All posts tagged: Surrealism

Mark Polizzotti on André Breton, Translation, and Surrealism | Mark Polizzotti, Jarrett Earnest

Mark Polizzotti on André Breton, Translation, and Surrealism | Mark Polizzotti, Jarrett Earnest

Published by José Betancourt

In this episode of Private Life, Jarrett Earnest is joined by Mark Polizzotti to discuss André Breton’s surrealist novel, Nadja, originally published in 1928 and translated into English by Polizzotti for NYRB Classics in 2025. Click the “Subscribe” link in the player above to follow this podcast on your favorite listening platform. Polizzotti gives insight into the process of translation, the facts of the real Nadja’s life, and the quotations and photography that Breton employed to evoke the woman behind the “ethereal phantom.”  André Breton was a French poet, writer, and theorist, best known as a pioneering Surrealist and Dadaist. He published Claire de Terre, a collection of poems, in 1923 and the Surrealist Manifesto (Manifeste du surréalisme)in 1924. Breton also cofounded the literary magazine Littérature in 1919.   Source link

Di Donna to Mount First Major Dalí Show in NYC in Nearly Two Decades

Di Donna to Mount First Major Dalí Show in NYC in Nearly Two Decades

Published by José Betancourt

As Emmanuel Di Donna prepares to leave his Madison Avenue gallery, the veteran dealer is returning to the artist most people think they already understand. This spring, Di Donna Galleries will mount one of the most significant exhibitions of Salvador Dalí seen in New York in decades. “Dalí: The Great Years, 1929–1939,” on view from April 16 through June 13, brings together more than two dozen paintings, sculptures, and works on paper focused on the decade in which the artist forged his visual language and his public persona.  Related Articles It is the first major Dalí presentation in the city since the Museum of Modern Art’s 2008 exhibition, and it will be the last staged in Di Donna’s current space before he embarks on a new joint venture with Pace and David Schrader.  For a dealer with a reputation for expanding the canon of Surrealism—often spotlighting overlooked figures and reframing the movement’s global reach—the decision to focus on Dalí may seem obvious.  “There hasn’t been a proper Dalí show in New York in years,” Di Donna said, pointing to the difficulty of assembling one. …

Surrealist Artist Behind Hand-Chair Dies at 90

Surrealist Artist Behind Hand-Chair Dies at 90

Published by Jenni Sidey

Pedro Friedeberg, an artist affiliated with the Mexican offshoot of the Surrealist movement and who is now best known for his absurdist designs, including the iconic Hand-Chair, died on Thursday in San Miguel de Allende. He was 90, according to his New York gallery, Ruiz-Healy Art. Friedeberg’s diverse practice included paintings dense with dreamy imagery and design objects that looked like body parts and animals. Though commonly labeled a Surrealist, he bristled against being associated with that movement. Related Articles When a W magazine journalist made the error of claiming that he was the last of the Surrealists in 2024, Friedeberg said, “That’s a terrible mistake. I’m neither a Surrealist nor the last of anything.” He also didn’t like being labeled an artist—“a horrible word,” he once told an interviewer for Christie’s—and said that, if his career took a different turn, he would have become “a spiritualist or a gigolo.” He is most fondly remembered for the Hand-Chair, a seat resembling a large palm that he designed during the early 1960s. He had been assigned …

Small Prophets review: Mackenzie Crook’s superb Detectorists follow-up brings surrealism to the suburbs

Small Prophets review: Mackenzie Crook’s superb Detectorists follow-up brings surrealism to the suburbs

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Trust Mackenzie Crook to do it again. Since his BBC curio Detectorists concluded in 2017 (the 2022 Christmas special notwithstanding), it has achieved cult-like status: a comedy that excavated the profound from the prosaic, transforming muddy fields and failed treasure hunts into something more. Crook’s deft writing made his tale of two men and their metal detectors less a satire about hobbyists than a meditation on male friendship, thwarted dreams, and the quiet devastations of middle age. Expectations are high, then, for Small Prophets. It doesn’t disappoint. Just as Detectorists found poetry in the Suffolk landscape and church halls, so Small Prophets discovers it in retail parks and overgrown suburban gardens – that same mournful melancholy punctured by moments of brilliant, absurdist humour. Even the music, haunting and ethereal, will twang its way into your soul. Pearce Quigley stars as Michael …

Christie’s Offers Belgian Couple’s Million Collection, Led by Magritte

Christie’s Offers Belgian Couple’s $54 Million Collection, Led by Magritte

Published by Jenni Sidey

Christie’s London will offer a selection of modern and contemporary works from Belgian collecting couple Roger and Josette Vanthournout during its March marquee sales week. The couple collected for six decades, amassing holdings ranging from Symbolism, Belgian Expressionism and Surrealism to post war avant-garde, Minimalism, and modern and contemporary British art. The collection bears an overall estimate of £40 million ($53.8 million), and will come to the block in a March 5 evening sale, a March 6 daytime sale, and an online sale running February 25–March 12.  Related Articles Roger Vanthournout was trained in design and decoration and founded a furniture manufacturing business. Josette Vanthournout was a painter. They began to travel widely in the 1950s, at first collecting Chinese ceramics and Flemish Expressionism but later shifting to acquire Surrealism, Minimalism, and postwar art.  “Spanning multiple decades and movements, the collection reflects a bold and deeply personal vision of 20th- and 21st-century art,” says Oliver Cau, the house’s deputy chairman of Impressionist and modern art, in press materials. “Begun in the mid -1950s, it is …

Sotheby’s Modern Art Sales Bring in 4.6 M., Led by M. Van Gogh

Sotheby’s Modern Art Sales Bring in $304.6 M., Led by $62 M. Van Gogh

Published by skeptic

On Thursday night, Christie’s finished off a week of evening sales with a mostly energetic three-part auction of modern art that saw a Frida Kahlo painting sell for a record price of $54.7 million and brought in a combined $304.6 million inclusive of fees, well above a $211.3 million–$289.3 million pre-sale estimate. The evening started off with 13 artworks from the collection of Chicago-based Cindy and Jay Pritzker, followed by a group of Surrealist works. Last came a multiple-owner modern art auction. “Everyone keeps asking me if I’m emotional,” said Pritzker’s granddaughter, Abby Pucker, before the sale started, “but I’m excited for everyone to see my grandmother’s personality and taste and elegance. To share that with the world is exciting.” Related Articles She had reason to be excited: the 13 lots in the Pritzker portion of the evening were a rousing success, totaling $109.5 million, with five artworks selling above estimate, five within, and only three below. The highest result in the sale was $62.7 million, a 35 percent jump on its pre-sale estimate, for Vincent van Gogh’s …