The Surrealist Look: An Erotics of Encounter [Paperback]

Mary Ann Caws (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 12, 1999

How we look at Surrealism, how it looks at the objects it encounters, and how it looks from here: all these looks intertwine in this study linking Surrealism and the Baroque. Le look (whatever it might be): you have it or you don't, and Surrealism had it all the way. The emotional charge Surrealism extended to the objects of its encounter makes itself felt as at least philosophically erotic. This charged look determines the atmosphere around the Surrealist text and its encounters--in the world of art and the world it made into art. In this unprecedented attempt to make sense of the way Surrealism sees, conceals, poses, and stares at its own self and the selves of others, Mary Ann Caws examines the decors, games, portraits, transformations, and mirrorings that establish Surrealism's links to Baroque forms of representation."We have to learn to look and to read slowly," Caws writes. Her study begins with an exhortation to take one's time, for the figures in the carpet of this study are not easy, nor do they put one at ease. Take, for example, the self-portraits of Claude Cahum and Dorothea Tanning, Marcel Duchamp's creation Rrose Sélavy, the crossing of André Breton into Melusine. The constructions of Joseph Cornell and the fashionings by Man Ray meet in a space determined by the architecture of François de Nomé, Robert Desnos, and Antonin Artaud, pointed at by Marcel Duchamp in his crossings not just with Rrose but with Ludwig Wittgenstein. The game of the Exquisite Corpse has it own erotic charge, and the Baroque vanitas casts its shadow over everything from Cornell's Shadow Boxes to the game of chance. It all ends with two of Picasso's pipes, one by a skull and one in a frame play--signaling, perhaps, that Surrealism looks the way it looks and speaks the Baroque language it speaks because whoever is looking frames it that way.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A melting wristwatch. A man in a bowler hat flying through the air. Images such as these became the signatures of surrealism, an art form that tread a finer-than-usual line between avant-garde and hype. Its most famous practitioners were men--Man Ray, Salvador Dali, René Magritte, and André Breton--who often depicted women as little more than body parts. In The Surrealist Look, Mary Ann Caws examines the misogyny that ran rampant through surrealism. She also suggests that surrealism is descended from the baroque, another style of art that rejoiced in exaggeration. Whether you agree with Caw's ideas or not, The Surrealist Look is an interesting take on an unusual school of art. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Long, intense years of immersion in the poetry and art of theSurrealist climate endow Mary Ann Caws' responses with what theSurrealists would have called authenticity—a rare quality. Herpresent meditation offers a fresh view of unusual value in her stresson the element of the Baroque in Surrealists' works. I would say thatCaws enters her thoughts on the history of Surrealism with perfectpitch; both eye and ear alert to every nuance, and mind attuned totheir grandest illusions. She offers a lively argument which, withconsiderable daring, leads her readers deeply into Surrealistterritory where they must, willingly, lose themselves." Dore Ashton, author and Professor of Art History atThe Cooper Union

"Caws's love of her subject and intimate knowledge of it are immediately clear." New Art Examiner

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Product Details

• Paperback: 366 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (February 12, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262531623
• ISBN-13: 978-0262531627
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,604,406 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I like writing about all sorts of things, art and artists, poetry and poets, literatures of various sorts, and also about travel and cooking. And I love living in New York and Provence. My daughter created a great website for me: maryanncaws.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Dull/Dead, September 12, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Surrealist Look: An Erotics of Encounter (Hardcover)

This is a waste of money. Its only value is the wonderful pictures by Claude Cahun, but now they can be found elsewhere. Caws has nothing interesting to say, and will completely numb your brain with her empty voice and disinformation. I tried to sell this book back to a local bookstore, but they had already accumulated so many returned copies before mine that they refused to buy it. Now I'm stuck with the useless junk. Thanks for wasting my money, Mary.