Celebrating the publication of the volume of essays Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture Resistance from Penn State University Press in March of this year, editors Elliott H. King and Abigail Susik host a discussion with legendary activist and Chicago surrealist, Penelope Rosemont. The conversation will cover topics relevant to the display of Chicago surrealist pamphlets and posters at the recent “Surrealism Beyond Borders” exhibition at the Tate Modern through August, and attendees will have the chance to pose plenty of questions about surrealism past and present.
Penelope Rosemont was welcomed into the Paris group by André Breton in 1966, and she coauthored the essay, “Surrealism in the U.S.,” which appeared in the Paris-based surrealist journal L’Archibras. Artist, writer, and publisher, her work was included by Arturo Schwarz in the 1986 Venice Biennale “Arts & Alchemy” presentation. Her books include Surrealist Women: An International Anthology (University of Texas Press); Dreams & Everyday Life: André Breton, Surrealism Rebel Worker, SDS & the Seven Cities of Cibola (Kerr); and Surrealism: Inside the Magnetic Fields (City Lights).
Abigail Susik is Associate Professor of Art History at Willamette University and author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (Manchester University Press, 2021). She is co-editor of Surrealism and Film after 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries (Manchester University Press, 2021), and Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (Penn State University Press, 2021). She is a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism. https://willamette.edu/undergraduate/arth/faculty/susik/index.html
Elliott H. King is Associate Professor of Art History at Washington and Lee University and the author of Salvador Dalí: The Late Work and Dalí, Surrealism, and Cinema. He is a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism. www.spiralspecs.com
Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture Resistance www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09135-8.html
Gertrude Abercrombie once said, “I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace, I like to paint simple things that are a little strange.” ‘Gertrude Abercrombie once said, “I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace, I like to paint simple things that are a little strange.” ‘Solitary Surrealism’ is a term that often describes Abercrombie’s paintings populated by lone women, cats, owls, and moonlight. Her rooms feature empty chairs, tables, and chaise lounges — a sense of domesticity not so much disrupted but achingly quiet and still.
Abercrombie’s images are otherworldly yet felt so deeply real and profoundly familiar; a dreamy Surrealism with a touch of hallucination. This lecture will focus on Abercrombie’s solitary Surrealism and how her still, isolated art offers us glimpses into marvellous worlds that feel excitingly alive.
Bio
Dr Sabina Stent is a freelance writer specialising in women surrealists and visual culture. Her bylines include Magnum Photos, AnOther Magazine, Crime Reads, and MAI: a journal of feminism and visual culture (as a contributing editor). She is especially interested in how work by feminist-surrealists explores the body, fashion, the cinematic, and the uncanny. Her authored book chapters including ‘Women Surrealists and the Egyptian Imagination’ in Tea with the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt and the Modern Imagination (I. B. Tauris, 2019); and ‘Leonor Fini: Fashion Magic Sorceress’ in Making Magic Happen: Selected Essays From the Inaugural Magickal Women Conference 2019 (Hadean Press, 2021).
Hosted by
Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta-based anthropologist and folklorist writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall in various combinations. Her biography of Ithell Colquhoun, Genius of the Fern Loved Gully, is available from Strange Attractor Press, and she is also the editor of the forthcoming collection Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses from Palgrave Macmillan. Other writings can be found at her Medium site https://medium.com/@amyhale93 and her website www.amyhale.me.
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In 1938, Surrealist fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli — collaborator of Salvador Dalí, Leonor Fini and Jean Cocteau, and pioneer of everything ‘Shocking Pink’ — unveiled her Zodiac Collection. The spectacular celestial garments included jackets emblazoned with planets, dresses with stars, and solar-adorned capes. Every item was carefully thought-out and rooted in Schiaparelli’s fascination with astronomy, Euclid’s Elements, and the constellation Ursa Major, her life-long talisman.
This illustrated lecture will specifically revolve around Schiaparelli’s Zodiac Collection, exploring her fascination with the Solar System and how astronomy influenced her life. We will also delve into Schiaparelli’s scientific approach to couture, the collection’s effect on contemporary fashion, and how the planets provided creative force for other women artists associated with the Surrealist movement.
Bio
Dr Sabina Stent is a freelance writer specialising in women surrealists and visual culture. Her bylines include Magnum Photos, AnOther Magazine, Crime Reads, and MAI: a journal of feminism and visual culture (as a contributing editor). She is especially interested in how work by feminist-surrealists explores the body, fashion, the cinematic, and the uncanny. Her authored book chapters including ‘Women Surrealists and the Egyptian Imagination’ in Tea with the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt and the Modern Imagination (I. B. Tauris, 2019); and ‘Leonor Fini: Fashion Magic Sorceress’ in Making Magic Happen: Selected Essays From the Inaugural Magickal Women Conference 2019 (Hadean Press, 2021).
Hosted by
Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta-based anthropologist and folklorist writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall in various combinations. Her biography of Ithell Colquhoun, Genius of the Fern Loved Gully, is available from Strange Attractor Press, and she is also the editor of the forthcoming collection Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses from Palgrave Macmillan. Other writings can be found at her Medium site https://medium.com/@amyhale93 and her website www.amyhale.me.
