Collective Inventions:
Surrealism in Belgium
Lieven Gevaert Series, Vol. 5

Edited By Patricia Allmer & Hilde Van Gelder
July 2007
Leuven University Press
Distributed By Coronet Books
ISBN: 9789058675927
247 pages, Illustrated, 6 3/4" x 9"
$62.50 Paper Original

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Collective Inventions constitutes the first collection and book-length publication on Surrealism in Belgium on which Belgian and Anglo-American scholars have collaborated. Collective Inventions offers new writings by leading international scholars and experts on the movement's diverse manifestations in Belgium.

The essays range from comparative analyses of Surrealism in Belgium with other versions of Surrealism, particularly French, to detailed critical engagements with individual oeuvres. The authors use contemporary theoretical and critical models to explore artistic production in a variety of media, including painting and photography, film and fashion, postcards and Perspex.

Collective Inventions significantly alters and widens current understandings of Surrealism.

Table of Contents:

Authors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Surrealism in Belgium
1. Surrealist STructures
The Fashionable Surrealism of Variétés
An Paenhuysen
The End of Surrealism in Belgium
Steven Harris
2. Word and Image
Paul Nougé Constructing Absence
Silvano Levy
Magritte's Smoke and Mirrors: Reading, Writing, and Art-magic
Ben Stoltzfus
René Magritte and the Postcard
Patricia Allmer
3. Masculin/Feminine
He Who Has Never Dreamt of Mae West: Surrealist Masculinity and the Late Collages of E.L.T. Mesens
Neil Matheson
Color Plates
Evelyne Axell (1935-1972): a Belgian Surrealist Pop Artist?
Liesbeth Decan
4. Film and Photography
Automatic Photographs: Brussels, Breton and Surrealism
David Bate
The King Cophetua Legend, Synestesia and Magic (Sur)realism in André Delvaux's Rendez-vous a bray (1971) and Benvenuta (1983)
Georgiana Colvile
Christian Dotremont's Theory of Photography
Hilde Van Gelder
Index
Colophon

Art; Surrealism

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