Radical Dreams

Surrealism is widely thought of as an artistic movement that flourished in Europe between the two world wars. However, during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, diverse radical affinity groups, underground subcultures, and student protest movements proclaimed their connections to surrealism. Radical Dreams argues that surrealism was more than an avant-garde art movement; it was a living current of anti-authoritarian resistance.

Featuring perspectives from scholars across the humanities and, distinctively, from contemporary surrealist practitioners, this volume examines surrealism’s role in postwar oppositional cultures. It demonstrates how surrealism’s committed engagement extends beyond the parameters of an artistic style or historical period, with chapters devoted to Afrosurrealism, Ted Joans, punk, the Situationist International, the student protests of May ’68, and other topics. Privileging interdisciplinary, transhistorical, and material culture approaches, contributors address surrealism’s interaction with New Left politics, protest movements, the sexual revolution, psychedelia, and other subcultural trends around the globe.

A revelatory work, Radical Dreams definitively shows that the surrealist movement was synonymous with cultural and political radicalism. It will be especially valuable to those interested in the avant-garde, contemporary art, and radical social movements.

In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Jonathan P. Eburne, David Hopkins, Claire Howard, Michael Löwy, Alyce Mahon, Gavin Parkinson, Grégory Pierrot, Penelope Rosemont, Ron Sakolsky, Marie Arleth Skov, Ryan Standfest, and Sandra Zalman.

“Radical Dreams . . . conveys a sense of the [surrealist] movement as a global network, reclaiming its original radicalism in alternative political contexts.”—Ela Bittencourt, Frieze

“This well-organized and evocatively illustrated volume exposes contemporary surrealist scholarship and has the potential to lead to new lines of inquiry connecting surrealism to contemporary realism.”—S. Schumacher, Choice

“[T]he chapters in Radical Dreams complement each other to outline the ways surrealism manifested in the postwar decades. King and Susik happily conclude that the volume is “incomplete” and Radical Dreams certainly lays the groundwork for ongoing research.”—Emily Wieder, Dada/Surrealism

“Radical Dreams reignites Surrealism’s revolutionary appeal from the 1960s and 1970s and rewrites an often forgotten chapter of the movement.”—Stephanie D’Alessandro, Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Elliott H. King is Associate Professor of Art History at Washington and Lee University and the author of Salvador Dalí: The Late Work and Dalí, Surrealism, and Cinema. He is a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism.

Abigail Susik is Associate Professor of Art History at Willamette University and the author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work. She co-edited the volume Surrealism and Film After 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introductory Essays

Surrealism as Radicalism

Abigail Susik and Elliot H. King

Surrealism and Revolutionary Romanticism in May ’68

Michael Löwy

Part 1: Surrealist Solidarity

1. “Down with Art, Up with Revolution”: Protesting Dada and Surrealism in 1968

Sandra Zalman

2. Ted Joans, the Other Jones: Jazz Poet, Black Power Missionary, and Surrealist Interpreter

Grégory Pierrot

3. Angry, Hopeful Chaos an the Great Secret of Surrealism: Unraveling the Tangled Web of the 1970s

Penelope Rosemont

Part 2: Against the Liquidators

4. Passionate Attraction: Fourier, Feminism, Free Love, and L’Écart absolu

Claire Howard

5. “To Be a Painter Means to Oppose”: Exhibiting and Politicizing Robert Rauschenberg, 1959-1965

Gavin Parkinson

6. A Consciousness of Being: Burn, Baby, Burn and the Political Art of Roberto Matta

Alyce Mahon

Part 3: The Right to Insubordination

7. The Fantasy of a Powerful Myth: The Situationist International After Surrealism

Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen

8. Afrosurrealism as a Counterculture of Modernity

Jonathan P. Eburne

9. The Surrealist Adventure and the Poetry of Direct Action: Passionate Encounters Between the Chicago Surrealist Group, the Wobblies, and Earth First!

Ron Sakolsky

Part 4: Passional Attractions

10. A Useful Bile: André Breton’s Humour Noir in 1960s America

Ryan Standfest

11. Oz Magazine and British Counterculture: A Case Study in the Reception of Surrealism

David Hopkins

12. Surrealism and Punk: The Case of COUM Transmissions

Marie Arleth Skov

List of Contributors

Index

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction

Art History & Architecture

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