Featured: Dada & Surrealism

Louis Aragon, Treatise on Style
Hardcover with dust jacket

"Written in 1927, this work is a part of a moment of transition between Aragon's surrealist period and his movement toward "socialist realism."
His last contribution to the Surrealist movement,Treatise on Style is a stinging criticism of the great novelists of the past and an elevation of Surrealist "heroes" such as Rimbaud, the Marquis de Sade, Freud, and Einstein. The violence of his attack illuminates his claim that Surrealism does not represent an organized aesthetic as much as it presents a particular invitation to revolt, and that in this revolt are contained new insights that the artist can use. "




Jacques Vaché and the Roots of Surrealism, Franklin Rosemont
Paperback

"Conscripted into the French Army during World War One, Vaché soon became not only the unsurpassed champion of "Desertion from Within," but also the master of "Disservice with Diligence." His posthumous book, War Letters (included in this volume,) is a classic of surrealist anti-militarism and subversion. Vaché, along with Isidore Ducasse (the Comte de Lautréamont,) was one of the great inspirations of André Breton and the surrealist revolution.




Hans Richter, Dada: Art & Anti-Art
Paperback (out of print)

‘Where and how Dada began is almost as difficult to determine as Homer’s birthplace’, writes Hans Richter, the artist and film-maker closely associated with this radical and transforming movement from its earliest days. Here he records and traces Dada’s history, from its inception in about 1916 in wartime Zurich, to its collapse in Paris in 1922 when many of its members were to join the Surrealist movement, down to the present day when its spirit re-emerged first in the 1960s with, for example, Pop Art.

This absorbing eye witness narrative is greatly enlivened by extensive use of Dada documents, illustrations and a variety of texts by fellow Dadaists. It is a unique document of the movement, whether in Zurich, Berlin, Hanover, Paris or New York. The complex relationships and contributions of, among others, Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Picabia, Arp, Schwitters, Hausmann, Duchamp, Ernst and Man Ray, are vividly brought to life.




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