David Hopkins analyses the extensive network of shared concerns and images in the work of Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst, the greatest names associated with Dada and Surrealist art. This book covers a broad period from c.1912 to the mid-1940s, during which the emergence of Dada and Surrealism in Europe and the United States challenged earlier movements such as Cubism and Expressionism, creating scope for the expression of the unconscious fears and desires of artists acutely sensitive to the troubled nature of their times. Examining Duchamp's and Ernst's subversion and manipulation of religious and hermetic beliefs such as Catholicism, Rosicrucianism and Masonry, David Hopkins demonstrates the ways in which these esoteric concerns intersect with themes of peculiarly contemporary relevance, including the social construction of gender and notions of ordering and taxonomy. This detailed comparison of components of Duchamp's and Ernst's work reveals fascinating structural patterns, enabling the reader to discover an entirely new way of understanding the mechanisms underlying Dada and Surrealist iconography.
