Enchanted Ground: Andr Breton, Modernism and the Surrealist Appraisal of Fin-de-Sicle Painting

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Enchanted Ground is about the challenge to modernist criticism by Surrealist writers mainly Andr Breton but also Louis Aragon, Pierre Mabille, Ren Magritte, Charles Estienne, Ren Huyghe and others who viewed the same artists in terms of magic, occultism, precognition, alchemy and esotericism generally. It introduces the history of the ways in which those artists who came after Impressionism Paul Czanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh became canonical in the 20th century through the broad approaches we now call modernist or formalist (by critics and curators such as Alfred H. Barr, Roger Fry, Robert Goldwater, Clement Greenberg, John Rewald and Robert L. Herbert), and then unpacks chapter-by-chapter, for the first time in a single volume, the Surrealist positions on the same artists. To this end, it contributes to new strains of scholarship on Surrealism that exceed the usual bounds of the 1920s and 1930s and that examine the fascination within the movement with magic.

Reviews

Parkinsons extensive knowledge of the field allows him to navigate with ease between continents, following the various developments and reception of modern art in the twentieth century. His ability to modify the length of his focus from detailed textual analysis to wider comparative geographical and art historical contexts makes this book one of the most astute on the movement to date. * French History *
Gavin Parkinson had the novel idea to reconsider the canonical figures of late nineteenth century French painting as they appear within the discourse of Surrealism: Czanne or Gauguin through Breton or Dal. His gambit pays off brilliantly. He ferrets out a shadow history of French modernism, tracking long-lost interpretive metaphors that shift from positive to negative and back again. The surrealist alternative to traditional criticism generates an unfamiliar constellation of cultural significance. From out of its obscurity, Parkinson reveals the mythic, poetic or magic resonance of the practice otherwise known as modernism. * Richard Shiff, Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art and Director of Center for the Study of Modernism, University of Texas at Austin, USA *
Gauguin, Czanne, Seuratthose canonical modernists we thought we kneware reinvested with myth, magic and poetry in this lively and polemical account of their 'Surrealisation' in the mid-20th century. Parkinson pulls no punches in voting for the Surrealists as the most perceptive interpreters of this alternative cast of 19th-century precursors. * Linda Goddard, Senior Lecturer and Director of Postgraduate Studies, University of St. Andrews, UK *
Enchanted Ground highlights Parkinsons skill in asking unexpected questions of modern art, matched with astute answers; and in taking Surrealism seriously, as a source of vivid and relevant ideas rather than just an art movement. This books great strength lies in shining a searchlight at its material, not simply to look at Surrealism, but look with it and through it, alert to the refractions that illuminate adjacent histories in fresh ways. Enchanted Ground is on high alert to details, anomalies and the overlooked, using them to unpick received wisdom about Surrealism, modernism and art history itself. * Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Professor of Visual Culture, Norwich University of the Arts, UK *
Gavin Parkinsons text is a timely reminder that there are other ways of seeing the founding fathers of modernist painting than through the lens of Greenbergs formalism. He explores the posthumous critical fortunes of Czanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Seurat in the writings of the doyen of Surrealism, Andr Breton. Part intricate historiography, gathering together writings that have hitherto been overlooked because dispersed and difficult of access, Enchanted Ground brings us familiar art from an unfamiliar, indeed magical, Surrealist perspective. This is an arresting, ambitious and important book. * Belinda Thomson, Honorary Professor of Art History, University of Edinburgh, UK *

Author Bio

Gavin Parkinson is Senior Lecturer in European Modernism at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK. He is the author of Futures of Surrealism: Myth, Science Fiction and Fantastic Art in France 1936-1969 (2015), Surrealism, Art and Modern Science: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Epistemology (2008), and The Duchamp Book (2008), as well as the editor of Surrealism, Science Fiction and Comics (2015).