The British Surrealists

The British Surrealists
Author: Desmond Morris
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2022-03-03
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0500777284

Fêted for their idiosyncratic and imaginative works, the surrealists marked a pivotal moment in the history of modern art in Britain. Many banded together to form the British Surrealist Group, while others carved their own, independent paths. Here, bestselling author and surrealist artist Desmond Morris - one of the last surviving members of this important art movement - draws on his personal memories and experiences to present the intriguing life stories and complex love lives of this wild and curious set of artists. From the unpredictability of Francis Bacon to the rebelliousness of Leonora Carrington, from the beguiling Eileen Agar to the brilliant Ceri Richards, Morris brings his subjects foibles and frailties to the fore. His vivid account is laced with his inimitable wit, and profusely illustrated by images of the artists and their artworks. Featuring thirty-four surrealists - some famous, some forgotten - Morriss intimate book takes us back in time to a generation that allowed its creative unconscious to drive their passions in both art and life. With 105 illustrations

The Lives of the Surrealists

The Lives of the Surrealists
Author: Desmond Morris
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0500296375

A lively history of the Surrealists, both known and unknown, by one of the last surviving members of the movement—artist and bestselling author Desmond Morris. Surrealism did not begin as an art movement but as a philosophical strategy, a way of life, and a rebellion against the establishment that gave rise to the World War I. In The Lives of the Surrealists, surrealist artist and celebrated writer Desmond Morris concentrates on the artists as people—as remarkable individuals. What were their personalities, their predilections, their character strengths and flaws? Unlike the impressionists or the cubists, the surrealists did not obey a fixed visual code, but rather the rules of surrealist philosophy: work from the unconscious, letting your darkest, most irrational thoughts well up and shape your art. An artist himself, and contemporary of the later surrealists, Morris illuminates the considerable variation in each artist’s approach to this technique. While some were out-and-out surrealists in all they did, others lived more orthodox lives and only became surrealists at the easel or in the studio. Focusing on the thirty-two artists most closely associated with the surrealist movement, Morris lends context to their life histories with narratives of their idiosyncrasies and their often complex love lives, alongside photos of the artists and their work.

Farewell to the Muse: Love, War and the Women of Surrealism

Farewell to the Muse: Love, War and the Women of Surrealism
Author: Whitney Chadwick
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2017-11-14
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0500774056

A fascinating examination of the ambitions and friendships of a talented group of midcentury women artists Farewell to the Muse documents what it meant to be young, ambitious, and female in the context of an avant-garde movement defined by celebrated men whose backgrounds were often quite different from those of their younger lovers and companions. Focusing on the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Whitney Chadwick charts five female friendships among the Surrealists to show how Surrealism, female friendship, and the experiences of war, loss, and trauma shaped individual women’s transitions from someone else’s muse to mature artists in their own right. Her vivid account includes the fascinating story of Claude Cahun and Suzanne Malherbe in occupied Jersey, as well as the experiences of Lee Miller and Valentine Penrose at the front line. Chadwick draws on personal correspondence between women, including the extraordinary letters between Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini during the months following the arrest and imprisonment of Carrington’s lover Max Ernst and the letter Frida Kahlo shared with her friend and lover Jacqueline Lamba years after it was written in the late 1930s. This history brings a new perspective to the political context of Surrealism as well as fresh insights on the vital importance of female friendship to its progress.

Watching

Watching
Author: Desmond Morris
Publisher: MAX
Total Pages: 696
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape and Manwatching, is a household name. He is admired and renowned as a natural historian, a keen observer of both animal and human behaviour. This is his long-awaited autobiography. The autobiography begins with a shy young boy who, while everyone else was dancing on the streets, celebrated VE day by observing a colony of rooks. After studying the behavioural habits of the ten-spined stickleback at Oxford, Morris became Curator of Mammals at London Zoo and quickly became a familiar figure in homes all over Britain as presenter of Zootime, delighting millions of tea-time viewers with a daring attempt to pick up a deadly scorpion by its tail or a tumble off the back of an elephant, An-An. As Curator of Mammals at the zoo, life was as bizarre behind the cameras as in front of them, not least when a whale turned up in the Thames at Kew or when a pair of ferocious bears escaped and caused havoc with a lavatory. In 1967, with the publication of the landmark book The Naked Ape, Morris turned his attention to humans. Since then he has continued his work on human and animal species, written many other successful books and has presented a number of television series. Desmond Morris's travels have taken him to some sixty countries, from the cities of North America to the islands off the Mediterranean, Europe, the Pacific and Africa. This book tells the story of many of these adventures, in fascinating and often hilarious detail.

