Surrealism
Magnetic and manipulative – the enigma of Gala Dali
Countless people apparently found her fascinating, but apart from being shrewd, scary, intelligent and very beady about money, it’s hard to see why
The liberating, invigorating music of Pierre Boulez
‘When you’re not offensive in life, you obtain absolutely nothing,’ declares a twinkly-eyed Pierre Boulez in one of the archive…
An exhilarating, uneven survey of an outstandingly eccentric British surrealist
Ithell Colquhoun was always a bit of a mystery surrealist. Her greatest hit is the unsettling, dream-like ‘Scylla’ (1938), a…
The triumph of surrealism
When Max Ernst was asked by an American artist to define surrealism at a New York gathering of exiles in…
This UFO testimony had me hooked
In October 1964, a young man was driving to a dance in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, when his radio began to pick…
Why has Leonora Carrington still not had a big exhibition?
‘It had nothing to endow it with the title of studio at all,’ was Edward James’s first impression of Leonora…
This British surrealist is a revelation
When the 15-year-old Maggi Hambling arrived at Benton End in Hadleigh, Suffolk – home of the East Anglian School of…
How a market town in Hampshire shaped Peggy Guggenheim
On 24 April 1937 Marguerite Guggenheim – known as Peggy – of Yew Tree Cottage, Hurst was booked by a…
‘I’m a hypocrite and a total fraud’ – the confessions of a French Surrealist poet
My writing is mere bricolage … whatever I do, I only half do’, wails Michel Leiris in the final volume of his self-lacerating autobiography
The life of René Magritte was even more surprising than his art
René Magritte’s life, so outwardly respectable, was as full of surprises as his art, says Philip Hensher
Rich and strange: Eileen Agar at Whitechapel Gallery reviewed
Heads turn, strangers gawp, matrons tut or look in envy. A man doffs his bowler hat knowing when he is…
Rodin was as modern as Magritte and Dali, but more touching and troubling than either
Rodin’s studio at Meudon in the suburbs of Paris is huge and filled with light — a sort of combined…
Puzzle Pieces: Cowboy Graves, by Roberto Bolaño, reviewed
This might seem an odd confession, but the work of Roberto Bolaño gives me very good bad dreams. When I…
How Algernon Newton made great art out of empty streets and dingy canals
Quite late in life Walter Sickert paid his first visit to Peckham Rye. He was excited, apparently, because he had…
A high-end car-boot sale of the unconscious: Colnaghi’s Dreamsongs reviewed
In 1772 the 15-year-old Mozart wrote a one-act opera set, like The Magic Flute, in a dream world. Il sogno…
Haunted by a black cat: Earwig, by Brian Catling, reviewed
Genuinely surrealist novels are as rare as hen’s teeth. They are a different form from the magic realist, the absurdist,…
British surrealism at its most remarkable and nightmarish
Holding the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936 was a coup for the British avant-garde, putting newbie surrealists such…
Wicked, humorous and high-spirited: Dorothea Tanning at Tate Modern reviewed
Art movements come and go but surrealism, in one form or another, has always been with us. Centuries before Freud’s…
Few soldiers have seen as many terrible sights as Don McCullin
Diane Arbus saw mid-20th century New York as if she was in a waking dream. Or at least that is…
Never Anyone But You, by Rupert Thomson reviewed
In a 2013 interview with a Canadian newspaper, Rupert Thomson acknowledged the strange place he occupies in the literary world.…
It’s the thought that counts
During a panel discussion in 1949, Frank Lloyd Wright made an undiplomatic comment about Marcel Duchamp’s celebrated picture of 1912,…
Beyond Timbuktu
Every so often a monster comes along. Here’s one — but a monster of fact not fiction, over 700 pages…
Repo women
Aren’t you getting a little sick of the white cube? I am. I realised how sick last week after blundering…
Matilda Bathurst chooses the best recent short story collections
‘I just wanted the damn story to ask the right questions,’ sighs a disaffected journalist in Jack Livings’s debut collection…
Poetic or pretentious? Joseph Cornell: Wanderlust at the Royal Academy reviewed
Someone once asked Joseph Cornell who was his favourite abstract artist of his time. It was a perfectly reasonable question…
