In the decades between the two World Wars, Greek writers and artists adopted surrealism both as an avant-garde means of overturning the stifling traditions of their classical heritage and also as a way of responding to the extremely unstable political situation in their country. Despite producing much first-rate work throughout the rest of the twentieth century, Greek surrealists have not been widely read outside of Greece. This volume seeks to remedy that omission by offering authoritative translations of the major works of the most important Greek surrealist writers. Nikos Stabakis groups the Greek surrealists into three generations: the founders (such as Andreas Embirikos, Nikos Engonopoulos, and Nicolas Calas), the second generation, and the Pali Group, which formed around the magazine Pali. For each generation, he provides a very helpful introduction to the themes and concerns that animate their work, as well as concise biographies of each writer. Stabakis anthologizes translations of all the key surrealist works of each generation—poetry, prose, letters, and other documents—as well as a selection of rarer texts. His introduction to the volume places Greek surrealism within the context of the international movement, showing how Greek writers and artists used surrealism to express their own cultural and political realities.

Early twentieth-century visual artists Andre Masson and Pablo Picasso both used the Minotaur to represent their thoughts and experiences, but for very different reasons. The relationship of both artists to Surrealism, along with their life experiences, allowed the Greek figure to develop into their work. After Masson broke away from the Surrealist group, he had a strong relationship with theorist Georges Bataille. The two worked on their own journal Acephale. Masson's use of the Minotaur was highly inspired by the writings of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote extensively on Greek myth. It was in Acephale that Masson published numerous drawings related to the Cretan myth. Picasso's Minotaur, on the other hand, was mostly featured in his commission, the Vollard Suite. These drawings tell the tale of his faltering marriage to Olga Khokhlova and his mentally-deteriorating affair with Marie-Therese Walter. For these two artists, the Cretan myth was an expression for either the frustrations with personal relationships or the result of a deep-seated interest in a philosophical idea. The Minotaur was personal for them.In addition to laying the importance of the Minotaur to Masson and Picasso, another aim of this thesis is to solidify the place of the journal Minotaure in the canon of Surrealism as it relates to the theme of the Minotaur. Although Masson and Picasso were the two artists who brought the Minotaur into their work the most, the covers of Minotaure were decorated by such famous artists as Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse, and Rene Magritte amongst others. The covers show that the Minotaur was much more prevalent in Surrealism; they demonstrate it was not a coincidence that both Masson and Picasso illustrated the myth.

This is the catalogue of the thematic exhibition Andr Masson and Ancient Greece, to be staged in 2007 at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in Andros, Greece (1 July - 30 September 2007). It illustrates exceptio

Yatromanolakis examines the complex, at times contradictory, responses to ancient Greece in Greek and broader Western European modernism. Exploring the dynamics of ruination and the reconfiguration of fundamental icons of ancient mythology in surrealism, the author shows that Greek antiquity was an integral constituent of avant-garde myth-making.

The body was central to the visual culture of ancient Greece, reflecting an obsession with physical beauty, integrity, dynamism, and power. In this penetrating study, Andrew Stewart analyses the problem of the Greeks' strange preoccupation with nakedness and sketches how artworks filter our understanding of the subject. Exploring selected constructions of gender, ranging from the men of the Parthenon frieze to naked girls on Spartan hand-mirrors, Stewart investigates the Greek body as a microcosm of society, focusing upon figurations of the Athenian body politic; erotica for men and women; and selected representations of the Other, such as Gorgons, Satyrs, Centaurs, and Amazons. A cultural, theoretical and sociological study of this seminal topic, Stewart's analysis offers new insights into the society and mentality of the ancient Greeks.

"The ancient Greeks developed their own very specific ethos of art appreciation, advocating a rational involvement with art. This book explores why the ancient Greeks started to write art history and how the writing of art history transformed the social functions of art in the Greek world. It looks at the invention of the genre of portraiture, and the social uses to which portraits were put in the city state. Later chapters explore how artists sought to enhance their status by writing theoretical treatises and producing works of art intended for purely aesthetic contemplation which ultimately gave rise to the writing of art history and to the development of art collecting. The study, which is illustrated throughout and which draws on contemporary perspectives in the sociology of art, will prompt the student of classical art to rethink fundamental assumptions on Greek art and its cultural and social implications."--BOOK JACKET.