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The Lives of the Surrealists - Hardcover | Diverse Reads

The Lives of the Surrealists

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Life histories of the Surrealists, known and unknown, by one of the last surviving members of the movement—artist and best-selling author Desmond Morris

Surrealism did not begin as an art movement but as a philosophical strategy, a way of life, and a rebellion against the establishment that gave rise to the First World War. In Lives of the Surrealists, Desmond Morris concentrates on the artists as people—as remarkable individuals. What were their personalities, their predilections, their character strengths and flaws?

Unlike the Impressionists or the Cubists, the surrealists did not obey a fixed visual code, but rather the rules of surrealist philosophy: work from the unconscious, letting your darkest, most irrational thoughts well up and shape your art. An artist himself, and contemporary of the later surrealists, Morris illuminates the considerable variation in each artist’s approach to this technique. While some were out-and-out surrealists in all they did, others lived more orthodox lives and only became surrealists at the easel or in the studio.

Focusing on the thirty-five artists most closely associated with the surrealist movement, Morris lends context to their life histories with narratives of their idiosyncrasies and their often complex love lives, alongside photos of the artists and their work.

ISBN-13: 9780500021361

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Publication Date: 05-15-2018

Pages: 272

Product Dimensions: 6.90(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.30(d)

Desmond Morris is a zoologist, ethnologist, and painter. He is the bestselling author of The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal, The Human Zoo: A Zoologist’s Classic Study of the Urban Animal, Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior, Bodytalk: A World Guide to Gestures, The Artistic Ape: Three Million Years of Art, and The Lives of the Surrealists.

Table of Contents

Preface 6

Introduction 11

Eileen Agar 20

Jean (Hans) Arp 27

Francis Bacon 32

Hans Bellmer 40

Victor Brauner 46

André Breton 52

Alexander Calder 64

Leonora Carrington 71

Giorgio De Chirico 77

Salvador Dalí 82

Paul Delvaux 94

Marcel Duchamp 100

Max Ernst 110

Leonor Fini 118

Wilhelm Freddie 125

Alberto Giacometti 131

Arshile Gorky 139

Wifredo Lam 144

Conroy Maddox 150

René Magritte 156

André Masson 166

Roberto Matta 172

E. L. T. Mesens 179

Joan Miró 185

Henry Moore 194

Meret Oppenheim 201

Wolfgang Paalen 207

Roland Penrose 214

Pablo Picasso 223

Man Ray 234

Yves Tanguy 241

Dorothea Tanning 250

Further resources 255

Further reading on individual artists 256

Acknowledgments 263

Illustration credits 264

Index 267