Synopses & Reviews
Although Georgia Oand#8217;Keeffe (1887and#8211;1986) has long been regarded as a central figure in 20th-century art, the abstract works she created throughout her career have remained critically and popularly overlooked in favor of her representational subjects. Beginning with charcoal drawings made in 1915, which were among the most radical creations produced in the United States at that time, Oand#8217;Keeffe sought to transcribe pure emotion in her work. While her output of abstract work declined after 1930, she returned to abstraction in the 1950s with a new vocabulary that provided a precedent for a younger generation of abstractionists. By devoting itself to this largely unexplored area of her work, Georgia Oand#8217;Keeffe: Abstraction is an overdue acknowledgment of her place as one of Americaand#8217;s first abstractionists.
In addition to rethinking Oand#8217;Keeffeand#8217;s role in the development of a uniquely American abstract style, this book chronicles the shifts and changes in subject matter and style over the span of her long career. It adds significant new insight into her life, reproducing excerpts of previously sealed letters written by Oand#8217;Keeffe to photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, whom she married in 1924. These previously unpublished letters, along with other primary documents referenced by the authors, offer an intimate glimpse into her creative method and intentions as an artist.
Review
"A beautifully illustrated book about this icon, a liberated, unconventional, independent, and spirited American woman and celebrity who predated the feminist movement and had few peers."and#8212;Rose Safran, Maine Antique Digest
Review
"[Surrealist Ghostliness] is an important addition to the literature on surrealism and modern art, very well written and an extremely interesting and engaging read."and#8212;Rob Harle, Leonardo Journal
Review
andquot;Conley offers a richly argued discussion, speculative and articulate, that usefully contributes to our reading of the 'long Surrealism'.andquot;andmdash;Robert Radford, Burlingtonand#160;Magazine
Synopsis
In this study of surrealism and ghostliness, Katharine Conley provides a new, unifying theory of surrealist art and thought based on history and the paradigm of puns and anamorphosis. In
Surrealist Ghostliness, Conley discusses surrealism as a movement haunted by the experience of World War I and the repressed ghost of spiritualism. From the perspective of surrealist automatism, this double haunting produced a unifying paradigm of textual and visual puns that both pervades surrealist thought and art and commemorates the surrealistsand#8217; response to the Freudian unconscious. Extending the gothic imagination inherited from the eighteenth century, the surrealists inaugurated the psychological century with an exploration of ghostliness through doubles, puns, and anamorphosis, revealing through visual activation the underlying coexistence of realities as opposed as life and death.
Surrealist Ghostliness explores examples of surrealist ghostliness in film, photography, painting, sculpture, and installation art from the 1920s through the 1990s by artists from Europe and North America from the center to the periphery of the surrealist movement. Works by Man Ray, Claude Cahun, Brassaand#239; and Salvador Daland#237;, Lee Miller, Dorothea Tanning, Francesca Woodman, Pierre Alechinsky, and Susan Hiller illuminate the surrealist ghostliness that pervades the twentieth-century arts and compellingly unifies the centuryand#8217;s most influential yet disparate avant-garde movement.
About the Author
Barbara Haskell is Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Barbara Buhler Lynes is Curator at the Georgia Oand#8217;Keeffe Museum and the Emily Fisher Landau Director of the Georgia Oand#8217;Keeffe Museum Research Center in Santa Fe. Bruce Robertson is Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Elizabeth Hutton Turner is Professor and Vice Provost for the Arts at the University of Virginia and Guest Curator at the Phillips Collection.