' -- is worth any number of Surrealist manifestos... Sawin also provides new insight into the relationship between Breton and Duchamp.& quot; -- Pepe Karmel, Art in America "Sawin's book... provides a constant stream of evocative details of life among the Surrealists. It's interesting to learn that Sylvia Makles, the sister of Andre Masson's wife Rose, was married to Georges Bataille but left him for psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan... An anonymous woman artist's comment about Breton--'making love to Andre was like taking a bath in molten steel'--is worth any number of Surrealist manifestos... Sawin also provides new insight into the relationship between Breton and Duchamp."--Pepe Karmel, Art in America

About the Author:

Martica Sawin was a faculty member at the Parsons School of Design and is the book review editor for Art Journal.

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