Andre Masson and the Surrealist Self by Clark V. Poling
8vo. pp. vii, 201. profusely illustrated. bibliography. index. hardcover. dw. (fine condition). New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
ISB-10: 0300135629 / ISBN-13: 9780300135626
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This richly documented book examines the attempts of the French Surrealist artist André Masson (18961987) 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 selfas fragmented, dissolved, merged with other selves and with the natural environment, and, ultimately, reconstituted and consolidated.