Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School [Hardcover]

Martica Sawin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 18, 1995

In this fascinating, detailed account of what was happening within Surrealism during the crucial years 1938-1947, Martica Sawin documents the cultural transfer that took place when the greater part of the prewar Surrealist group was transplanted to the Western Hemisphere. Sawin's year-by-year narrative pieces together when and how the refugees arrived and their various points of contact with the future abstract expressionists. It documents conclusively the roots of the New York School - a hybrid of startling vigor that brought world attention to the new American art for the first time - the evolution of the artworks involved, and the last brilliant flowering of Surrealist art. Interwoven with the text are 250 photographs of people, places, and artworks.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The advent of Nazism in Germany and the subsequent fall of France at the start of World War II began an exodus of the European intelligentsia to North America. The surrealists-including Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Yves Tanguy, and many others-were a major component of this flight. A critic, independent curator, and an instructor at Parsons School of Design, Sawin weaves together the varied stories of the individual members of this increasingly loose group of artists. Of even greater value, she carefully documents their interaction with, and influence on, the young American artists-Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and others-who would form the core of Abstract Expressionism (the New York School). This excellent account of this neglected chapter in Surrealism's history is highly recommended for all academic libraries and larger public collections. [For a new biography of Breton, see Mark Polizzotti's Revolution of the Mind, p. 74.-Ed.]-Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.
--Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Sawin's book... provides a constant stream of evocative details of life among the Surrealists. It's interesting to learn that Sylvia Makles, the sister of Andre Masson's wife Rose, was married to Georges Bataille but left him for psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan... An anonymous woman artist's comment about Breton—'making love to Andre was like taking a bath in molten steel'—is worth any number of Surrealist manifestos... Sawin also provides new insight into the relationship between Breton and Duchamp."
—Pepe Karmel, Art in America

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 482 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (September 18, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262193604
• ISBN-13: 978-0262193603
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,270,849 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #37 in Books > Arts & Photography > Schools, Periods & Styles > Surrealism

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How America Stole Europe's Artistic Thunder, March 9, 2003

By 

Captain Cook (Leeward to the Sandwich Islands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School (Hardcover)

So much art history and criticism is just a pose of knowledge instead of its communication. This book, thankfully is not one of these. Focusing on one of the pivotal points in the history of art, this work tells the story of the effect the European Surrealist painters had on the American Abstract Expressionists. Sawin communicates in clear readable prose that usually succeeds in avoiding the petentious, tautological jargon that passes for art writing elsewhere.

The interest in this story is in the way it reveals the start of a kind of artistic Munro doctrine. The European emigres with their Parisian sophistication, aloofness, and arrogance come over as Masters but then have all their best ideas stolen and Americanized before trickling back with their tails firmly between their legs to a Paris that had all but forgotten them during the War.

The period concentrated on in this book is a dividing point in the history of modern art, marking a watershed between two clear movements determined by two opposing trends, something Sawin could have perhaps emphasized more.

First there was a move towards increasing explicitness in art, which climaxed in the efforts of Surrealists like Dali, Masson, Ernst, and Matta to drag the processes of the mind out into the daylight. This tended to strip away the veils of mystery and made art almost unnecessary, so this was quickly followed by a move to mask and hide the subject of paintings as we see in the work of the abstract expressionists like Pollock, and the colorfield painters like Rothko. This was a vital and no doubt self-interested U-turn entered into by artists and the art establishment.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The view from the mind's eye...., July 28, 2001

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School (Hardcover)

When the 20th Century began, proto-Cubists like Cezanne and the last remnants of the Impressionist movement like Monet dominated European art. No one could foresee the rise of Surrealism. Surrealism was a reaction to it's times that exploded in France in the years following WWI and later migrated to the United States during WWII. In SUREALISM IN EXILE, Martica Sawin says surrealism was inspired by many events. Certainly the surreal literary movement led by writers such as Baudelaire affected the visual arts. Similarly, the writing of anthropologists and sociologists beginning to make "scientific" contact with traditional societies also played a role.

However, Sawin suggests it was the personal experiences of artists like Max Ernst who had served at the front with the German army in WWI and French artists like Paul Eluard who faced him on the battlefield who felt the need to explore surrealism --"Rational" realism was too narrow. Later on, others joined the movement. Onslow Ford, whose physician father had witnessed the slaughter at Gallipoli as an English medical officer and returned home bitter, became a primary player after watching his father slip into depression and madness.

Ford was to say at a later date in New York that artists needed to "tear down the veils one by one that hide the reality of our own incomprehensible universe." He and the other surrealists felt the rationalist view was too restrictive. The surrealist artist could tap into the collective unconscious described by Jung (whose book on that subject was published in 1939) and bring to light a broader view of reality. Ford said artists could escape the cubist-driven semi-abstact dead end they found themselves in by opening their third eye--the Cyclopian eye, or the mind's eye, or the inner eye, and tap into their unconscious.

Sawin's book is a history of Surrealism, a movement that borrowed and incorporated ideas from the Navaho sand painters, the Tsimshian Indians (totem poles), German fairy tales, Celtic myths, Tarot cards, and menhirs--dolmans in Brittany. From these inspirational sources the Surrealists created paintings such as "Rotary Disks" --an optical illusion comprised of revolving concentric circles; "Star, Flower, Personage, Stone' --depicting alchemical transformation; and other physical transformations of space that exploded the confines of the convential 3-D world humans see owing to their limited view of reality. Surrealist art attempted to depict time and change seen by a third eye.

SURREALISM IN EXILE is filled with photographs (black and white) of the lives and works of the Surrealists, beginning with the early works in France and ending with the later works from the New York school in the late forties. If you are interested in exploring the influences that affected the work of Jackson Pollock, Piet Mondrian, Kandinski and other modern artists this book is invaluable. I gave it 4 stars because there are no color photos.