Surrealist Masculinities offers a fresh exploration of how surrealist visual production was shaped by constructions of gender and sexuality, particularly masculinity, in the 1920s and early 1930s. Amy Lyford builds on feminist critical approaches to surrealism, which have viewed the female body in surrealism as symptomatic of male misogyny; yet she also departs from such work by arguing that representations of an anxious, ambivalent, or perverse masculinity were integral to the movement's critique of France's "return to order" in the years following World War I. This book analyzes surrealist work in relation to the history of surrealism and investigates how surrealist artists and writers appropriated contemporary medical science, advertising, and sexology in their quest to undermine the status quo.
Amy Lyford is Associate Professor of Art History at Occidental College.
"This fascinating and well-researched book explores a little-examined side of Surrealism with rigor and style. Lyford has delved into little-known archives, finding means to put pressure on the gendered relationships within the movement and, most important, on the Surrealists' conceptions and experiences of masculinity. Surrealist Masculinities will become a classic resource for all scholars of Surrealism and the highly gendered literary and artistic subcultures of early twentieth-century Europe and North America."—Amelia Jones, Professor and Pilkington Chair, University of Manchester
252 pp.7 x 9Illus: 103 b/w illustrations
9780520246409$85.00|£71.00Hardcover
Jul 2007