Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School by Martica Sawin is quite simply one of the best art histories I've come across. Not only is it well written but it's obvious that it's also been exhaustively researched to provide the wealth of detail contained within it. Dealing with the period from 1938 to 1945, it traces the emigration to the United States and Mexico of European Surrealist artists fleeing the Nazis and their subsequent encounter with the young American artists who were later to form the nucleus of the New York School. While this might seem a simple enough matter to chronicle, the huge number of artists involved, both European and American, and the complex personal and artistic interrelationships that existed among them actually make any attempt at a comprehensive survey extremely daunting. Moreover, such a task requires an in-depth knowledge of modern art in the first half of the twentieth century and an ability to analyze and correctly evaluate individual paintings and sculptures.
Though its historic importance is largely forgotten today, Surrealism was the major cultural movement to arise in Western Europe, particularly in France, as a response to the carnage wrought by World War I. At its most basic level, it was an attempt to replace traditional subject matter, now discredited by the insanity of total war, with a new approach to the arts, one linked closely to the expressions of the unconscious mind, already mapped by Freud at the beginning of the century, in the form of automatism. This focus on the unconscious in turn greatly influenced the young American artists with whom the Surrealists came in contact and eventually led them to the breakthrough that became Abstract Expressionism, originally referred to as Abstract Surrealism.
The contribution of the Surrealists to their American counterparts was not, however, limited to the purely philosophical but also involved actual technique. In the chapter "New York, 1941" there is a fascinating reproduction of a collaborative painting, the only surviving example of a series, in which the painters William Baziotes, Gerome Kamrowski and Jackson Pollock experimented in jointly dripping fast drying enamel paint on a canvas surface. This obviously anticipated by more than a decade Pollock's famous drip paintings that were to become the the very avatars of American post-war art. The idea did not, however, originate with these Americans. Already in 1939 Gordon Onslow Ford, while working in his Paris studio with Victor Brauner, had tried his hand at the same technique, which he called coulage, using Ripolin enamel and had brought with him when he emigrated to New York the paintings he had created while using it.
At the center of the story (which, if he were alive today, he would consider his proper place) is André Breton. Even if he were thoroughly irascible and a petty tyrant, Breton still deserves credit for holding together a band of temperamental artists in a cohesive school and for having the insight to understand intuitively their strengths and weaknesses. This is all the more remarkable in that Breton and the other cofounders of Surrealism were not visual artists themselves but poets and writers. There are also many other artists, such as Gordon Onslow Ford himself (as one of the last surviving Surrealists at the time the book was written he was able to give his account directly to the author and so secure for himself a more prominent position than he might otherwise have been allotted), who are little remembered today but who are here given their due in this book. In addition, Sawin sheds new light on the development of such famous artists as Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, Yves Tanguy, André Masson, Roberto Matta and Arshile Gorky while convincingly demonstrating the manner in which their distinctive styles evolved.
The passing of the torch from Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism was also emblematic of the larger cultural shift that occurred after the end of World War II when the United States became not only the earth's greatest superpower but also its acknowledged leader in the arts. Paris was replaced by New York City as the new world capital, a position it still holds today. This transformation could not have been possible without the resources the transplanted Surrealists brought with them from Europe. It was they who inspired the opening of many of New York's most prominent galleries, Peggy Guggenheim's Art of this Century foremost among them, that were later to be the first to showcase the works of the New York School.
The one fault of this book is the quality of the reproductions. These are rarely full page but more often in smaller format. Worse, they are all monochromatic and have a murky appearance. The absence of color makes it difficult for the reader to appreciate the quality of the original artworks and it's sometimes even difficult to decipher the content of the images shown. There are, however, extensive notes and a voluminous bibliography.
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