Surrealism and the Politics of Eros

In this rigorous and highly original history, Alyce Mahon provides a radically new assessment of French Surrealism. The orthodox idea of a terminal decline for the movement after the 1930s is transformed into an artistic renaissance in the war and post-war years in which the Surrealists redefined and extended their interests in social crisis, political engagement, transgressive art, myth, the occult and the erotic. Through 'the politics of Eros' the Surrealists attempted to shatter the repression intrinsic to bourgeois society by appealing to and arousing individual desire as a route to political consciousness and action. In analysing the conception and organization of their four international exhibitions from 1938 to 1965, Dr Mahon shows how they evoked in the gallery space a three-dimensional world of dream, desire and sexual pleasure, using the power of 'uncanny', feminine forms and symbols. The result is to demonstrate that the last decades of Surrealism were a dynamic and intensely creative period that should be central to our understanding and appreciation of Surrealism as a whole - its artistic, philosophical and political motivations and aspirations then, as well as its legacy today. Dr Mahon evocatively elaborates the ways in which Surrealism revolutionized the exhibition as a cultural forum, wreaked havoc on the Establishment and ultimately inspired the generation of May '68. By documenting the ways in which the Surrealists used sound, lighting, special effects and performance art to create a living, theatrical environment in which the spectator had to 'complete' the aesthetic experience, Dr Mahon also sheds new light on topics increasingly seen as central to understanding art in our time. Illustrated throughout not only with artworks but with rare contemporary photographs and documents, this book will open new territory and debates in several fields, as well as taking its place as a classic work on one of the most popular and controversial art movements of the twentieth century.