Elza Adamowicz presents an analysis of surrealist collage, both as a technique of cutting and pasting ready made material, and as a subversive and creative strategy. She considers verbal collage, pictorial collage, and the hybrids they generate, and discusses the works of Max Ernst and Andre Breton, as well as those of Aragon, Brunius, Eluard, Hugnet, Magritte, Peret, Styrsky and others. Focusing on the recycling of art-historical icons, the parodic reworking of narrative cliches, the concept of defamiliarisation of the banal, or the relations between part bodies and totalities, she offers close readings of individual collages, and links specific aspects of collage practice to central issues of surrealist aesthetic and political thought. Throughout this well illustrated study Adamowicz confronts the 'monstrous' nature of collage, grounded on excess and composed of irretrievable fragments and hovering signs.

A new analysis of Surrealist collage in France, leading to a radical reassessment of Surrealism.
Reviews
"Here Elza Adamowicz offers an interestingly analyzed study of the various techniques of cutting, assembling, and pasting the parts that go to make up the kinds of collage, visual and verbal, constructed in surrealism, and...in dada before it. She is particularly good at the discussion of the subversive undermining of 'established narratives' and of organic wholes by the 'processes of substitution and displacement,' the theoretical background for it, and the individual exmaples adduced to support her statements." Mary Ann Caws, L'Esprit Createur



Book Information
ISBN 9780521619875
Author Elza Adamowicz
Format Paperback
Page Count 268
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 486g
Dimensions(mm) 246mm * 189mm * 14mm