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon
The occultist, artist and writer of international importance, Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) showed a lifelong commitment to contesting the distinction between apparently different or opposing states. In this talk I shall explore the significance to her of the boundaries that normally define such differences. As a prime example, I shall focus on one particular boundary, that between land and water, the conjunction of which defines an island. I shall explore the personal significance of islands as a theme in her work and how this came about. I shall identify the spiritual meaning that earth and water held for her as well as their relevance to a specifically female spirituality. I shall give examples from her writings as well as her paintings and drawings.
Speaker: Dr Richard Shillitoe spent his working life in the NHS. Publications include Ithell Colquhoun: Magician Born of Nature (2010), Colquhoun’s unpublished novel I Saw Water, (in conjunction with Mark Morrisson, 2014) a new, illustrated, edition of her first novel Goose of Hermogenes (2018), Medea’s Charms, a volume of her selected shorter writing (2019) and Desination Limbo, her final novel in 2020. He maintains the website ithellcolquhoun.co.uk.
Host: Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta-based anthropologist and folklorist writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall in various combinations. Her biography of Ithell Colquhoun, Genius of the Fern Loved Gully, is available from Strange Attractor Press, and she is also the editor of the forthcoming collection Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses from Palgrave Macmillan. Other writings can be found at her Medium site https://medium.com/@amyhale93 and her website www.amyhale.me.
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon www.patreon.com/theviktorwyndmuseum
Nayia Yiakoumaki discusses the research and making of the exhibition Phantoms of Surrealism.
This archive show took place at Whitechapel Gallery ( 27 April – 12 December 2021). Artists presented were Elizabeth Andrews (1882–1977), Ruth Adams (1893–1948), Eileen Agar (1898–1991), Claude Cahun (1894–1954), Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988), Diana Brinton Lee (n/a–1982), Grace Pailthorpe (1883–1971), Elizabeth Raikes (1907–1942), Edith Rimmington (1902–1986), Sheila Legge (1911–1949) who exhibited at the London International Surrealist Exhibitions or with the Artists International Association. AIA was dedicated to the ‘Unity of Artists for Peace, Democracy and Cultural Development’ and staged an anti-war exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery in 1939 which included a Surrealist section. Drawn from the Whitechapel Gallery archives and other national collections, including the National Galleries of Scotland, Edward James Archives and Jersey Heritage Trust, as well as private collections, photographs, documents and dazzlingly designed printed matter reveal women’s contribution to these ground-breaking shows.
Nayia Yiakoumaki is Curator and Head of Curatorial studies at Whitechapel Gallery, where she has developed an innovative programme of research exhibitions which investigate unknown histories of art and curating. Yiakoumaki runs the Whitechapel Gallery’s MA course Curating Art and Public Programmes in association with London South Bank University. From 2016-2017 she co-directed the Athens Biennale as Director of Research and International Networks. She is on the committees of the board for Wroclaw Contemporary, Poland; Women’s Art Library, UK and is a Trustee at Matt’s Gallery, UK. Yiakoumaki has curated a number of successful exhibitions including John Latham: Anarchive (2010), Rothko in Britain (2012), Stephen Willats: Concerning Our Present Way of Living (2014), Guerrilla Girls: Is it even worse in Europe? (2016-2017), Staging Jackson Pollock (2018), Queer Spaces: London, 1980s – Today (2019), Exercising Freedom: Encounters with Art, Artists and Communities (2021) and Phantoms of Surrealism (2020-2021).
Surrealism was one of the most influential movements of the 20th century and had a profound impact on all forms of culture. It was a philosophy and a way of life for some of the most brilliant artists and writers of the century.This is the first exhibition to examine in depth Surrealism’s impact in the wider fields of design and the decorative arts and its sometimes uneasy relationship with the commercial world. From the sensuality of Dalí’s Mae West Lips Sofa to Schiaparelli’s extraordinary Tear dress, Surrealism produced some of the most emotive objects ever created.
In this ground-breaking exhibition , works in all media from artists and designers such as Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst and Joan Miró were used to explore some of the movement’s dominant themes with a range of objects spans painting, sculpture, bookbindings, jewellery, ceramics, glass, textiles, furniture, fashion, film and photography.
Ghislaine Wood is the acting director of The Sainsbury Centre, she has curated many exhibitions including ‘Surreal Things’ at The V&A & ‘Art Deco by The Sea’ at The Sainsbury
Why were surrealists so preoccupied with the imagery of the sewing machine? Artists such as Man Ray, Salvador Dalí, Óscar Domínguez, and Joseph Cornell devoted artworks in different mediums to the iconography of the sewing machine. Elisa Breton, Alan Glass, Maurice Henry, Konrad Klapheck, and others followed suit later in the 20th century. Certainly, surrealists were inspired by the infamous simile of the late-19th century writer Comte de Lautréamont in his experimental text, Les Chants de Maldoror (The Songs of Maldoror) (1868–69): a desired male lover is as handsome “as the chance juxtaposition of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table!” However, a closer examination of surrealist texts from the interwar period reveals that figures such as André Breton and Óscar Domínguez were also deeply interested in the sensational 19th century French medical discourse about the gynecological dangers of sewing machine work for women.
