In Montparnasse: The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dalí

by Sue Roe

Overview

"Describes with plenty of colour how surrealism, from Rene Magritte's bowler hats to Salvador Dali's watches, was born and developed." - The Times (UK)

As she did for the Modernists In Montmartre, noted art historian and biographer Sue Roe now tells the story of the Surrealists in Montparnasse.

In Montparnasse begins on the eve of the First World War and ends with the 1936 unveiling of Dalí’s Lobster Telephone. As those extraordinary years unfolded, the Surrealists found ever more innovative ways of exploring the interior life, and asking new questions about how to define art. In Montparnasse recounts how this artistic revolution came to be amidst the salons and cafés of that vibrant neighborhood.

Sue Roe is both an incisive art critic of these pieces and a beguiling biographer with a fingertip feel for this compelling world. Beginning with Duchamp, Roe then takes us through the rise of the Dada movement, the birth of Surrealist photography with Man Ray, the creation of key works by Ernst, Cocteau, and others, through the arrival of Dalí. On canvas and in their readymades and other works these artists juxtaposed objects never before seen together to make the viewer marvel at the ordinary—and at the workings of the subconscious. We see both how this art came to be and how the artists of Montparnasse lived. Roe puts us with Gertrude Stein in her box seat at the opening of The Rite of Spring; with Duchamp as he installs his famous urinal; at a Cocteau theatrical with Picasso and Coco Chanel; with Breton at a session with Freud; and with Man Ray as he romances Kiki de Montparnasse. 

Stein said it best when she noted that the Surrealists still saw in the common ways of the 19th century, but they complicated things with the bold new vision of the 20th. Their words mark an enormously important watershed in the history of art—and they forever changed the way we all see the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101981177
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/20/2019
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,204,679
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Sue Roe is the author of several books, including In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art and a collective biography of the Impressionists. She lives in Brighton, England.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations vii

Introduction: Nude Descending a Staircase 1

1 Café Life, Performances and Fancy-dress Balls 7

2 What is Art? 17

3 Anticipation in Paris, Readymades in New York 25

4 Parade: Une sorte de sur-réalisme 33

5 The Dada Manifesto 55

6 Rrose Sélavy 75

7 Max Ernst's Surrealist Collages 85

8 The First Rayographs 103

9 The Female Anatomy Explored 127

10 The Surrealist Manifesto 146

11 New Surrealist Perspectives 165

12 Surrealists Divide 189

13 Surrealists Explore l'amour fou 208

14 The Impact of Salvador Dalí 224

15 The Long Lens of Surrealism 238

Acknowledgements 253

Notes 255

Bibliography 283

Index 293

Editorial Reviews

05/06/2019

Roe (In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art) traces the birth and evolution of Surrealism in this colorful but overly detailed account, revealing how a group of disgruntled Paris artisans created a new movement and turned the art world on its head. Infuriated by the massive destruction of WWI, artists including Marcel Duchamp, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, and Man Ray exploded the boundaries of society and art when they moved to the low-rent, gritty district of Montparnasse, “lifting things out of their habitual contexts... to endow them with new, startling implications.” Throughout, Roe describes pivotal artistic moments: Gertrude Stein attending the revolutionary premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Duchamp adapting a urinal into ready-made art, Cocteau transforming a bar into an avant-garde hangout, Man Ray developing images with three-dimensional qualities called rayographs, René Magritte turning a painting of a pipe into a work of art, and, finally, the showing of Salvador Dali’s Lobster Telephone in 1936. Roe is an elegant writer, but the narrative can become confusing as she jumps back and forth between artists within chapters. Nevertheless, this entertaining, fast-paced history will thrill Francophones and art historians alike. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Roe proves a sure-handed guide on the quest for 'something more real than reality' and excels in documenting clashes both serious and silly."—New Yorker

“Untangl[es] Surrealism’s evolutionary history. In this undertaking [Roe] succeeds admirably, making sense of the by-turns anguished and playful chaos… In fixing on the emergence of Surrealism rather than its popular apotheosis in, say, the mature paintings of Dalí, René Magritte and Joan Miró, Ms. Roe leaves readers to draw their own visual conclusions. The expectation is reasonable and just as the artists themselves would have wanted. For the Surrealists’ chief revolutionary legacy lies in the credit—and role—they gave to viewers.”—The Wall Street Journal

"Roe is an elegant writer . . . [T]his entertaining, fast-paced history will thrill Francophones and art historians alike."—Publishers Weekly

"[Roe] renders with deftness and precision the strange and disturbing works surrealists produced by tapping into their emotions of ‘terror, horror, disgust, or fear.’ A thorough, well-informed survey of an art revolution."—Kirkus Reviews

“She vividly charts the birth of surrealism . . . a tale rich in absurdity and outlandish characters, from Cocteau and Max Ernst to Dalí and Picasso”—Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times (U.K.)
 
