Penelope Rosemont

An International Anthology (The Surrealist Revolution Series)

Surrealist Women 

Beginning in Paris in the 1920s, women poets, essayists, painters, and artists in other media have actively collaborated in defining and refining surrealism's basic project—achieving a higher, open, and dynamic consciousness, from which no aspect of the real or the imaginary is rejected. Indeed, few artistic or social movements can boast as many women forebears, founders, and participants—perhaps only feminism itself. Yet outside the movement, women's contributions to surrealism have been largely ignored or simply unknown. This anthology, the first of its kind in any language, displays the range and significance of women's contributions to surrealism. Letting surrealist women speak for themselves, Penelope Rosemont has assembled nearly three hundred texts by ninety-six women from twenty-eight countries. She opens the book with a succinct summary of surrealism's basic aims and principles, followed by a discussion of the place of gender in the movement's origins. She then organizes the book into historical periods ranging from the 1920s to the present, with introductions that describe trends in the movement during each period. Rosemont also prefaces each surrealist's work with a brief biographical statement.

An International Anthology

Surrealist Women

A series of personal and historical encounters with surrealism from one of its foremost practitioners in the United States. "Penelope Rosemont has given us, better than anyone else in the English language, a marvelous, meticulous exploration of the surrealist experience, in all its infinite variety."—Gerome Kamrowski, American Surrealist Painter One of the hallmarks of Surrealism is the encounter, often by chance, with a key person, place, or object through a trajectory no one could have predicted. Penelope Rosemont draws on a lifetime of such experiences in her collection of essays, Surrealism: Inside the Magnetic Fields. From her youthful forays as a radical-student in Chicago to her pivotal meeting with André Breton and the Surrealist Movement in Paris, Rosemont—one of the movement's leading exponents in the United States—documents her unending search for the marvelous and the avant-garde. Surrealism finds her rubbing shoulders with some of the movement's most important visual artists, such as Man Ray, Leonora Carrington, Mimi Parent, and Toyen; discussing politics and spectacle with Guy Debord; and crossing paths with poet Ted Joans and outsider artist Lee Godie. The book also includes scholarly investigations into American radicals like George Francis Train and Mary MacLane, the myth of the Golden Goose, and Dada precursor Emmy Hennings. Praise for Surrealism: "When writing about André Breton and his friends, or about the marvelous surrealist women artists Toyen, Mimi Parent, Leonora Carrington or Jayne Cortez, Penny Rosemont is not delivering dry abstractions, as so many academic 'specialists,' but telling us about warm and exciting human encounters, illuminated by the subversive spirit of Permanent Enchantment."—Michael Löwy, author of Redemption and Utopia and Fire Alarm "This compelling and well-drawn book lets us see the adventures, inspirations, and relationships that have shaped Penelope Rosemont's art and rebellion."—David Roediger, author of Class, Race, and Marxism "Penelope Rosemont’s remarkable life and legendary body of work lies centrally at the crossroads of surrealism then and now. The broad sampling of essays included here offer a compelling entry point for curious readers and an essential compendium for surrealist practitioners."—Abigail Susik, professor of art history, Willamette University "Artist, historian, and social activist, Rosemont writes from the inside out. Like a rare, hybrid flower growing out of the earth, she complicates, expands, and opens the strange and beautiful meadow where Surrealism continues to live and thrive.”—Sabrina Orah Mark, author of Wild Milk "In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Penelope Rosemont, long a keeper of surrealism's revolutionary flame, shows how a penetrating look into the past can liberate the future."—Andrew Joron, author of The Absolute Letter "The looming centenary of Surrealism will be greeted by a boatload of publications, but few will be as heartfelt, spirited, and teeming with the atmosphere conjured by Penelope Rosemont. Her welcome memoir has a double virtue, as testament to the enduring radiance of Surrealism, and as a memento to the Sixties, revealing a sweetly beating wonderment at the heart of that absurdly maligned decade."—Jed Rasula, author of Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century "Rosemont recreates the feverish antics and immediate reception her close-knit, sleep-deprived, beat-attired squad find in the established, moray-breaking Parisian and international surrealists. Revolution is here, between the covers."—Gillian Conoley, author of A Little More Red Sun on the Human: New and Selected Poems and translator of Thousand Times Broken: Three Books by Henri Michaux

