News and Calls for Papers
Calls for Papers:
- Surrealism, Science Fiction, and Comic Books
Saturday 22 January 2011
Courtauld Institute
Proposals are invited for a conference exploring the overlooked relationship between surrealism, science fiction and the comic book. Proposals should be of about 300 words for papers lasting about 30 minutes, and should be sent to gavin.parkinson@courtauld.ac.uk by 1 August 2010.
- Ashgate Studies in Surrealism
The series Ashgate Studies in Surrealism has been initiated because it has become clear that key areas of Surrealist inquiry are currently unsupported by relevant English-language books in spite of the continuing high visibility of Surrealism across the world in popular and scholarly publications and museum exhibitions. Initially through collections of essays on surrealism and nature, surrealism and the middle ages, and surrealism and the postwar avant-garde, Ashgate Studies in Surrealism aims to remedy this situation. The publisher and series editor invite proposals for further publications on surrealism covering philosophical, social, artistic, anthropological, and literary themes. In addition, we would like to hear from authors of monographs on artists and writers connected to surrealism who have been overlooked or marginalized. Although this is an "academic" series, proposals critical of the academicization of writing on surrealism - those that adhere to the scholarly conventions of the university - are also welcome.
Gavin Parkinson
The Courtauld Institute of Art, London
gavin.parkinson@courtauld.ac.uk
Exhibitions:
- The Subversion of Images. Surrealism, Photography, Film
23 September - 11 January 2010, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
26 February - 23 May 2010, Fotomuseum Winthertur
16 June - 12 September 2010, Fondación Mapfre, Madrid
This exhibition brings together nearly 400 works, giving us a rare overview of surrealist photography. A broad selection of the finest proofs by Man Ray, Hans Bellmer, Claude Cahun, Raoul Ubac, Jacques-André Boiffard, Maurice Tabard will be shown alongside rarely seen images which reveal a number of surrealist ways of using photography, such as publications in magazines or artists' books, advertisements, collections of images, fascination for the raw print, pictures taken in photo booths and group photographs etc. The event introduces the public to unknown series of collages by such renowned artists as Paul Eluard, André Breton, Antonin Artaud and Georges Hugnet, the photographic games of Léo Malet and Victor Brauner and highlights personalities like Artür Harfaux and Benjamin Fondane.
- Gegen jede Vernunft. Surrealismus Paris – Prag
14 November 2009 - 14 February 2010
Wilhelm-Hack-Museum and Kunstverein
Ludwigshafen am Rheim
The exhibition "Against All Reason. Surrealism Paris – Prague" brings together surrealist painting, photography and film made by Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Brassaï, Man Ray, and a number of Czech artists including Jindrich Styrsky, Karel Teige and Toyen who figure prominently in the show. Under the patronage of the author Pavel Kohout, more than three hundred works from all over the world will be on view in the Wilhelm Hack Museum and – with a special limelight on photography – at the Kunstverein Ludwigshafen. At the same time, the collection Sammlung Prinzhorn will present the exhibition “Surrrealismus und Wahnsinn / Surrealism and Insanity”. The psychiatric patients’ works collected by the physician and art historian Hans Prinzhorn served the surrealists as an important source of inspiration.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive programme of events and activities. Readings, films, concerts, lectures and workshops will convey a lively and multifaceted picture of surrealism.
- Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective
10 February - 3 March 2010
Tate Modern
This exhibition celebrates the extraordinary life and work of Arshile Gorky (c.1904-1948). Along with Rothko, Pollock and de Kooning, Gorky was one of the most powerful American painters of the twentieth century, and a seminal figure in the formation of Abstract Expressionism. The exhibition includes paintings and drawings from across his career, and a handful of rarely seen sculptures. During the 1940s Gorky encountered Surrealists exiled from wartime Europe. Stimulated by their ideas of free flowing, automatic painting, he rapidly developed the style for which he became famous. Works such as Waterfall 1943 are evocative, layered, and translucent, with a liquid glowing quality. Gorky's characteristic paintings of this final period include biomorphic forms in strong colours, shifting abstract elements and the energetic line that he developed in his drawings.
The exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.
- John Tunnard: Inner Space to Outer Space
13 Mar 2010 - 6 Jun 2010
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
The first major exhibition for thirty years of the British abstract artist whose paintings drew on both surrealist fantasy worlds and develpoment in science and engineering.
Conferences and Symposia:
- Dawn Ades's Slade Lectures – Surrealism and the Avant-Garde in Europe and the Americas
Dawn Ades (Co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacies; Professor at the University of Essex) has been appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford for the academic year 2009-2010. From January 20th to March 10th, she will deliver a series of lectures on surrealism's role in European and American cultures from the movement's inception to contemporary practices.
- Michael R. Taylor (Philadelphia Museum of Art) on Arshile Gorky
Wednesday 10 February 2010
17.30, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
Courtauld Institute, London
Timed to coincide with the Arshile Gorky retrospective exhibition at Tate Modern (10 February - 3 May 2010), this lecture will explore the artist's relationship with the Abstract Expressionist movement. The initial reception of Gorky’s work after his death in 1948 paved the way for his gradual assimilation into the canon of Abstract Expressionism as it was formed in the 1950s by Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, Thomas Hess, Sam Hunter, and Dore Ashton. Gorky’s work was acclaimed by these critics and art historians as an important precursor to the large-scale abstract paintings of friends and colleagues such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. Although universally accepted at the time, this reading of Gorky's work has been contested in recent years, since it deliberately downplays the artist's longstanding allegiance to surrealism during his lifetime, leading to a fundamental misunderstanding of his work and its meaning.
- Surrealist Sessions at the 36th AAH Annual Conference 2010
Two sessions are dedicated to surrealism and its legacies at this year's AAH annual conference, University of Glasgow, 15-17 April.
Dada and Surrealism in Play. Chaired by David Hopkins (University of Glasgow) and Debbie Lewer (University of Glasgow). This session explores the relationship between dada, surrealism and their legacies and notions of the infantile, the child-like and the adolescent.
Atrocity Exhibitions: RE/Reading RE/Search. Chaired by Patricia Allmer (MIRIAD, Manchester Metropolitan University) and John Sears (MMU Cheshire). To mark the 30th anniversary of the surrealist-inspired journal RE/Search, published in San Francisco since 1980, this session analyses the publication's artistic and cultural agendas, its sources and context, as well as its contribution to contemporary practices.
- Surrealism and the Americas – Rice University
Thursday 4 – Friday 5 November 2010
This conference focuses on the interactions and patters of influence among surrealist artists and collectors within the Americas that have been marginalized within dominant narratives of surrealism and European Exile.