Surrealism's queer methods (Rethinking Art's Histories) [9781526193155]

Overview

This edited volume excavates overlooked connections between surrealist creative strategies, queer theory, and trans epistemologies, from the 1920s to the present. It will be the first book to focus on 'queer surrealism'--first identifying untapped queer potentials latent in the historical movement and then tracing surrealism’s revolutionary influence on art made in the context of postwar social movements.
Each essay explores a single creative technique and explores how that surrealist strategy helped artists negotiate queer/trans identity or agitate for queer causes. With essays on Mexican drawings, Haitian religious practices, and collages made by American AIDS activists—among other geographies and contexts—leading queer theorists and surrealist scholars explore the long, global history of surrealism’s queer possibilities. A gathering of art historians, artists, and queer theorists, this volume speaks to surrealist specialists but also any scholars or artists interested in gender, sexuality, and visual culture in the 20th and 21st centuries.