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Surrealism and Women
These sixteen illustrated essays present an important revision of surrealism by focusing on the works of women surrealists and their strategies to assert positions as creative subjects within a movement that regarded woman primarily as an object of masculine desire or fear.While the male surrealists attacked aspects of the bourgeois order, they reinforced the traditional patriarchal image of woman. Their emphasis on dreams, automatic writing, and the unconscious reveal some of the least inhibited masculine fantasies. The first resistance to the male surrealists' projection of the female figure arose in the writings and paintings of marginalized woman artists and writers associated with Surrealism. The essays in this collection explore the complexity of these women's works, which simultaneously employ and subvert the dominant discourse of male surrealists.Essays
What Do Little Girls Dream Of: The Insurgent Writing of Gis�1/2le Prassinos - Finding What You Are Not Looking For - From D�1/2jeuner en fourrure to Caroline: Meret Oppenheim's Chronicle of Surrealism - Speaking with Forked Tongues: Male Discourse in Female Surrealism? - Androgyny: Interview with Meret Oppenheim - The Body Subversive: Corporeal Imagery in Carrington, Prassinos, and Mansour - Identity Crises: Joyce Mansour's Narratives - Joyce Mansour and Egyptian Mythology - In the Interim: The Constructivist Surrealism of Kay Sage - The Flight from Passion in Leonora Carrington's Literary Work - Beauty and/Is the Beast: Animal Symbology in the Work of Leonora Carrington, Remedio Varo, and Leonor Fini - Valentine, Andr�1/2, Paul et les autres, or the Surrealization of Valentine Hugo - Refashioning the World to the Image of Female Desire: The Collages of Aube Ell�1/2ou�1/2t - Eileen Agar - Statement by Dorothea Tanning
What Do Little Girls Dream Of: The Insurgent Writing of Gis�1/2le Prassinos - Finding What You Are Not Looking For - From D�1/2jeuner en fourrure to Caroline: Meret Oppenheim's Chronicle of Surrealism - Speaking with Forked Tongues: Male Discourse in Female Surrealism? - Androgyny: Interview with Meret Oppenheim - The Body Subversive: Corporeal Imagery in Carrington, Prassinos, and Mansour - Identity Crises: Joyce Mansour's Narratives - Joyce Mansour and Egyptian Mythology - In the Interim: The Constructivist Surrealism of Kay Sage - The Flight from Passion in Leonora Carrington's Literary Work - Beauty and/Is the Beast: Animal Symbology in the Work of Leonora Carrington, Remedio Varo, and Leonor Fini - Valentine, Andr�1/2, Paul et les autres, or the Surrealization of Valentine Hugo - Refashioning the World to the Image of Female Desire: The Collages of Aube Ell�1/2ou�1/2t - Eileen Agar - Statement by Dorothea Tanning
246 pages, Paperback
First published March 13, 1991
2 people are currently reading
135 people want to read
About the author
Mary Ann Caws
173 books63 followersMary Ann Caws is an American author, translator, art historian and literary critic.
She is Distinguished Professor Emerita in Comparative Literature, English, and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, and on the film faculty. She is an expert on Surrealism and modern English and French literature, having written biographies of Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Henry James. She works on the interrelations of visual art and literary texts, has written biographies of Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí, and edited the diaries, letters, and source material of Joseph Cornell. She has also written on André Breton, Robert Desnos, René Char, Yves Bonnefoy, Robert Motherwell, and Edmond Jabès. She served as the senior editor for the HarperCollins World Reader, and edited anthologies including Manifesto: A Century of Isms, Surrealism, and the Yale Anthology of 20th-Century French Poetry. Among others, she has translated Stéphane Mallarmé, Tristan Tzara, Pierre Reverdy, André Breton, Paul Éluard, Robert Desnos, and René Char.
Among the positions she has held are President, Association for Study of Dada and Surrealism, 1971–75 and President, Modern Language Association of America, 1983, Academy of Literary Studies, 1984–85, and the American Comparative Literature Association, 1989-91.
She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, and a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.
In October 2004, she published her autobiography, To the Boathouse: a Memoir (University Alabama Press), and in November 2008, a cookbook memoir: Provençal Cooking: Savoring the Simple Life in France (Pegasus Books).
She was married to Peter Caws and is the mother of Hilary Caws-Elwitt and of Matthew Caws, lead singer of the band Nada Surf. She is married to Dr. Boyce Bennett; they live in New York City.
She is Distinguished Professor Emerita in Comparative Literature, English, and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, and on the film faculty. She is an expert on Surrealism and modern English and French literature, having written biographies of Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Henry James. She works on the interrelations of visual art and literary texts, has written biographies of Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí, and edited the diaries, letters, and source material of Joseph Cornell. She has also written on André Breton, Robert Desnos, René Char, Yves Bonnefoy, Robert Motherwell, and Edmond Jabès. She served as the senior editor for the HarperCollins World Reader, and edited anthologies including Manifesto: A Century of Isms, Surrealism, and the Yale Anthology of 20th-Century French Poetry. Among others, she has translated Stéphane Mallarmé, Tristan Tzara, Pierre Reverdy, André Breton, Paul Éluard, Robert Desnos, and René Char.
Among the positions she has held are President, Association for Study of Dada and Surrealism, 1971–75 and President, Modern Language Association of America, 1983, Academy of Literary Studies, 1984–85, and the American Comparative Literature Association, 1989-91.
