Beyond Symbolism and Surrealism


Book Description

Beyond Symbolism and Surrealism sheds light on the oeuvre of Alexei Remizov (1877-1957), a great modernist eccentric who has remained largely unknown to Western audiences. Although his original prose garnered him early acclaim and has since entered the Russian literary canon, Remizov's artistic capacity was fully realized only after his experimentation with words and images culminated in a writing process that relies as much on drawing as it does on language. --




Surrealism And The Sacred


Book Description

A vital new interpretation of the personalities, historical forces and intellectual paradigms that created Surrealist art




Surrealism and the Occult


Book Description

"Searching for a deeper understanding of the power and influence of surrealist art, Nadia Choucha clearly confirms that many surrealists and their predecessors were steeped in magical ideas. The Theosophical involvement of Kandinsky, the visionary paintings of Salvador Dali, the alchemy of Pablo Picasso, and the shamanism of Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington all demonstrate the fundamental and dynamic impact of magic and mysticism on surrealism. Surrealist artists believed that society had much to learn from the unconditioned, spontaneous forms of art produced by spiritual mediums, children, untutored artists, and the insane. In their attempt to tap the unconscious regions of the mind, the surrealists borrowed imagery from alchemy, the Tarot, Gnosticism, Tantra, and other esoteric traditions and sought inspiration from ancient myths, 'irrational' thought, and ethnic art. Enhanced by both color and black-and-white reproductions of fine art, Choucha's account explains the intimate connections between occult and surrealist philosophies and provides an essential key to the mysteries of the surrealist movement and the forces that give it life" --Back cover.




Symbolist Art


Book Description

Symbolic art - Romanticism and Symbolism - Symbolist movement in France - Gustave Moreau - Redon and Bresdin - Puvis de Chavannes and Carriere - Gauguin, Pont-Aven and the Nabis - Edvard Munch.




Beyond the Arab Disease


Book Description

Presenting bold and original insights, this book examines the policies and diplomacies pursued by Arab and Western governments, while discussing both the political and cultural roles played by the modern Arab World. It explores the various facets of the malaise affecting the Arab world, stressing the urgent call for reform and recovery, as well as the need to address major issues including inter-Arab affairs, relations with a hegemonic USA, and peace with Israel. In addition, the book provides new perspectives on a range of topics including Arab and Muslim diplomacy, literature, and culture; often as these interact with Western models and paradigms in an increasingly interconnected but challenging world. Employing a combination of disciplines and discourses, the book aids learners and policy-makers in better understanding the Arab world’s successes and failures in its problematic relations with the West and modernity.




Literary Modernism and Beyond


Book Description

Early modernists turned to theories of consciousness and aestheticism to combat what they saw as the hostility of naturalism and to find new ways of thinking about reality. This consciousness took various forms, including a Jamesian sense of moral ambiguity, Proustian time spots, and B ergsonian intuition, but the Nietzschean theory that reality depends on perception connected them all. This modernist movement reached a distinguished level of achievement with novelists Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, and James Joyce, but a succession of counterinfluences transformed it after World War II, when elitism and a desire for a homogeneous culture gave way to diversity and elements of mass culture. In Literary Modernism and Beyond, Richard Lehan tracks the evolution of the movement from its emergence in the late nineteenth century to its recent incarnations. In this wide-ranging study, Lehan demonstrates how and why the "originary vision" of modernism changed radically after it gained prominence. With critical discussions on a wide variety of major modernist writers, intellectuals, and artists and their works -- including Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Andre Gide, Franz Kafka, Zora Neale Hurston, Ian Fleming, and J. K. Rowling -- Lehan examines the large-scale changes that came as critical authority moved from one generation to another. Both popular culture and literary criticism -- especially "critical theory" -- acted as key agents of change, and structuralism, poststructuralism, and concerns with gender and race also greatly influenced the movement. Along with a process of decline and a nihilism that emerged from the modernist movement, these changes created a new literary reality and with it a new textuality. Literary Modernism and Beyond treats modernism's major innovations of myth, symbol, and structure not as individual pieces but as interrelated contributions to a historical process, the product of three generations of transformations. Lehan's analysis provides a more complete understanding than ever before of the movement itself.




The Absence of Myth


Book Description

For Bataille, the absence of myth had itself become the myth of the modern age. In a world that had lost the secret of its cohesion, Bataille saw surrealism as both a symptom and a beginning of an attempt to address this loss. His writings on this theme are the result of a profound reflection in the wake of World War Two. The Absence of Myth is the most incisive study yet made of surrealism, insisting on its importance as a cultural and social phenomenon with far-reaching consequences. Clarifying Bataille's links with the surrealist movement, and throwing revealing light on his complex and greatly misunderstood relationship with Andre Breton, The Absence of Myth shows Bataille to be a much more radical figure than his postmodernist devotees would have us believe: a man who continually tried to extend Marxist social theory; a pessimistic thinker, but one as far removed from nihilism as can be.




Beyond Symbolism


Book Description







Paths to the Absolute


Book Description

A groundbreaking account of the meaning of abstract painting From Mondrian's bold geometric forms to Kandinsky's use of symbols to Pollock's "dripped paintings," the richly diverse movement of abstract painting challenges anyone trying to make sense of either individual works or the phenomenon as a whole. Applying his insights as an art historian and a painter, John Golding offers a unique approach to understanding the evolution of abstractionism by looking at the personal artistic development of seven of its greatest practitioners. He re-creates the journey undertaken by each painter in his move from representational art to the abstract—a journey that in most cases began with cubism but led variously to symbolism, futurism, surrealism, theosophy, anthropology, Jungian analysis, and beyond. For each artist, spiritual quest and artistic experimentation became inseparable. And despite their different techniques and philosophies, these artists shared one goal: to break a path to a new, ultimate pictorial truth. The book first explores the works and concerns of three pioneering European abstract painters—Mondrian, Malevich, Kandinsky—and then those of their American successors—Pollock, Newman, Rothko, and Still. Golding shows how each painter sought to see the world and communicate his vision in the purest or most expressive form possible. For example, Mondrian found his way into abstraction through a spiritual response to the landscape of his native Holland, Malevich through his apprehension of the human body, Kandinsky through a blend of religious mysticism and symbolism. Line and color became the focus for many of their creative endeavors. In the 1940s and 50s, the Americans raised the level of pictorial innovation, beginning most notably with Pollock and his Jung-inspired concept of action. Golding makes a powerful case that at its best and most profound, abstract painting is heavily imbued with meaning and content. Through a blend of biography, art analysis, and cultural history, Paths to the Absolute offers remarkable insights into how a sense of purpose is achieved in painting, and how abstractionism engaged with the intellectual currents of its time. Please note: All images in this ebook are presented in black and white and have been reduced in size.