Books

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...

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...

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...

A concise compendium of the lives and work of the 101 most significant surrealists by one of the last surviving members of the movement, bestselling author and artist Desmond Morris, who knew several of the key participants personally. 2024 marks the...

Surrealism was launched as a literary and artistic movement by French  poet Andre Breton in 1924, and by the time of his death in 1966 it had  become one of the most popular and recognizable art movements of the  twentieth century...

Unleash the unconscious Provoking the establishment with primal instincts With Salvador Dalí as its figurehead, the great ship of Surrealism traversed the turbulent seas of the early 20th century with sails billowing with dreams and desires. Inspired by...

Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS) (Author) Handbook of visual experience: An exploration of symbols and their meanings throughout history The Book of Symbols combines original and incisive essays about particular symbols with...

Spaces of Worship A Journey Through Spiritual Landscapes Taking us on a journey through the history of sacred art and architecture, Sacred Sites explores the myriads of ways in which we imbue our environments with profound and enduring meaning. From...

Celebrating the magick of the natural realm, Volume IV of The Library of Esoterica, delves into the symbolism, ceremony, and our ritual relationships with the botanical world. A visual journey through our interdependent evolution with nature, Plant...

A Date with Destiny The art of astrology, from ancient science to modern-day practice From the beginning of human history, individuals across cultures and belief systems have looked to the sky for meaning. The movement of celestial bodies and their...