Surrealists in New York: Atelier 17 and the Birth of Abstract Expressionism

by Charles Darwent

An absorbing group biography revealing how exiles from war-torn France brought surrealism to America, sparking the movement that became abstract expressionism. In 1957 the American artist Robert Motherwell made an unexpected "I have only known two painting milieus well … the Parisian Surrealists, with whom I began painting seriously in New York in 1940, and the native movement that has come to be known as 'abstract expressionism,' but which genetically would have been more properly called 'abstract surrealism.'" Motherwell’s bold assertion, that abstract expressionism was neither new nor local, but born of a brief liaison between America and France, verged on the controversial. Surrealists in New York tells the story of this "liaison" and the European exiles who bought Surrealism with them―an artistic exchange between the Old World and the New―centering on taciturn printmaker Stanley William Hayter and the legendary Atelier 17 print studio he founded. Here artists’ experiments literally pushed the boundaries of modern art. It was in Hayter’s studio that Jackson Pollock found the balance of freedom and control that would culminate in his distinctive drip paintings. The impact of Max Ernst, André Masson, Louise Bourgeois and other noted émigrés on the work of Motherwell, Pollock, Mark Rothko, and the American avant-garde has for too long been quietly written out of art history. Drawing on first-hand documents, interviews, and archive materials, Charles Darwent brings to life the events and personalities from this crucial encounter, revealing a fascinating new perspective on the history of the art of the twentieth century.  93 illustrations / 52 in color

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

264 pages, Hardcover

Published May 2, 2023

Reviews

[Hayes Knndy · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a focus on a single guy's weird obsession with printmaking in a dingy New York studio that somehow attracted a bigger group of other weird artist than an analysis of surrealist influence in New York. Of course that's a part of it, but it read more as an account of the sort of cult-like club around using a burin to clumsily carve weird lines that were became classified as surrealist art and even the author admits that William Hayer and this type of medium got very little public and critical traction even during this peak time of surrealist art and some famous exiled European artists working in their which does make you wonder why so much attention is placed on Studio 17. I literally went to the MoMA with the main goal of seeing some of his prints but I looked it up and they only have a few pieces of his burried in their storage which was surprising coming fresh out of this book. But it is an interesting story that seems like it was very close to being lost and I respect that these printmakers created a competitive organization that inadvertently rivaled Andre Breton's cult of personality in the surrealist movement even as it entered its closing era. It also set up the rise of abstract expressionism in its wake specifically with Pollock's involement when he wasn't cheating on his wife or getting DUIs but felt like a more narrow slice of history that the whole pie if you get what I'm carving down on a metal plate to be cured with acid and then transfered onto paper. That analogy makes more sense if you printmake or read this book hopefully.

[Paul Manoguerra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent argument and narrative, with its emphasis on Hayter. One minor criticism would be the occasional and stereotypical homogenizing of the Federal Art Project artists as a kind of foil for the “modern.”

[Chris Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was reasonable but I thought it overplayed the significance of Atelier 17.

[James Aston · Rating 3 out of 5]

#3.5

[Julia Szawlowska · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked the book, didn’t like how it was written