Rachel Cohen
Stepping out of the Shadows
The Militant Muse: Love, War and the Women of Surrealism
By Whitney Chadwick
Thames & Hudson 256pp £24.95
When people write condensed accounts of Surrealism, they generally refer to the best-known figures: André Breton, the magnetic and sometimes authoritarian self-proclaimed leader of the movement; Max Ernst, one of its most powerful painters and creators of collages and sculptures, his figures monstrous and hybrid; Man Ray, photographer of smoothness and celebrity; Antonin Artaud, with his brilliantly incendiary view of the theatre. They talk about Paris in the 1920s, about experimentation with automatic writing and new techniques of making films. They mention the psychological distress of surviving the First World War and the way these artists offered a more emotional, less detached stance than Cubism did; the Surrealists were more politically revolutionary than their Cubist counterparts. It is widely recognised that figures such as Marcel Duchamp, who was associated with Surrealism, though not exactly a canonical member, opened up important new avenues for art. Happenings, installations, mixed media work, ready-mades, art films, performance pieces – all of these draw significantly on practices developed by the Surrealists.
What you hear much less about in these accounts is the artistic accomplishments of the women associated with Surrealism. Sometimes Dora Maar is mentioned, though more often as the person who photographed her lover Picasso’s Guernica than as a significant painter and photographer in her own right. Meret Oppenheim’s fur-lined
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
When @djbduncan notices the text for a literary jigsaw puzzle had been written by a former colleague, his head spins. A wild surmise. Are jigsaws REF-able?
Dennis Duncan - The W Factor
Dennis Duncan: The W Factor
literaryreview.co.uk
In an effort to scold drinkers, Victorian temperance societies furiously marked every drinking establishment with a red X on city maps. It was a spectacular case of propaganda backfiring.
@foxtosser explores the history of drink maps
Edward Brooke-Hitching - From Beer Street to Gin Lane
Edward Brooke-Hitching: From Beer Street to Gin Lane - Drink Maps in Victorian Britain by Kris Butler
literaryreview.co.uk
How did a workers’ insurance agent who died of tuberculosis at the age of forty become a global literary icon?
@MortenHoiJensen on Kafka's metamorphosis
Morten Høi Jensen - Paranoid Humanoid
Morten Høi Jensen: Paranoid Humanoid - Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka by Karolina Watroba; Kafka: Making o...
literaryreview.co.uk