“Highly colourful . . . they're all here, the big names of the time - behaving badly, and, at times, quite madly too.”—Observer (U.K.)
 
“Brings together some of the chief protagonists in one of the 20th century's most inventive art movements. A vivid read”—Radio Times (U.K.)

“Roe is a talented writer, fascinated by la vie Boheme . . . She can find phrases that perfectly capture the feeling of a neighborhood”—John Carey, Sunday Times (U.K.)

“I loved Roe’s In Montmartre and [In Montparnasse]—a colorful, gossipy account of the birth of Surrealism . . . is equally beguiling.” —The Bookseller, Editor’s Choice (U.K.)

“Sue Roe describes with plenty of colour how surrealism was born and developed in Montparnasse . . . Roe marshals [the figures behind dada and surrealism] with great finesse”—The Times (U.K.)

From the Publisher

07/01/2019

From about 1911 onward, notes Roe (In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art), the artistic center of Paris had begun to shift from Montmartre to the galleries, studios, and cafés of Montparnasse. In this lively and colorful new book (released in the UK in 2018), the author takes readers there, to experience the emergence of the surrealist movement in not only art (Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Man Ray, Amedeo Modigliani, Giorgio di Chirico) but also literature and poetry (André Breton, Guillaume Apollinaire), theater (Jean Cocteau), music (Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky), and dance (Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes). It was a wild and crazy time in the arts, with some wild and crazy personalities. It was also a dark time: the looming war, artists' poverty as well as success, vicious feuds among artists, and the thoughtless, often cruel, treatment of their wives, girlfriends, and models. VERDICT Of the many books published on surrealism, Roe's has a breadth of coverage and vivacity of observation that make it special. Art lovers will find much to appreciate and ponder, and Francophiles will enjoy this distinctive "tour."—Marcia G. Welsh, Dartmouth Coll. Lib., Hanover, NH

Library Journal

2019-05-07
The legacy of surrealism continues to affect how viewers see art.

Biographer and art historian Roe (In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse, and Modernism in Paris, 1900-1910, 2014, etc.) follows her account of the titans of modernism by documenting the lives and works of artists and writers who invented, promoted, and reimagined the anarchic movement they called surrealism. Their goal was to produce art that "extended beyond the limits of realism" by juxtaposing elements of the real world in new and shocking ways, illuminated the workings of the unconscious, and aimed, explicitly, "to jar the relationship between artist and viewer." The Parisian neighborhood of Montparnasse thronged with surrealists: the imperious André Breton, the "Pope of Surrealism," whose strident manifestos laid out the principles of the movement; poets Louis Aragon and Paul Éluard; German artist Max Ernst, creator of shocking collages—one featuring "part of a hand emerging through a trap door, the index finger pierced with a steel implement"; the flamboyant poet, filmmaker, artist, and opium addict Jean Cocteau; the young Salvador Dalí, enthusiastically celebrating his own inner world; Marcel Duchamp, who famously submitted a urinal as a sculpture to a major exhibition and eventually gave up art for chess; photographer Man Ray; and scores of other men and their many idealized, exploited, and betrayed lovers, wives, and mistresses. Surrealists treated women badly, Roe concedes, explaining their misogyny as consistent with the times. Surrealist artists, she adds, "were baffled by women and wanted in their work to dissect and inspect the female." As noisy revolutionaries, they exhibited "myriad contradictions": for example, managing to be "both trenchantly anti-establishment and sartorially dapper." Drawing largely on memoirs, biographies, and histories of the period, Roe reprises events and personalities that readers may find familiar from works such as Ruth Brandon's Surreal Lives (1999) and Desmond Morris' The Lives of the Surrealists (2018). Nevertheless, she renders with deftness and precision the strange and disturbing works surrealists produced by tapping into their emotions of "terror, horror, disgust, or fear."

A thorough, well-informed survey of an art revolution.

Kirkus Reviews

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