Surrealism, Occultism and Politics

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 various essays shed light on how esoteric/occult ideas, assumptions, and intuitions evolved within and through surrealist artistic creations. The book presents a fine collection of original scholarship. Recommended to those interested in the intersection of art and alternative religiosity."--Religious Studies Review