In this lecture devoted to surrealist sewing machines and the surrealist movement’s interest in female masturbation as a form of social-sexual resistance, art historian Abigail Susik will share research from her new book, Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (Manchester University Press, October 2021). Focusing on paintings and objects by the Canarian artist Óscar Domínguez, as well as other surrealist artworks from the 1930s, this talk will uncover some of the secrets of surrealism’s sewing machines and its other objects of self-pleasure and autoeroticism.
Abigail Susik
is Associate Professor of Art History at Willamette University and author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (2021). She has written numerous essays devoted to Surrealism and is co-editor of Absolutely Modern Mysteries: Surrealism and Film After 1945 (2021) and Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (2021). She is co-curator of the 2021–22 exhibition Alan Glass: Surrealism’s Secret at Leeds Arts University and also curated a major survey of Imogen Cunningham’s photographs at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, OR, in 2016. Susik is a founding board member of the International Study for the Society of Surrealism and co-organised its 2018 and 2019 conferences.
Since her death in 2011, the legendary Surrealist Leonora Carrington has been reconstructed and reinvented many times over. In his new book, Gabriel Weisz Carrington draws on remembered conversations and events to demythologise his mother, revealing the woman and the artist behind the iconic persona. He travels between Leonora’s native England and adopted homeland of Mexico, making stops in New York and Paris and meeting some of the remarkable figures she associated with, from Max Ernst and André Breton to Remedios Varo and Alejandro Jodorowsky. At the same time, he strives to depict a complex and very real Surrealist creator, exploring Leonora not simply in relation to her romantic partners or social milieus but as the artist she always was. A textured portrait emerges from conversations, memories, stories and Leonora’s engagement with the books that she read. Using the act of writing to process and understand the death of his mother, the author has produced a moving and fascinating account of life, art, love and loss.
Leonora Carrington is one of Viktor Wynd’s most enduring obsessions, her work is in his museum and surrounds him at home.
These are extraordinary times and the plague has hit some harder than others, tickets are by donation – if you possibly can £10 is much appreciated, but £2 is also much appreciated. Thank you for your support.
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From Fantômas to the murderous delirium of the Papin Sisters, the criminal imaginary of modern Paris formed the basic cultural material from which the surrealist movement first stitched together its political and intellectual priorities. The surrealists established many of the basic coordinates of their poetic universe according to the images of violence and atrocity that formed the dramatic and often documentary core of modern popular culture. Ardent readers of the press and active consumers of popular culture, the poets and artists of the surrealist movement were also champions of real-life killers, particularly women: this included the anarchist Germaine Berton, who gunned down the managing editor of the reactionary right-wing newspaper L’Action Française in 1923, as well as the patricide Violette Nozière, who poisoned her father in 1933 in retaliation, she claimed, for a lifetime of sexual abuse. Such figures were criminalized by the popular press, yet for many surrealists their violent acts were counterstrikes against pervasive structural violence, which the surrealist group extended to colonialism, bourgeois morality, and, most of all, the rise of right-wing nationalism in Western Europe. Understanding crime—and distinguishing systematic violence from sudden, perverse outbursts— was fundamental to the surrealist movement’s responses to pressing political and intellectual events of the twentieth century.
In Leonora Carrington´s oeuvre, fantastic animals and beings inhabit magical worlds. Goddesses and magicians perform rituals in places filled with symbols and references abound to a range of occult traditions dating back to antiquity.
Her paintings bring together Celtic traditions and Egyptian, Hebrew, Mesopotamian and Greek mysteries. There are references To alchemy, astrology, the Cabala, Tarot, herbalism, magic and witchcraft. As Edward James once stated: “her paintings sometimes Seem to have materialized in a cauldron at the stroke of midnight. Carrington´s interest in magic and witchcraft began in childhood and expanded with her encounter with the surrealists. Nevertheless, the imprint of Mexico and the Mesoamerican religions and magical rituals has often been overlooked. In this talk I will explore the syncretism of some of the Celtic and British traditions and the ones she encounter once she settled in Mexico where she produced the majority of her work.
Tere Arcq was Chief Curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico and Director of an International Art Investment Fund. As an independent curator, she creates and produces exhibitions in Mexico and abroad. Her most recent is Leonora Carrington Magical Tales at Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City and MARCO in Monterrey. In 2012 she curated In Wonderland. The Adventures of Women Surrealists in Mexico and the United States, an international project presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), The National Museum of Fine Arts in Quebec and The Modern Art Museum in Mexico.
Her expertise in the art world includes, teaching; edition of art books and exhibition catalogues; collaboration in the production of documentaries and short films on artists and the design and organization of specialized art tours for collectors. She is a frequent lecturer at museums, institutions and universities worldwide.
Tere Arcq is an Art Historian with a Masters Degree in Museum Studies and Art Management.
