In 1932, against the troubled background of the Depression, the American art community had its first glimpse of the revolutionary art of the Surrealists. Combining a fascination for Freud's new symbolic language of dreams with a radical leftist utopianism, the Parisian movement galvanized an emerging American avant-garde. New galleries opened to exhibit the "terrifying," "insane" works of Surrealist artists, and new magazines sprang up to publish a startling crop of Surrealist poetry, criticism, and vociferous attacks on mainstream culture and politics. Only four years later, a major Surrealist exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art catapulted Surrealism into the cultural limelight and the attention of high-fashion magazines like Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. Soon the art of Man Ray was selling cologne and swimwear and the manic Salvador Dali was designing windows for Bonwit's and a pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Even Andre Breton and his circle, exiled in Manhattan during World War II, were unable to assert control over this new kind of Surrealism. If anything, their cultural dislocation in these years gave Americans the edge in developing new Surrealist concepts and new movements such as Abstract Expressionism. In this innovative and vividly written cultural history, Professor Dickran Tashjian tells the story of Surrealism's remarkable sea change during its years in America, from a fiercely leftist, strongly literary, avant-garde movement into an apolitical, almost exclusively visual style. Exploring both "high" and "low" cultural perspectives, he shows how the American avant-garde selectively filtered and reshaped European Surrealism to meet its own agendas, and how it in turn was reinterpreted, de-politicized, and commercially exploited by mainstream American culture and the fashion/advertising industry.

A Boatload of Madmen: Surrealism and the American Avant-Garde 1920 1950

Arts & Photography

Tashjian, Dickran

History & Criticism

Thames&Hudson

A Boatload of Madmen: Surrealism and the American Avant-Garde, 1920-1950

The American art community had its first glimpse of Surrealism in 1932. Its revolutionary art galvanised an emerging avant-garde. New galleries opened to exhibit the works of Surrealist artists, and new magazines sprang up to publish a startling crop of Surrealist poetry, criticism and attacks on mainstream culture and politics. Only four years later, a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art catapulted Surrealism into the cultural limelight and the attentions of high-fashion magazines like "Harper's Bazaar" and "Vogue". Soon the art of Man Ray was selling cologne and swimwear; and the manic Salvador Dali was designing windows for Bonwitt's and a pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Even Andre Breton and his circle, exiled in Manhattan during World War II, were unable to assert control over this new kind of Surrealism. In this cultural history, Professor Dickran Tashjian tells the story of Surrealism's remarkable sea change, from a fiercely leftist, strongly literary, avant-garde movement into an apolitical almost exclusively visual style. Exploring both high and low cultural perspectives, he shows how the American avant-garde selectively reshaped European Surrealism to meet its own agendas, and how it was in turn reinterpreted, de-politicized and commercially exploited by mainstream American culture and the fashion and advertising industries. Dickran Tashjian teaches in the Programme in Comparative Culture at the University of California, Irvine, and is the author of several books, including "Joseph Cornell: Gifts of Desire".

A boatload of madmen: Surrealism and the American avant-garde, 1920-1950

THAMES HUDSON LTD

4to, stiff wrappers. 168 pp, 145 illustrations (16 in color), bibliography. Exhibition Dec. 12, 1978 - Feb. 4, 1979.

William Carlos Williams and the American Scene, 1920 - 1940

Literature & Fiction

University of California Press

William Carlos Williams and the American Scene, 1920-1940

Making Mischief: Dada Invades New York, the catalogue for the landmark exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1996, proposes that Dada was not only important to the growth of American modernism, but that the ferment of New York played a critical role in the continuing photographs, and related documentary material records the achievements of the French emigres Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia, the American expatriate Man Ray, as well as American artists Charles Demuth, Katherine Dreier, Charles Sheeler, Joseph Stella, Florine Stettheimer, Clara Tice, and Beatrice Wood.

Making Mischief: Dada Invades New York

Watson, Steven

Krauss, Rosalind E.

Jones, Amelia

Whitney Museum of American Art

Antliff, Allan

Venn, Beth

Nesbit, Molly

Rosenblum, Robert

Zabel, Barbara

Henderson, Linda Dalrymple

Alden, Todd

Naumann, Francis M.

Bochner, Jay

Davidson, Abraham

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF ART.

Skyscraper Primitives: Dada and the American Avant-Garde, 1910-1925

Wesleyan University Press

Cultural historian Dickran Tashjian provides a fresh analysis of the works that Joseph Cornell conceived as gifts to ballerinas,poets and actresses. In this way the artist connected his life withg that of Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Hedy Lamarr, Lauren Bacall and other glamourous and talented personalities he admired, most often from afar.His gifts ranged from simple gestures of love and affection to collaborations and exchanges with photographer Lee Miller and artists Leonor Fini and Dorothea Tanning,who,like himself,were connected with the Surrealist movement. 
By making extensive use of the artist's diaries,correspondence and library,Tashjian leads the reader on a wondrous journey through the labrinth of Cornell's creative process.This beautifully designed book with lavish color plates captures the spirit of Cornell's enchanting collages and box constructions.

Joseph Cornell: Gifts of Desire

Parenting & Relationships

Grassfield Pr

First edition, first printing. Soft cover. Photographically illustrated matt laminated paper wrappers, no dust jacket as issued. Photographs, sculpture, paintings, films and mixed media works by Man Ray. Essays by Robert Berman, Tom Patchett, Dickran Tashjian. Interview with James and Barbara Byrnes. Includes notes to the text and a bibliography. Designed by Douglas Martin. 128 pp., with 24 four-color, 16 duotone and 50 black and white reference illustrations. 12 x 9 inches. Published on the occasion of the 1996 exhibition Man Ray: Paris at the Track 16 Gallery and Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica, California.

Man Ray: Paris-LA (Smart Art Press Series)

MAN, RAY

Track 16 Gallery and Mainspace

Robert Berman Gallery

Biographies & Memoirs

Smart Art Pr

Curtis is a unique artist, an American original whose life and work have spanned and absorbed the art history of the entire twentieth century.

American Dreamer: The Art of Philip C. Curtis

RAND, Harry

Ehrlich, Susan

Chadwick, Whitney

Rubin, David S.

Hudson Hills

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