She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, and a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.
In October 2004, she published her autobiography, To the Boathouse: a Memoir (University Alabama Press), and in November 2008, a cookbook memoir: Provençal Cooking: Savoring the Simple Life in France (Pegasus Books).
She was married to Peter Caws and is the mother of Hilary Caws-Elwitt and of Matthew Caws, lead singer of the band Nada Surf. She is married to Dr. Boyce Bennett; they live in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 23, 2021
As with all collection of essays, it is a bit of a mixed bag. Some authors are wonderful at communicating and have a coherent vision, some are too academic and require a lot of previous knowledge (rife with 'as we know by reading this [reference]', 'building on [reference]') so that the lose their impact or are unintelligible. I didn't particularly get Robert J. Belton's point why women surrealists weren't surrealists at all. Alas.
It is fascinating to read about and be made continuously aware of the differences in approach and feminism in those artists. The phrase 'speaking in forked tongues' is apt for any interpretation of the past. So learning to know about the work of female surrealists is to be conscious of a completely different sense of agency and understanding of the mores of that milieu that they carried within themselves. Of course, men, who constituted the core and in fact, as it turns out, played the role of the gatekeepers of the surrealist movement, created art from their subconscious which was deeply sexist. It is quite hard to see some of their work (and even harder to hear the defence of it as being feminist). And quite hard to carry the aforementioned understanding and compassion when reading how some of female artists thought it natural to be considered beneath the men or Dorothea Tanning's statement saying that she chooses to be viewed as a human not a woman (harder still not to say: good luck with that).
I am making it seem more frustrating than it was - when in fact, I thoroughly enjoyed most of the essays and keep wanting to recommend them to my friends, who I believe will be influenced by the art and transported to that time. In particular, in the context of the body politics of the time in France - where women had no political power under the pretension that they were needed to repopulate France following the WWI, - the deeply affecting corporeal imagery of Prassinos. And my personal favourite, the constructivist surrealism of Kay Sage, that resounded with me just as much as the beautifully written essay about her work.
There is a lot more to learn here. Any art movement - specifically one interested in the subconscious - gains merit by expanding its horizons. I would say that Lautréamont's saying that 'poetry must be made by all and not by one' can be easily expanded to all art movements (and possibly beyond). There is a lot more to that (Afro-surrealism being one other interesting springboard here). I have no interest in arguing about the past, only learning more about this amazing artists that don't get the same attention, but offer a richness of experience all the same.
It is fascinating to read about and be made continuously aware of the differences in approach and feminism in those artists. The phrase 'speaking in forked tongues' is apt for any interpretation of the past. So learning to know about the work of female surrealists is to be conscious of a completely different sense of agency and understanding of the mores of that milieu that they carried within themselves. Of course, men, who constituted the core and in fact, as it turns out, played the role of the gatekeepers of the surrealist movement, created art from their subconscious which was deeply sexist. It is quite hard to see some of their work (and even harder to hear the defence of it as being feminist). And quite hard to carry the aforementioned understanding and compassion when reading how some of female artists thought it natural to be considered beneath the men or Dorothea Tanning's statement saying that she chooses to be viewed as a human not a woman (harder still not to say: good luck with that).
I am making it seem more frustrating than it was - when in fact, I thoroughly enjoyed most of the essays and keep wanting to recommend them to my friends, who I believe will be influenced by the art and transported to that time. In particular, in the context of the body politics of the time in France - where women had no political power under the pretension that they were needed to repopulate France following the WWI, - the deeply affecting corporeal imagery of Prassinos. And my personal favourite, the constructivist surrealism of Kay Sage, that resounded with me just as much as the beautifully written essay about her work.
There is a lot more to learn here. Any art movement - specifically one interested in the subconscious - gains merit by expanding its horizons. I would say that Lautréamont's saying that 'poetry must be made by all and not by one' can be easily expanded to all art movements (and possibly beyond). There is a lot more to that (Afro-surrealism being one other interesting springboard here). I have no interest in arguing about the past, only learning more about this amazing artists that don't get the same attention, but offer a richness of experience all the same.
March 5, 2018
This book was edited together for all the wrong reasons and the logic was flawed. There was no through line that seemed to connect everything and it was hard to figure out what the editors were actually trying to get at. The only good thing I got from it was the opportunity to read some of Giselle Prassino's work. More work needs to be done into the topics at hand and would like to see it brought to a more contemporary way of thinking.
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August 12, 2021Read for Art History 146: American Dream, American Nightmare final paper on Kay Sage
February 21, 2009
A lot of essays on various women artists related in some way to the Surrealist movement. Many of the essays reference Whitney Chadwick's feminist surrealist survey -- so maybe I would have been better off reading that? At best I learned about the lives of several very interesting artists that haven't gotten the recognition they deserve. At worst was trying to read essays heavily citing references in other languages with out translation or very short essays that seemed more like afterthoughts.
May 18, 2012
Fantastic! I should have read it long time ago. Introductions and Essays are very enlightening. Not only does it make be better undertstand the evolution of Modern Art, but it sheds light on my own intuitive development as an artist.
August 1, 2007
Women as objections of art
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July 27, 2013Another book i feel like i SHOULD read, but every time i do i end up never finishing it. Setting this one free back to the wilds of readers.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews