Surrealism, History and Revolution

373 Pages·2012·13.526 MB·English

by  Baker, Simon

Surrealism, History and Revolution

Simon Baker
Surrealism, History
and Revolution
PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
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Great Britain, and from The Library of Congress, USA
Cover image: Constantinesco, ‘Le maréchal Ney descendait les Champs Elysées’,
Marcel Sauvage, La Fin de Paris, Paris, 1932, plate 10.
Cover design: Adrian Baggett, Peter Lang Ltd.
ISBN 978-3-03911-091-9 (paperback)
ISBN 978-3-0353-0332-2 (eBook)

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ni dieu ni maître

Contents

Acknowledgements 9
List of illustrations 11

Introduction
Surrealism, history and revolution 21

Chapter One
Surrealism and history 25

Chapter Two
La Révolution surréaliste – the surrealist revolution 65

Chapter Three
Tales from the crypt / a surrealist pantheon 107

Chapter Four
Statuephobia! Surrealism and iconoclasm in the Bronze Age 147

Chapter Five
The unacceptable face of the French Revolution 231

Chapter Six
Surrealism in the streets 295

Appendix 339
Bibliography 349
Index 367

7

Acknowledgements

The research that forms the basis of this book was undertaken with a
three-year doctoral scholarship from the Arts and Humanities Re-
search Board, and its publication subsequently made possible by a
post-doctoral fellowship from the Henry Moore Foundation. I am
sincerely grateful to both of these institutions, their directors and staff,
for a degree of support without which this project would certainly not
have been impossible. Earlier versions, or parts, of Chapters 3, 4 and 6
appear in the Subject/Object: New Studies in Sculpture series,
published by the Henry Moore Institute.1
Both doctoral and post-doctoral work was undertaken at the
Department of History of Art, University College London. For this
author, as for many art historians in recent years, it was an academic
home in the best sense of the word, and it is impossible to overstate
the extent to which the culture of the department has influenced this
book. It was a great place to work and it is in the spirit of time spent at
UCL that I offer my sincere thanks to all the staff and students there,
past and present, for maintaining something very special.
I would like, in the first instance, to thank my thesis supervisors.
Briony Fer was, and continues to be, an immense source of inspiration
and encouragement, and Helen Weston contributed enormously to
both my knowledge and enthusiasm for the history and art history of
the French Revolution. It is in the nature of the History of Art de-
partment at UCL that I benefited enormously from the assistance and
encouragement of many other members of staff, and I thank David
Bindman, Tamar Garb, Andrew Hemingway, Fred Schwartz and
Frances Stracey for their friendship and support. Special thanks are
also due to Diana Dethloff, for many acts of kindness; Charles Ford,

1 R. Wrigley and M. Craske (eds), Pantheons: Transformations of a Monumental
Idea, Aldershot, 2004; S. Boldrick and R. Clay (eds), Iconoclasm: Contested
Objects, Contested Terms, Aldershot, 2007; B. Taylor (ed.), Sculpture and
Psychoanalysis, Aldershot, 2005.
9