Description
A wide-ranging look at surrealist and postsurrealist engagements with the culture and imagery of childhood
We all have memories of the object-world of childhood. For many of us, playthings and images from those days continue to resonate. Rereading a swathe of modern and contemporary artistic production through the lens of its engagement with childhood, this book blends in-depth art historical analysis with sustained theoretical exploration of topics such as surrealist temporality, toys, play, nostalgia, memory, and twentieth-century constructions of the child. The result is an entirely new approach to the surrealist tradition via its engagement with "childish things." Providing what the author describes as a "long history of surrealism," this book plots a trajectory from surrealism itself to the art of the 1980s and 1990s, through to the present day. It addresses a range of figures from Marcel Duchamp, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Hans Bellmer, Joseph Cornell, and Helen Levitt, at one end of the spectrum, to Louise Bourgeois, Eduardo Paolozzi, Claes Oldenburg, Susan Hiller, Martin Sharp, Helen Chadwick, Mike Kelley, and Jeff Koons, at the other.
About the Author
David Hopkins is professor of art history at the University of Glasgow.
Reviews
"A compelling history of the toy as a motif in modern and contemporary art. . . . The first four chapters explore the toy in Surrealist works and ideas. . . . This 'dark' quality, which speaks to associations that deviate from romantic visions of childhood as innocence, is a powerful feature of Hopkins's argument, at times bringing the reader into unsettling territory."-Julian Jason Haladyn, Burlington Magazine
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2022
Book Information
ISBN 9780300225747
Author David Hopkins
Format Hardback
Page Count 352
Imprint Yale University Press
Publisher Yale University Press
We all have memories of the object-world of childhood. For many of us, playthings and images from those days continue to resonate. Rereading a swathe of modern and contemporary artistic production through the lens of its engagement with childhood, this book blends in-depth art historical analysis with sustained theoretical exploration of topics such as surrealist temporality, toys, play, nostalgia, memory, and twentieth-century constructions of the child. The result is an entirely new approach to the surrealist tradition via its engagement with "childish things." Providing what the author describes as a "long history of surrealism," this book plots a trajectory from surrealism itself to the art of the 1980s and 1990s, through to the present day. It addresses a range of figures from Marcel Duchamp, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Hans Bellmer, Joseph Cornell, and Helen Levitt, at one end of the spectrum, to Louise Bourgeois, Eduardo Paolozzi, Claes Oldenburg, Susan Hiller, Martin Sharp, Helen Chadwick, Mike Kelley, and Jeff Koons, at the other.
About the Author
David Hopkins is professor of art history at the University of Glasgow.
Reviews
"A compelling history of the toy as a motif in modern and contemporary art. . . . The first four chapters explore the toy in Surrealist works and ideas. . . . This 'dark' quality, which speaks to associations that deviate from romantic visions of childhood as innocence, is a powerful feature of Hopkins's argument, at times bringing the reader into unsettling territory."-Julian Jason Haladyn, Burlington Magazine
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2022
Book Information
ISBN 9780300225747
Author David Hopkins
Format Hardback
Page Count 352
Imprint Yale University Press
Publisher Yale University Press
