Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Surrealist Art and Writing, 1919-1939 offers a fresh analysis of Surrealism--of the artists Dalí, Ernst, Masson and Tanguy and the writing of Surrealism's leaders--André Breton, Aragon and Eluard. Spector uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine how the ideas and images of this avant-garde movement grew up in anipathy to middle class values. He situates the concrete products of Surrealist art and writing in their historical context without losing sight of larger theoretical and ideological issues involving psychoanalysis, Marxism and philosophy.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• 1 Introduction
• 2 Breaking the institutional codes: revolution in the classroom
• 3 The politics of dream and the dream of politics
• 4 In the service of which revolution? An aborted incarnation of the dream: Marxism and Surrealism
• 5 Surrealism and painting (The ineffable)
• 6 The Surrealist woman and the colonial other

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

When Spector (Rutgers Univ.) stresses Andre Breton's and others' published and unpublished surrealist writings, he does so to gain insight into this artistic and literary development and also to debunk postmodern theoretical approaches that have provided idiosyncratic interpretations. Rosalind Krauss's 1985 essays in the exhibition catalogue L'Amour fou are dissected as evidence of a "crisis" in historical and art historical investigation. Although he considers a text supreme, Spector does not deny the importance of theory; he advocates surrealist literary production as a balancing force to the more visible Surrealists' "practices," which have always received more attention from scholars. Spector considers the literary transformation of automatic writing and its relationship to the importance of dreams as a development and break from earlier dadaist philosophy. This continued investigation of a subconscious reality became a surrealist "political" statement. Chapters detail the relationship of surrealist text to the "rational" Cartesian educational system of the Third Republic, artistic media, and the significance of woman as "Other." Spector's own writing is dense and presupposes a significant amount of prior knowledge of literature, science, and theory. It is best suited for graduate students, faculty, and professionals. E. K. Menon; Mankato State University