Radical Dreams

Surrealism is widely thought of as an artistic movement that flourished in Europe between the two world wars. However, during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, diverse radical affinity groups, underground subcultures, and student protest movements proclaimed their connections to surrealism. Radical Dreams argues that surrealism was more than an avant-garde art movement; it was a living current of anti-authoritarian resistance.

Featuring perspectives from scholars across the humanities and, distinctively, from contemporary surrealist practitioners, this volume examines surrealism’s role in postwar oppositional cultures. It demonstrates how surrealism’s committed engagement extends beyond the parameters of an artistic style or historical period, with chapters devoted to Afrosurrealism, Ted Joans, punk, the Situationist International, the student protests of May ’68, and other topics. Privileging interdisciplinary, transhistorical, and material culture approaches, contributors address surrealism’s interaction with New Left politics, protest movements, the sexual revolution, psychedelia, and other subcultural trends around the globe.

A revelatory work, Radical Dreams definitively shows that the surrealist movement was synonymous with cultural and political radicalism. It will be especially valuable to those interested in the avant-garde, contemporary art, and radical social movements.

In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Jonathan P. Eburne, David Hopkins, Claire Howard, Michael Löwy, Alyce Mahon, Gavin Parkinson, Grégory Pierrot, Penelope Rosemont, Ron Sakolsky, Marie Arleth Skov, Ryan Standfest, and Sandra Zalman.

Elliott H. King is Associate Professor of Art History at Washington and Lee University and the author of Salvador Dalí: The Late Work and Dalí, Surrealism, and Cinema. He is a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism.

Elliott H. King is Associate Professor of Art History at Washington and Lee University and the author of Salvador Dalí: The Late Work and Dalí, Surrealism, and Cinema. He is a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism.

Abigail Susik is Associate Professor of Art History at Willamette University and the author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work. She co-edited the volume Surrealism and Film After 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries.