Surrealist Sorcery - (Transnational Surrealism) by Will Atkin (Paperback)

About the Book

"Often regarded as an artistic movement of interwar Paris, Surrealism comprised an international community of artists, writers, and intellectuals who have aspired to change the conditions of life itself over the course of the past century. Consisting of a wide range of dedicated case studies from the 1920s to the 1970s, this book highlights the international dimensions of the Surrealist Movement, and the radical chains of thought that linked its followers across the globe: from France to Romania, and from Canada to the former Czechoslovakia. From very early on, the surrealists approached magic as a means of bypassing, discrediting, and combatting rationalism, capitalism, and other institutionalized systems and values that they saw to be constraining influences upon modern life. Surrealist Sorcery maps out how this interest in magic developed into a major area of surrealist research that led not only to theoretical but also practical explorations of the subject. Taking an international perspective, Atkin surveys this important quality of the movement and how it's remained an important element in the surrealist project and its ongoing legacy"--

Book Synopsis

Often regarded as an artistic movement of interwar Paris, Surrealism comprised an international community of artists, writers, and intellectuals who have aspired to change the conditions of life itself over the course of the past century. Consisting of a wide range of dedicated case studies from the 1920s to the 1970s, this book highlights the international dimensions of the Surrealist Movement, and the radical chains of thought that linked its followers across the globe: from France to Romania, and from Canada to the former Czechoslovakia.

From very early on, the surrealists approached magic as a means of bypassing, discrediting, and combatting rationalism, capitalism, and other institutionalized systems and values that they saw to be constraining influences upon modern life. Surrealist Sorcery maps out how this interest in magic developed into a major area of surrealist research that led not only to theoretical but also practical explorations of the subject. Taking an international perspective, Atkin surveys this important quality of the movement and how it's remained an important element in the surrealist project and its ongoing legacy.

Review Quotes

A work of extreme erudition, Atkin's book and its transnational framework contributes powerfully to long-standing debates on modernist primitivism and ethnographic forms of Surrealism. Slowly but surely, an underground Surrealism emerges, drawing the reader especially into the catastrophic war years and their aftermath.
George Baker, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, UCLA, USA

Illuminating a compelling archive spanning the 1920s through to the 1970s, and covering a wide range of international sources, this book demonstrates that surrealist art had a significant investment in magical practices as a means of reanimating and redeeming certain aspects of modern existence.
Abigail Susik, author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (2021), and Associate Professor of Art History, Willamette University, USA

About the Author

Will Atkin is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Art History at the University of Nottingham, UK