Gavin Parkinson

The art of Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) is usually viewed as quite distinct from Surrealism, a movement which the artist himself displayed some hostility towards. However, Rauschenberg had a very positive reception among Surrealists, particularly across the period 1959-69.In the face of Rauschenberg’s avowals of his own ‘literalism’ and insistence on his art as ‘facts,’ this book gathers generous evidence of the poetic, metaphorical, allusive, associative and connotative dimensions of the artist's oeuvre as identified by Surrealists, and thus extrapolates new readings from Rauschenberg's key works on that basis. By viewing Rauschenberg’s art against the expansion of the cultural influence of the United States in Europe in the period after the Second World War and the increasingly politicized activities of the Surrealists in the era of the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62), Robert Rauschenberg and Surrealism shows how poetic inference of the artist’s work was turned towards political interpretation. By analysing Rauschenberg’s art in the context of Surrealism, and drawing from it new interpretations and perspectives, this volume simultaneously situates the Surrealist movement in 1960s American art criticism and history.

The Picasso sketchbook featured here dates back to March 1923 and has never been seen before.It was part of a cache of works stolen over decades by Picasso's electrician and only discovered when he and his wife tried to sell some pieces in 2020. A facsimilie of the sketchbook itself, bound in real linen cloth that has been specifically aged to match the original, is packaged in a clamshell box with an illustrated book that tells the story of the theft and the discovery and examines the sketches in detail relating them to several examples of Picasso's finished work.

The art of Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) is usually viewed as quite distinct from Surrealism, a movement which the artist himself displayed some hostility towards. However, Rauschenberg had a very positive reception among Surrealists, particularly across the period 1959-69.In the face of Rauschenberg’s avowals of his own ‘literalism’ and insistence on his art as ‘facts,’ this book gathers generous evidence of the poetic, metaphorical, allusive, associative and connotative dimensions of the artist's oeuvre as identified by Surrealists, and thus extrapolates new readings from Rauschenberg's key works on that basis. By viewing Rauschenberg’s art against the expansion of the cultural influence of the United States in Europe in the period after the Second World War and the increasingly politicized activities of the Surrealists in the era of the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62), Robert Rauschenberg and Surrealism shows how poetic inference of the artist’s work was turned towards political interpretation. By analysing Rauschenberg’s art in the context of Surrealism, and drawing from it new interpretations and perspectives, this volume simultaneously situates the Surrealist movement in 1960s American art criticism and history.

Enchanted Ground is about the challenge to modernist criticism by Surrealist writers—mainly André Breton but also Louis Aragon, Pierre Mabille, René Magritte, Charles Estienne, René Huyghe and others—who viewed the same artists in terms of magic, occultism, precognition, alchemy and esotericism generally. It introduces the history of the ways in which those artists who came after Impressionism—Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh—became canonical in the 20th century through the broad approaches we now call modernist or formalist (by critics and curators such as Alfred H. Barr, Roger Fry, Robert Goldwater, Clement Greenberg, John Rewald and Robert L. Herbert), and then unpacks chapter-by-chapter, for the first time in a single volume, the Surrealist positions on the same artists. To this end, it contributes to new strains of scholarship on Surrealism that exceed the usual bounds of the 1920s and 1930s and that examine the fascination within the movement with magic.

Shortlisted for the R. Gapper Book Prize 2020Enchanted Ground is about the challenge to modernist criticism by Surrealist writers – mainly André Breton but also Louis Aragon, Pierre Mabille, René Magritte, Charles Estienne, René Huyghe and others – who viewed the same artists in terms of magic, occultism, precognition, alchemy and esotericism generally. It introduces the history of the ways in which those artists who came after Impressionism – Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh – became canonical in the 20th century through the broad approaches we now call modernist or formalist (by critics and curators such as Alfred H. Barr, Roger Fry, Robert Goldwater, Clement Greenberg, John Rewald and Robert L. Herbert), and then unpacks chapter-by-chapter, for the first time in a single volume, the Surrealist positions on the same artists. To this end, it contributes to new strains of scholarship on Surrealism that exceed the usual bounds of the 1920s and 1930s and that examine the fascination within the movement with magic.