Surreal Lovers: Eight Women Integral to the Life of Max Ernst
Category: Books,Biographies & Memoirs,Historical
Surreal Lovers: Eight Women Integral to the Life of Max Ernst Details
From the Inside Flap IF YOU LOVE LOVE ... YOU'LL LOVE SURREALISMThe slogan showed up on walls in the centre of Paris from one day to the next. The year was 1924 and the flyer announced the birth of a new movement with the premise of "free love" and eroticism at its heart. Nobody among its inner circle embraced the credo more eagerly than the artist Max Ernst, the strikingly handsome painter who André Breton described as the "most magnificently haunted brain" of his generation.Surreal Lovers focuses on the lives of eight extraordinary women Ernst loved deeply, who impacted on his life during the most exhilarating and treacherous of times. Several became eminent artists - Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, Leonor Fini and Meret Oppenheim.Others included the ground-breaking art historian and writer Luise Straus; the art collector Peggy Guggenheim, whose singular vision changed the face of the New York art world; Gala Éluard, the sole muse in their midst, and the movement's quintessential femme enfant Marie-Berthe Aurenche, who had the courage and compassion to protect a painter on the run from the Nazis.Champions of collaboration in both work and at play, the surrealists came together to produce mind-bending shows and events, to throw the most outrageous bacchanalian parties; they holidayed and cooked together, wrote books and painted together, drew up manifestos, organized protests and slept together.While Surreal Lovers describes the work and achievements of these women, and of Max Ernst, it emphasizes the human element in their entwined lives - what is usually omitted from official art histories - interweaving their interactions with each other, as well as members of their circle of artists and writers, among them Sophie Taeuber, Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara, Nusch and Paul Éluard, Man Ray, Lee Miller and Roland Penrose. Theirs are stories of profound passion and pain that span the volatile days of Dada and the rambunctious years of Surrealism, when they ricocheted between Cologne, Paris and London.Fate in the shape of a devastating world war intervened, bringing with it betrayal, insanity, death and internment. All were impacted in the ensuing upheaval that shifted the centre of the art world from Paris to New York, where those that survived settled and started all over again to varying degrees of success. Read more From the Back Cover PRAISE FOR MARGARET HOOKS:TINA MODOTTI'Tina Modotti's life had a great trajectory and Margaret Hooks traces that arc with grace ... This is a definitive biography.'- Robin Lippincott, New York Times Review of Books'Riveting stuff about the beautiful, old-fashioned, romantic idealist whose purity of intention ruled her life ... who suffered and starved, and may ultimately have died for her ideals.'- Lesley Cunliffe, Vogue'The gaps and ellipses in Tina Modotti's story have now been filled out by Margaret Hooks's carefully researched and fascinating biography ... a vivid picture of a Bohemian milieu in Mexico City in the twenties.'- Laura Mulvey, The GuardianSURREAL EDEN'Hooks articulates in detail [Edward] James' vision as well as his challenges and triumphs in realizing his works of art ... Surreal Eden does what many good art biographies and histories do: remind us of what gets forgotten and left out of "official" canons.'- Rain Taxi'The art writer Margaret Hooks provides a monument to James's fantastical life and works and a blueprint for his subconscious.'- Vogue LivingFRIDA KAHLO'Most exciting ... highlights the importance of photography in Kahlo's life and her art [and] complements the photographs themselves, offering an extended and more detailed history of each ... A stunning and unique addition to Kahlo and general art collections alike.'- Library Journal Read more About the Author Margaret Hooks is an Irish writer who has written extensively on the life and work of artists among them Tina Modotti, Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Edward Weston, Max Ernst and Edward James. Her books include the award-winning biography Tina Modotti: Photographer & Revolutionary, Frida Kahlo: Portraits of an Icon and Surreal Eden: Edward James & Las Pozas. Her writing has appeared in ARTnews, BOMB, Afterimage, Vogue, Aperture, Elle, The Guardian and The Observer Magazine. Read more
Reviews
This is an engaging and thoroughly readable account of some of the most colorful lives of the mid-Twentieth Century.Hooks has assembled a jewelled mosaic full of light and detail. At Ernst's first wedding, his bride wore ordinary shoes covered with red velvet to create the impression of gaity and status. The effect was marvelous, but there was blood inside the shoes before long: the tiny nails used to fix the red velvet were too long, and cut into her feet as she danced.That image encodes the life of his first wife, Luise Straus. Ernst abandoned her and their son Jimmy to pursue fame in Paris. Eventually she was deported from France to a Nazi death camp while Max and Jimmy lived their passions in New York City. Does the redeeming value of art in a material society include redemption of personal abandonment and betrayal?It is a tough question that Hooks isn't afraid to tackle.You will want to look at the work itself -- the collages and dream images that hint at impossible longing, dangerous comedies, symbols of unknowable emotions given life through metaphors that respect science and madness equally.Ernst's divorce documents, like his true affections,,were often in a limbo of intent at odds with memory. He was imprisoned as a hostile alien in France, and barely escaped the same fate in the U.S. through his relationship with Peggy Guggenheim, an American heiress whose family marshalled impressive legal clout on Ernst's behalf. What kind of marriage did they have?The lovers of Max Ernst were birds who flew with one eye toward a future that promised liberation from the patriarchal legacy of a religious, home-centric world-view. Surrealist artists deranged the logic and mythology they inherited. They made messes and achieved an exhalted state of perception that will live in their works.Margaret Hooks is an excellent guide through these lives. She treats her subjects with compassion, respect, humor, and a phemomenal amount of research. Other writings tend to dwell on the red velvet nailed to the ordinary shoes. Margaret Hooks includes the shoes, the red velvet, the blood, and the dance.