Full Description
The early surrealists attempted to create art directly from the unconscious, but the resulting art often reveals the stamp of its age. It is generally accepted that a certain macho sensibility prevailed within the movement, excluding queer sensibilities and reducing women to object status. In startling new readings of Breton, Bataille, Cocteau, Artaud, Crevel and others, Justin Vicari examines the intersections between surrealism and mental illness, deploying an interdisciplinary approach, which includes aesthetic theory, radical politics, and psychoanalysis. Of particular interest is the representation of the ideal woman as not only sexually available but mentally ill, a hysteric muse representing a kind of "authenticity" lost in modern life.
Contents
Table of Contents
Preface: A Lover's Revenge
Introduction: Modern Art and Mental Illness
1. Love Me, Love My Unconscious: Aesthetics and Politics of Hysteria
2. In Search of "Real Life": André Breton and the Surrealist Quest for Modern Selfhood
3. Loving Nadja
4. Georges Bataille and the Incest Wish
5. Michel Leiris and the Cult of Judith
6. And the Dancing Girl Goes on Dancing: The "Surrealist Gaze" Between Men
7. Masking the Medusa: The Cinema of Man Ray
8. Cocteau in Rehab
9. Artaud on Film: Hysterias of Dubbing
10. The Body of René Crevel
Conclusion: A Fool's Paradise?
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
