In Montparnasse
The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dalí
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
"Describes with plenty of colour how surrealism, from Rene Magritte's bowler hats to Salvador Dali's watches, was born and developed." - The Times (UK)
As she did for the Modernists In Montmartre, noted art historian and biographer Sue Roe now tells the story of the Surrealists in Montparnasse.
In Montparnasse begins on the eve of the First World War and ends with the 1936 unveiling of Dalí’s Lobster Telephone. As those extraordinary years unfolded, the Surrealists found ever more innovative ways of exploring the interior life, and asking new questions about how to define art. In Montparnasse recounts how this artistic revolution came to be amidst the salons and cafés of that vibrant neighborhood.
Sue Roe is both an incisive art critic of these pieces and a beguiling biographer with a fingertip feel for this compelling world. Beginning with Duchamp, Roe then takes us through the rise of the Dada movement, the birth of Surrealist photography with Man Ray, the creation of key works by Ernst, Cocteau, and others, through the arrival of Dalí. On canvas and in their readymades and other works these artists juxtaposed objects never before seen together to make the viewer marvel at the ordinary—and at the workings of the subconscious. We see both how this art came to be and how the artists of Montparnasse lived. Roe puts us with Gertrude Stein in her box seat at the opening of The Rite of Spring; with Duchamp as he installs his famous urinal; at a Cocteau theatrical with Picasso and Coco Chanel; with Breton at a session with Freud; and with Man Ray as he romances Kiki de Montparnasse.
Stein said it best when she noted that the Surrealists still saw in the common ways of the 19th century, but they complicated things with the bold new vision of the 20th. Their words mark an enormously important watershed in the history of art—and they forever changed the way we all see the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Roe (In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art) traces the birth and evolution of Surrealism in this colorful but overly detailed account, revealing how a group of disgruntled Paris artisans created a new movement and turned the art world on its head. Infuriated by the massive destruction of WWI, artists including Marcel Duchamp, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, and Man Ray exploded the boundaries of society and art when they moved to the low-rent, gritty district of Montparnasse, "lifting things out of their habitual contexts... to endow them with new, startling implications." Throughout, Roe describes pivotal artistic moments: Gertrude Stein attending the revolutionary premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, Duchamp adapting a urinal into ready-made art, Cocteau transforming a bar into an avant-garde hangout, Man Ray developing images with three-dimensional qualities called rayographs, Ren Magritte turning a painting of a pipe into a work of art, and, finally, the showing of Salvador Dali's Lobster Telephone in 1936. Roe is an elegant writer, but the narrative can become confusing as she jumps back and forth between artists within chapters. Nevertheless, this entertaining, fast-paced history will thrill Francophones and art historians alike.