Surrealism Beyond Borders challenges conventional narratives of a revolutionary artistic, literary, and philosophical movement. Tracing Surrealism’s influence and legacy from the 1920s to the late 1970s in places as geographically diverse as Colombia, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Philippines, Romania, Syria, Thailand, and Turkey, this publication includes more than 300 works of art in a variety of media by well-known figures—including Dalí, Ernst, Kahlo, Magritte, and Miró—as well as numerous artists who are less widely known. Contributions from more than forty distinguished international scholars explore the network of Surrealist exchange and collaboration, artists’ responses to the challenges of social and political unrest, and the experience of displacement and exile in the twentieth century. The multiple narratives addressed in this expansive book move beyond the borders of history, geography, and nationality to provocatively redraw the map of Surrealism.

Associate Museum Librarian Tamara Fultz looks at some Greek art gallery catalogues in the Watson Library collection.

Former High School Intern Karla shares the photographs she made during her internship and what she learned in trying to recreate surrealist photographs from The Met collection.

Associate Manager for Acquisitions Holly Phillips, Volunteer Diane De Fazio, and Intern Margaret Borozan look at some of the rare Japanese modernist books in Watson Library.

Max Ernst (1891–1976) is a rarity, a German artist who impressed his French peers with his wit and imagination. He was also an artist who profoundly influenced more than one generation of American as well as European painters: only Picasso played a role as decisive as Ernst in the invention of modern techniques and styles. As a leader of the Cologne Dada movement immediately after World War I, Ernst created collages in which he combined mundane and banal materials, transforming them into magical, surprising images by means of what has been called "visual alchemy." Proto-Surrealist paintings he produced between 1921 and 1923, first in Cologne, then in Paris—where he moved in 1922—are signature works of the Surrealist movement. Powerfully appealing and mysterious, these pictures inspired the early efforts of Tanguy, Magritte, Dalí and other Surrealists. Even more emblematic of Surrealist style than the paintings are Ernst's collages, in particular his utterly unique and bizarre collage novels composed of disparate elements cut from nineteenth-century engravings. The paintings and collages alike are steeped in Freudian metaphor, private mythology, and evocations of childhood memories. As Ernst's work developed, he for the most part eschewed the magic-realist imagery of one strain of Surrealism, channeling his energies into experiments with the unusual techniques of frottage, grattage, and decalcomania. Forced by World War II to flee Europe for the United States, the artist began his American career in 1941. He produced paintings, collages, and sculptures, initially in New York and later in Arizona, that were an important influence on the emerging Abstract Expressionists and were subsequently to inspire new generations of artists. After the war, Ernst returned to Europe, settling in France, where he continued to work until his death. This volume accompanies a major retrospective of Ernst's work at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the first held in the United States in thirty years. Every work in the exhibition is reproduced in the lavish plates section of the book, and many comparative illustrations are included. The texts by experts in the field follow Ernst's peripatetic career and offer fresh insights into his oeuvre. Sabine Rewald's introduction gives an overview of Ernst's character and career. In one essay Werner Spies writes of the coexistence of nightmare and exaltation in Ernst's work, and in a second text he interprets the artist's career in America, especially in regard to the autobiographical painting Vox Angelica. Ludger Derenthal examines the subject of Ernst's involvement with politics. Thomas Gaehtgens's topic is Ernst and the old masters. Robert Storr's text is a highly personal view of the collage novels. And Pepe Karmel illuminates the surprising connections between Ernst's work and that of contemporary artists. It is a tribute to Ernst's complexity and ingenuity that these essays shed light on many heretofore unexplored aspects of his oeuvre.

Beginning in the early 1940s, Jacques and Natasha Gelman formed what is arguably the strongest private collection, in the world, of the art of the School of Paris. The eighty-one paintings, drawings, and bronzes in the Gelman collection, by thirty European artists, provide a remarkable survey of modern art, mainly in France, during the early decades of this century. The artists represented, often by several examples, include Bonnard, Braque, Dalí, Dubuffet, Matisse, Miró, and Picasso. Among the highlights arc Matisse's Young Sailor II (1906), perhaps the most famous of all Fauve portraits; Braque's Still Life with Banderillas (1911), a major Cubist painting; de Chirico's Jewish Angel (1916); and Dalí's Accommodations of Desires (1927), a picture that reveals much about the artist personally, in addition to serving as a pivotal work in the evolution of the Surrealist movement. Of great importance also are fourteen pictures by Picasso, dating from his youth to his old age. This publication accompanies the first public exhibition of the Gelman's magnificent selection of master works. Sabine Rewald's texts examine these works closely, interpreting them individually as well as in their broader cultural context. New and interesting insights into each work are augmented by the large number of comparative photographs and by the provenance, bibliography, and exhibition histories given for every painting, drawing, and sculpture. The reader is thus presented with an extraordinarily rich overview of this most decisive period in twentieth-century art. William S. Lieberman, chairman of the Department of 20th Century Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, has written an informal introduction that chronicles the Gelmans' collecting activity. Essays by Pierre Schneider, Lawrence Gowing, Gary Tinterow, and Dawn Ades focus on such topics as the School of Paris, Fauvism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Also included are appreciations by Jacques Dupin, John Ashbery, and John Golding.

Associate Curator Jennifer Farrell traces the founding and development of Stanley William Hayter's workshop, Atelier 17, and the profound impact it had on 20th-century art.

Teen Advisory Group Member Jimmy shares his views on Parts, a 1998 photo screenprint by the artist Lorna Simpson.

The cerebral and irrational tenets of Surrealism find their ancestry in the clever and whimsical disregard for tradition fostered by Dadaism a decade earlier.