Project MUSE®: International Journal of Surrealism - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/865
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in International Journal of Surrealism.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2023) through current issueLatest Articles: International Journal of SurrealismTWOProject MUSE®International Journal of Surrealism2837-46492837-4657Latest articles in International Journal of Surrealism. Feed provided by Project MUSE®The Mystery of the Eggs: On Susana Wald's Obsession with the Ovoid Motif
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988010
<p></p>
Susana Wald's Huevos (Eggs, 1997–2006) series, examples of which are illustrated in the Portfolio section of this edition, functions as a compendium of the interests the artist has developed over her more than sixty-year career. Her approach to the ovoid form dates back to her beginnings. A graduate of the National School of Ceramics in Buenos Aires, Wald created large ceramic eggs in the 1960s, which she later incorporated at a realistic scale in conceptual sculptures like The Mystery of the Egg (1972), a black egg resting on a white plate, directly evoking Leonor Fini's The Guardian of the Black Egg (1955), an influence acknowledged by the artist. When she began painting in the early 1980s, the egg continued to
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988004">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/865/image/coversmallThe Mystery of the Eggs: On Susana Wald's Obsession with the Ovoid Motif2026-04-22text/htmlen-USThe Mystery of the Eggs: On Susana Wald's Obsession with the Ovoid Motif2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®201172026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Huevos
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988009
<p></p>
Between 1997 and 2006, while in her sixties, Susana Wald developed a body of work comprising more than fifty representations of eggs, produced in her studio in Oaxaca.While drawing on the egg as an established surrealist leitmotif—where the egg symbolizes the latent, the metamorphic, and the oneiric—here the egg also becomes a device for introspection at a crucial moment in her life as a woman: the menopause. Through painterly practice, Wald intensifies the symbolic charge of the egg as an emblem of the feminine that is no longer tied to reproduction but understood as an archaic and cyclical force. The series can thus be read as an archaeology of the feminine, exploring the mutability of the body as well as the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988004">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/865/image/coversmallHuevos2026-04-22text/htmlen-USHuevos2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®69212026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Some Considerations on H. R. Giger's Library
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988005
<p></p>
H. R. Giger's universe is known as one of the major factories of global popular culture in the 1980s, but few have delved into the reader he once was. Giger was a Swiss artist best known for his dark, biomechanical style that fused human, machine, and alien forms into haunting, dreamlike visions. His universe was one of nightmarish beauty—an unsettling blend of organic and mechanical, where flesh and metal intertwined in alien architectures and erotic, otherworldly landscapes. Avid for iconographic materials and texts, Giger kept a personal library that provides a particularly fertile ground from which his work grew, and this is what we aim to reveal here by studying the occurrences within the library related to
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988004">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/865/image/coversmallSome Considerations on H. R. Giger's Library2026-04-22text/htmlen-USSome Considerations on H. R. Giger's Library2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®886372026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Gina Litherland: A Child Moving Counters on a Board
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988003
<p></p>
In the first "Manifesto of Surrealism," André Breton evokes childhood in order to counter the degradation of real life that results from the burdens placed upon adults due to their having consented to work and to live in conformity with its demands. In contrast, Breton insists that "children set off each morning without a care in the world. Everything is close at hand, the worst material conditions are excellent. The woods are white or black, one will never sleep."1Breton's invocation recalls the sovereignty that Heraclitus assigned to the child in his fragment asserting that "lifetime is a child at play moving counters on a board. Kingship belongs to the child," as well as Nietzsche's fable of the spirit that
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988004">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/865/image/coversmallGina Litherland: A Child Moving Counters on a Board2026-04-22text/htmlen-USGina Litherland: A Child Moving Counters on a Board2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®570722026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Editorial Introduction: The Open Edition
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987998
<p></p>
André Breton died on September 28, 1966, in Paris and was buried in Batignolles Cemetery. His headstone reads "Je cherche l'or du temps" (I seek the gold of time). The artwork that graces the cover of this edition, by Chilean Canadian artist Susana Wald (b. 1937, Budapest), is born of those words and titled Times Gold. Homage to André Breton (2002). One of a series of Wald's Huevos paintings (1997–2006), discussed by Macarena Bravo Cox in the Récit of this edition, Wald's use of everyday objects—the domestic egg, the sea, the sand—to craft speculative scenes reminds us how far Surrealism's tendrils have reached since Breton's death. Contemporary artists continue to advance the avant-garde call to liberate society
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988004">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/865/image/coversmallEditorial Introduction: The Open Edition2026-04-22text/htmlen-USEditorial Introduction: The Open Edition2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®166512026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Reimagining Modernity Through Surrealist Aesthetic: Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine and the Berber Renaissance
