This volume examines the relationship between occultism and Surrealism, specifically exploring the reception and appropriation of occult thought, motifs, tropes and techniques by Surrealist artists and writers in Europe and the Americas, from the 1920s through the 1960s. Its central focus is the specific use of occultism as a site of political and social resistance, ideological contestation, subversion and revolution. Additional focus is placed on the ways occultism was implicated in Surrealist discourses on identity, gender, sexuality, utopianism and radicalism.
Tessel M. Bauduin is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Amsterdam.Victoria Ferentinou is assistant professor at the University of Ioannina.Daniel Zamani is a PhD student at Trinity College, University of Cambridge and an assistant curator at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.
Table of ContentsList of ContributorsList of PlatesList of IllustrationsIntroduction: In Search of the MarvellousTessel M. Bauduin, Victoria Ferentinou and Daniel ZamaniPart I: Alternative Modes of Knowledge1 Spiritual Surrealists: Séances, Automatism, and the Creative UnconsciousClaudie Massicotte2 The Vertiginous Pursuit of the Grand Jeu: Experimental Metaphysics, Paramnesia, and Creative InvolutionDonna Roberts3 Palmistry as Portraiture: Dr. Charlotte Wolff and the SurrealistsM. E. Warlick4 Occulted Un-Knowing: Bataillean Approaches to the Sacred in Gellu Naum’s Ceasornicãria Taus and Alejo Carpentier’s El Siglo de las LucesVivienne Brough-EvansPart II: Myth, Magic and the Search for Re-Enchantment5 Melusina Triumphant: Matriarchy and the Politics of Anti-Fascist Mythmaking in André Breton’s Arcane 17Daniel Zamani6 Esotericism and Surrealist Cinema: Wilhelm Freddie’s Films and the New MythKristoffer Noheden7 Disenchanted Ground, or Antonin Artaud, Vincent van Gogh and Magic in 1947Gavin Parkinson8 Kurt Seligmann, Surrealism and the OccultGražina SubelytėPart III: Female Artists, Gender and the Occult9 The Quest for the Goddess: Matriarchy, Surrealism and Gender Politics in the Work of Ithell Colquhoun and Leonora CarringtonVictoria Ferentinou10 On the True Exercise of Witchcraft in the Work of Remedios VaroMaría José González Madrid11 Clear Dreaming: Maya Deren, Surrealism and MagicJudith Noble12 Harbingers of the New Age: Surrealism, Women and the Occult in the United StatesSusan AberthBibliography
"The book presents a fine collection of original scholarship.Recommended to those interested in the intersection of art and alternative religiosity." - Grzegorz Frąszczak, Religious Studies Review
Daniel Birnbaum, Tessel M. Baudin, Briony Fer, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Stephen Kern, Gary Lachman, Marco Pasi, Gertrud Sandqvist, Helmut Zander, Raphael Rosenberg, Christoph Wagner, Victoria Ferentinou, Pehr Sällström, Hanne Loreck, Wolfgang Zumdick, David Lomas, Iris Müller-Westermann, Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, Kurt Almqvist, Louise Belfrage
Susan Bischoff, Daniel Zamani, Kathrin DuBois, Kirsten Heusgen, Josephine Klinger, Peter Kropmanns, Ana Nasyrova, Stefanie Meisgeier, Christiane Scharf, Dieter Scholz, Alte Nationalgalerie und Kunstpalast
Andrea Gremels, Anna Reid, Brianna Mullin, Olivier Penot-Lacassagne, Julia Drost, Victoria Ferentinou, Christina Heflin, Tor Scott, Adam Jolles, Kristoffer Noheden, Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Samantha Kavky, Terri Geis, Iveta Slavkova, Donna Roberts, Anne Marie Butler
Andrea Gremels, Anna Reid, Brianna Mullin, Olivier Penot-Lacassagne, Julia Drost, Victoria Ferentinou, Christina Heflin, Tor Scott, Adam Jolles, Kristoffer Noheden, Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Samantha Kavky, Terri Geis, Iveta Slavkova, Donna Roberts, Anne Marie Butler