Books

These “Metaphysical "works began around 1912, with a series of 8 Ariadne paintings in which the artist depicted a reclining statue of the Princess of Greek mythology in an empty, sun-drenched piazza. According to the legend, Ariadne was abandoned by her...

The first in-depth study of Man Ray’s groundbreaking rayographs of the 1920s and their interconnections with his Dada and Surrealist works. This is the first in-depth study of the rayograph (or camera-less photograph) pioneered by Man Ray (1890–1976) in...

Lovers, collaborators, friends: the story of two inventive icons of 20th-century photography This volume pays homage to Lee Miller (1907–77)—pioneer of Surrealist photography, war correspondent, muse and icon—and places her emphatically...

A panorama of Man Ray’s protean artistic output spanning film, assemblage, drawing and much more Emmanuel Radnitzky, better known as Man Ray (1890–1976), occupies a prominent place in 20th-century art. Living at the heart of the Parisian artistic milieu,...

When is a urinal no longer a urinal? When Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) declared it to be art. The uproar that greeted the French artist’s Fountain  (1917), a porcelain urinal installed in a gallery, sent shock waves  through the art world...

Back in print after over a decade: the playful and genre-shattering memoir of a beloved surrealist known for her gender-bending portraiture First published in 1930 by anti-fascist, avant-garde publisher Éditions du Carrefour in Paris as Aveux non Avenus,...

The perfect primer on the surrealist writer and photographer Claude Cahun. Claude Cahun (1894–1954), the chosen name of the artist Lucy Schwob, was best known in her lifetime as a writer but built up a remarkable body of photographic work that only came...

Artists’ Film offers a lucid, accessible account of artists’ unique contribution to the art of the moving image in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. International in scope and accessibly written by a renowned authority on the subject,...

First published in 1979, this updated edition of the pioneering study in the World of Art series surveys a full century of performance, from the Futurist manifesto of 1909 through the second decade of the new millennium. The standard reference since its...

A selection of dream epiphanies and reveries from Joseph Cornell's voluminous diaries Joseph Cornell is well known for the oneiric quality of his art and films. Many have tried, often in vain, to put into words the strange power of his boxes—toy-like...

Based on the original 1863 edition, this presentation of Goya's 80 etchings decries the consequences of war through his bleak, gruesome and unflinching imagery Following his tenure as court painter for the Spanish royal family, Francisco de Goya's art...

A specialized monograph on the artist whose importance has finally been recognized, given clarity by recent biographical research. This beautifully illustrated book, the first monograph on Wifredo Lam since 1989, provides a comprehensive retrospective of...

First discovered, celebrated and published by the Surrealists at the age of 14 (they declared her the “new Alice”), Gisèle Prassinos quickly found herself established in the literary world as a fount of automatic tales freighted with transgressive humor...

Before psychogeography, the Situationists and dream urbanism, there was Paris Peasant, a pioneering Surrealist excavation of the twentieth century's capital city Paris Peasant (1926) is one of the central works of Surrealism, yet Exact Change's edition...

This seminal 1929 surrealist novel by the painter Giorgio de Chirico merges the realms of dream and reality. In the artist’s only novel, de Chirico invites the reader into a world where language, time, space, and meaning are fluid, highlighting...

An exciting collection of the essential writings of surrealism, the European avant-garde movement of the mind’s deepest powers Originating in 1916 with the avant-garde Dada movement at the famous Café Voltaire in Zurich, surrealism aimed to unleash the...

Breton’s late treatise on magic and art appears for the first time in English, complete with citations, commentaries and a bibliography What is “Magic Art”? In 1953, André Breton, founder of the Surrealist movement, was invited by a prestigious French...

A detailed and intellectually invigorating collection that places Surrealism in the thick of the battle for political emancipation The Surrealist movement famously initiated a revolution in visual and written art, but its political engagement is...

A lively history of the Surrealists, both known and unknown, by one of the last surviving members of the movement—artist and bestselling author Desmond Morris. Surrealism did not begin as an art movement but as a philosophical strategy, a way of life,...

Why does Surrealism continue to fascinate us a century after André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism? How do we encounter Surrealism today? Mark Polizzotti vibrantly reframes the Surrealist movement in contemporary terms and offers insight into why it...