André Masson Eine Mythologie der Natur erscheint begleitend zur Ausstellung im Museum Würth, Künzelsau vom 18. September 2004 bis 30. Januar 2005 André Masson (1896-1987), französischer Maler und Grafiker, studierte in Brüssel und Paris und wurde zu einem der Hauptvertreter des Surrealismus. Er nahm beachtlichem Einfluss auf eine nachrückende Künstlergeneration in den USA. Ursprünglich vom Kubismus beeinflusst öffnete sich ihm durch den Surrealismus der Zugang zu den psychologischen Quellen der Kunst, deren Tiefe er mit Hilfe des Auto-matismus auszuloten suchte. Eine wesentliche Inspiration nahm er aus der Natur, die er in eigenen, faszinierend gesteigerten mythologischen Metaphern ausdrückte. Das Museum Würth beleuchtet erstmalig diesen Aspekt seines Werkes anhand zahlrei-cher Gemälde und des bislang noch nie präsentierten Zeichenzyklus' "Sur le thème du désir". Der begleitende Katalogband ist reich an Abbildungen und umfasst Beiträge, die Thema und Werk Massons aufschlussreich analysieren.

A timely and stimulating collection of essays about the impact of Darwin's ideas on visual culture

This richly documented book examines the attempts of the French Surrealist artist Andr� Masson (1896-1987) to define "self” in his art in the period between the early 1920s and 1940, the most fruitful period of classic Surrealism, culminating in the emergence of existentialism. Through a close reading of Masson’s paintings, drawings, and writings, Clark Poling explores the ways in which the artist figured the self--as fragmented, dissolved, merged with other selves and with the natural environment, and, ultimately, reconstituted and consolidated. Masson’s work, Poling argues, reveals his involvement with modern conceptions of the self that he absorbed from Nietzsche and the Surrealist writers, as well as from other sources in philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis and ethnography. He traces Masson’s articulation of these ideas in paintings and graphic works, using his correspondence from the Surrealist period and his many subsequent writings as supporting evidence.

An absorbing group biography revealing how exiles from war-torn France brought surrealism to America, sparking the movement that became abstract expressionism. In 1957 the American artist Robert Motherwell made an unexpected claim: "I have only known two painting milieus well … the Parisian Surrealists, with whom I began painting seriously in New York in 1940, and the native movement that has come to be known as 'abstract expressionism,' but which genetically would have been more properly called 'abstract surrealism.'" Motherwell’s bold assertion, that abstract expressionism was neither new nor local, but born of a brief liaison between America and France, verged on the controversial. Surrealists in New York tells the story of this "liaison" and the European exiles who bought Surrealism with them—an artistic exchange between the Old World and the New—centering on taciturn printmaker Stanley William Hayter and the legendary Atelier 17 print studio he founded. Here artists’ experiments literally pushed the boundaries of modern art. It was in Hayter’s studio that Jackson Pollock found the balance of freedom and control that would culminate in his distinctive drip paintings. The impact of Max Ernst, André Masson, Louise Bourgeois and other noted émigrés on the work of Motherwell, Pollock, Mark Rothko, and the American avant-garde has for too long been quietly written out of art history. Drawing on first-hand documents, interviews, and archive materials, Charles Darwent brings to life the events and personalities from this crucial encounter, revealing a fascinating new perspective on the history of the art of the twentieth century.

Disfiguring is constructive or, perhaps more accurately, reconstructive. By exploring the religious dimensions of twentieth-century painting and architecture, he shows how the visual arts continue to serve as a rich resource for the theological imagination.