Lee Miller (1907-1977) moved to London in the late 1930s, just as a rich strand of Surrealist practice was burgeoning in Britain. Miller was central to its development and prolonged life after World War II, exhibiting alongside British Surrealists such as Eileen Agar and Henry Moore in often overlooked London exhibitions. This book is the first to present Lee Miller's photographs of, and collaborations with key British Surrealists alongside their artworks, to tell the story of this exciting cultural moment. Miller's photographs of noted continental Surrealists such as Max Ernst and E.L.T Mesens, taken while they were working and exhibiting in Britain, also feature alongside their works, documenting their enduring friendships with Miller and her husband, the artist Roland Penrose. Miller's interdisciplinary photographic practice acted as a conduit for the dispersal of Surrealist images out of the realm of fine art and into the worlds of fashion, commercial photography and journalism. A vital study for all students and enthusiasts of Surrealism and those enthralled by the enigmatic Lee Miller, this book reveals the social and cultural networks in which she was embedded, offering a holistic view of her work and the life of the Surrealist movement in Britain. Exhibition: The Hepworth, Wakefield, UK (22.06.-07.10.2018).

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.

This study proposes that there has been a revival of surrealist poetry, and traces an uninterrupted thread of development in surrealism throughout 20th-century English poetry.

The lives, loves, and works of key British Surrealists revealed by one of the last surviving members of this movement, best-selling author and artist Desmond Morris. Honored for their idiosyncratic and imaginative works, the surrealists marked a pivotal moment in the history of modern art in Britain— pioneering the Surrealist movement between World War I and II. Many artists banded together to form the British Surrealist Group, while others carved their own, independent paths. Here, best-selling 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, complex love lives, and groundbreaking works of this wild and curious set of artists. From the rebelliousness of Leonora Carrington to the beguiling Eileen Agar and the “brilliant” Ceri Richards, Morris brings his subjects’ triumphs as well as their shortcomings to the fore. Laced with his inimitable wit, and profusely illustrated by images of the artists and their artworks, Morris’s vivid account reflects the movement’s strange, rebellious, and imaginative nature. Featuring thirty- four surrealists—some famous, some now largely forgotten—Morris’s intimate book takes us back in time to a generation that allowed its creative unconscious to drive their passions in both art and life.

In a catalogue note for the 1965 exhibition 'Between Poetry and Painting' at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the poet Edwin Morgan probed the relationship between abstraction and literature: 'Abstract painting can often satisfy, but "abstract poetry" can only exist in inverted commas'. Language may be fragmented, rearranged, or distorted, abstract in so far as it is withdrawn from a particular system of knowledge, but Morgan was of the mind that to be wholly 'disruptive' was to deprive a poem of its 'point' as an 'object of contemplation'. Whilst abstract art may have come to fulfil or or fortify an impression of post-war taste, abstraction in literature continued to be treated with suspicion. But how does this speak to the extent to which Britain's literary culture was responsive to progress compared to its artistic culture? Abstraction in Post-War British Literature 1945-1980 traces a line of literary experimentation in post-war British literature that was prompted by the aesthetic, philosophical and theoretical demands of abstraction. Spanning the period 1945 to 1980, it observes the ways in which certain aesthetic advancements initiated new forms of literary expression to posit a new genealogy of interdisciplinary practice in Britain. At a time in which Britain became conscious of its evolving identity within an increasingly globalised context, this study accounts for the range of Continental and Transatlantic influences in order to more accurately locate the networks at play. Exploring the contributions made by individuals, such as Herbert Read, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Christine Brooke- Rose, as well as by groups of practitioners. It brings a wide range of previously unexplored archival material into the public domain and offers a comprehensive account of the evolving status of abstraction across cultural, institutional, and literary contexts.