Surrealism in Britain

Surrealism in Britain
Author: Michael Remy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 475
Release: 2019-09-10
Genre: Art
ISBN: 042962719X

This book was originally published in 1999, and is the first comprehensive study of the British surrealist movement and its achievements. Lavishly illustrated, the book provides a year-by-year narrative of the development of surrealism among artists, writers, critics and theorists in Britain. Surrealism was imported into Britain from France by pioneering little magazines. The 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London, put together by Herbert Read and Roland Penrose, marked the first attempt to introduce the concept to a wider public. Relations with the Soviet Union, the Spanish Civil War and World War Two fractured the nascent movement as writers and artists worked out their individual responses and struggled to earn a living in wartime. The book follows the story right through to the present day. Michael Remy draws on 20 years of studying British surrealism to provide this authoritative and biographically rich account, a major contribution to the understanding of the achievements of the artists and writers involved and their allegiance to this key twentieth-century movement.

Peoplewatching

Peoplewatching
Author: Desmond Morris
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 578
Release: 2012-11-30
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1407071491

Peoplewatching is the culmination of a career of watching people - their behaviour and habits, their personalities and their quirks. Desmond Morris shows us how people, consciously and unconsciously, signal their attitudes, desires and innermost feelings with their bodies and actions, often more powerfully than with their words.

Cats in Art

Cats in Art
Author: Desmond Morris
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Cats
ISBN: 9781780238333

The cat--that most graceful, stubborn, and agile of animals--has been a favorite subject of artists the world over from prehistory to the modern day. A spectacular 7,000-year-old engraving in Libya depicts a catfight. Figures modeled by the Babylonians remind us of their belief that the souls of priests were escorted to paradise by a helpful cat. Pablo Picasso was known to have loved cats and famously portrayed them as savage predators. In Victorian times, cats were depicted in loving family groups with mothers caring for their playful kittens. Today, the cat is one of the most popular domestic pets on the planet, and feline art is a hugely popular theme across the world. In his latest eye-catching book, best-selling author Desmond Morris tells the compelling story of cats in art. He explores feline art in its many forms, tracing its history from ancient rock paintings and spectacular Egyptian art to the work of old masters, avant-garde representations, and the depiction of cats in cartoons. Morris discusses the various ways in which artists have approached the subject throughout history, weaving illuminating stories with rarely seen images. The result is a beautifully illustrated book that will delight anyone with a Kitty, Max, or Tigger in their life.

The Human Sexes

The Human Sexes
Author: Desmond Morris
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Total Pages: 254
Release: 1997
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780312183110

Based on a series shown on cable's The Learning Channel, a famous behaviorist shares his original and often startling take on human nature, gender roles, and the equality between men and women that appears our ancestral cultures.

Postures

Postures
Author: Desmond Morris
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-11-05
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0500022615

This copiously illustrated book, by the ever-provocative Desmond Morris, is a pioneering and lively exploration of the importance of body language in how we understand art. Every time an artist portrays a human subject, a decision has to be made about the posture of the figure. Will they be standing, sitting, or reclining? Smiling, screaming, or weeping? Never before given such dedicated attention, Postures argues that the gestures portrayed in a work of art can reflect the mores of a particular period in history, the customs of a certain culture, or a fashion in artistic styles. Exploring these with masterful subtlety, celebrated artist and anthropologist Desmond Morris uncovers fascinating insights about changing social attitudes and conventions throughout history, finding surprising similarities and significant differences. Morris’s vast selection of gestures, from the handshake to the glove-slap, are analyzed and grouped according to wider forms of communication—greetings, threats, insults, and more. All are illustrated with full color works, ranging from prehistoric masks and Greek statues to contemporary paintings and sculptures. Postures uniquely combines Morris’s expertise in both art and social science, shedding new light on even the most familiar paintings.