Inside the Magnetic Fields

Surrealism

Franklin Rosemont

Paul Garon

In 1966, with the support of Andre Breton, the first indigenous Surrealist Group in the US was organized in Chicago. From there, it spread. This book is a compendium of collective declarations - texts in which surrealists as a group have intervened in particular political or cultural affairs and controversies. The 100-plus tracts, leaflets and other writings collected here document the first tumultuous decade of organized surrealism in this country. In the Introduction, three surrealist militants sketch the origins and development of the Surrealist Movement in the US and outline the specific features of 'Chicago Idea' surrealism: revolt and revolution against Capital and State, poetry as revolutionary praxis, psychoanalysis as a subversive activity, love and sexual insurrection, the struggle against miserabilism, the exaltation of play, the necessity of laziness, the creation of free territories of the imagination, defense of the Marvelous against religion, the abolition of whiteness, undermining patriarchy, the importance of recalcitrant undercurrents in popular culture, the special glory of Black music, the dialectic of dialectic, alchemy by any means necessary, the emancipation of wilderness, and humor, the pivot of surrealism's revolutionary project today. Surrealist solutions, the editors argue, are not only still viable, but are more urgent than ever. "What remains for surrealism to do far exceeds what surrealism has done."

Tracts & Other Collective Declarations of the Surrealist Movement in the United States, 1966-1976

The Forecast is Hot!

Essay. Focused on fortuitous encounters and their manysided magic, Rosemont in these essays explores the importance of play, the affinities of alchemy and anarchy, poetry in the comics, the revolutionary significance of a fairy tale, the game of Time-Travelers' Potlatch, and the future of surrealism. SURREALIST EXPERIENCES: 1001 DAWNS, 221MIDNIGHTS is Penelope Rosemont's first book of articles and essays. It includes nearly two dozen texts originally published in surrealist journals from 1970 through the '90s, plus eleven that appear here for the first time. One of the few Americans welcomed into the Surrealist Movement in Paris by Andre Breton, the author has been a force in surrealism since the 1960s as a painter, photographer, and collagist.

1001 Dawns, 221 Midnights

Surrealist Experiences

Surrealist Women displays the range and significance of women's contributions to surrealism. Penelope Rosemont, affiliated with the Paris Surrealist Group in the 1960s and now a Chicago poet and painter, has assembled nearly three hundred texts by ninety-six women from twenty-eight countries. She opens the book with a succinct summary of surrealism's basic aims and principles, followed by a discussion of the place of gender in the origins of the movement.The texts are organised into historical periods ranging from the 1920s to the present, with introductions describing trends in the movement for each period; and each surrealist's work is prefaced by a brief biographical statement. Authors include El Allailly, Bruna, Cunard, Carrington, Cesaire, Gauthier, Giovanna, van Hirtum, Kahlo, Levy, Mansour, Mitrani, Pailthorpe, Joyce Peters, Rahon, Svankmajerova, Taub, Zangana>

Surrealist Women displays the range and significance of women's contributions to surrealism. Penelope Rosemont, affiliated with the Paris Surrealist Group in the 1960s and now a Chicago poet and painter, has assembled nearly three hundred texts by ninety-six women from twenty-eight countries. She opens the book with a succinct summary of surrealism's basic aims and principles, followed by a discussion of the place of gender in the origins of the movement.The texts are organised into historical periods ranging from the 1920s to the present, with introductions describing trends in the movement for each period; and each surrealist's work is prefaced by a brief biographical statement. Authors include El Allailly, Bruna, Cunard, Carrington, Cesaire, Gauthier, Giovanna, van Hirtum, Kahlo, Levy, Mansour, Mitrani, Pailthorpe, Joyce Peters, Rahon, Svankmajerova, Taub, Zangana

Penelope Rosemont

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