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987999
<p></p>
The concept of the Maghreb has long resisted clear definition. While geopolitical discourse reduces the Maghreb to a region of North Africa bordering the Mediterranean Sea, twentieth-century poets and intellectuals reimagined it as a far more complex and layered construct. A particularly thorough exploration of this complexity is provided by anthropologist Abdelmajid Hannoum, who deconstructs the notion by tracing its historical emergence within what he calls "colonial modernity." Accordingly, the Maghreb was produced through colonial processes that relied on the authority of new technologies. In this framework, elements of modernity were reshaped to such an extent that they became inseparable from colonialism
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988004">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/865/image/coversmallReimagining Modernity Through Surrealist Aesthetic: Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine and the Berber Renaissance2026-04-22text/htmlen-USReimagining Modernity Through Surrealist Aesthetic: Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine and the Berber Renaissance2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®870102026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Feyyaz Kayacan's Surrealist Storytelling: "Dislodge the dark, undo the grip of decreed silence"
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988000
<p></p>
"Déclaration du Groupe Surréaliste en Angleterre" (Declaration of the Surrealist Group in England, 1947) marked a final attempt to reunite the dispersed surrealists in England and revive interest in a movement that had lost momentum in the aftermath of the Second World War. The document sought to explain why Surrealism had remained comparatively short-lived in England, attributing this principally to the disorganized efforts of the group, unlike the more coordinated French movement.1 While noting the scarcity of twentieth-century writers who carried this imaginative spirit forward, it also affirmed that the remaining members of the group were committed to pursuing the surrealist ideal despite all setbacks. Among
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988004">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/865/image/coversmallFeyyaz Kayacan's Surrealist Storytelling: "Dislodge the dark, undo the grip of decreed silence"2026-04-22text/htmlen-USFeyyaz Kayacan's Surrealist Storytelling: "Dislodge the dark, undo the grip of decreed silence"2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®739422026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22A Tusk, a Head and an Ancestor Board: Provenance Questions in Surrealist Collections
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988001
<p></p>
Three unique objects from across the world have converged in Edinburgh, Scotland: an impressive ancestral board, a Māori carved head, and an engraved walrus tusk from North America. The ancestral board may be found in the National Museum of Scotland as part of a larger showcase on Oceania.1 Close by, in the Gabreille Keiller Library of the National Galleries of Scotland (Modern Two), the Māori carved board and walrus tusk are kept.2 These objects are quite different from each other, not least in terms of material, size, iconography, geographical origin, and sociocultural significance. They also have several things in common, including, first, being displayed in a very particular environment: the Western museum.
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988004">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/865/image/coversmallA Tusk, a Head and an Ancestor Board: Provenance Questions in Surrealist Collections2026-04-22text/htmlen-USA Tusk, a Head and an Ancestor Board: Provenance Questions in Surrealist Collections2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®1026602026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22A Stirring Threesome: Max Ernst's Seduction in the Eye/"I"
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988002
<p></p>
Once relegated to a realm of minor importance for the unfolding and course of art history, women have increasingly moved center-stage with a growing number of scholars focusing on their impact and legacy across painting, drawing and sculpture, performance, and installation. On these grounds, the role of the female sex for creative production has garnered attention since at least the 1980s, with a strong interest in the respective lives and loves of the main protagonists.1 Of the many art movements, it was Surrealism in particular where "women" made a fierce appearance, staking a claim and voice as seminal proponents equal to their male counterparts. While often seen as figures of minor importance during their
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988004">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/865/image/coversmallA Stirring Threesome: Max Ernst's Seduction in the Eye/"I"2026-04-22text/htmlen-USA Stirring Threesome: Max Ernst's Seduction in the Eye/"I"2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®745632026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22Surrealism in Disavowal: Marcel Broodthaers and the Legacy of Surrealism in Belgium
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988004
<p></p>
Marcel Broodthaers (1924–1976) and Surrealism were born in the same year. The year 2026, two years after their shared centenary, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the artist's death. Though his trajectory through the art world was brief—he only turned to the visual arts in 1963, having begun as a poet—Broodthaers has rapidly come to be recognized as a central figure in the postwar avantgarde, propelled in large part by the scholarship of several prominent American art historians. His critical dialogues with various contemporary movements—including but not limited to pop art, conceptualism, and institutional critique—undoubtedly underpin his current canonical standing. Broodthaers's relationship to Surrealism
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988004">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/865/image/coversmallSurrealism in Disavowal: Marcel Broodthaers and the Legacy of Surrealism in Belgium2026-04-22text/htmlen-USSurrealism in Disavowal: Marcel Broodthaers and the Legacy of Surrealism in Belgium2026-04-222026TWOProject MUSE®835092026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-22