[.ca] Surrealism The Occult (ISBN 0892813733)

Of Value, for a Specialized Audience:
This slender book has an excellent first chapter that does an good job of describing the Romantic era mythos of the visionary artist, who attains wisdom by excess, by disordering the senses, and by breaking through conventional barriers. Chouda shows how this image of the artist continued throught he Surrealist period, and was congenial to an interest in magic and the occult. Subsequent chapters cover a lot of ground quickly, and presuppose a certain familiarity with both major and minor Surrealist artists. The style of these chapters reads like an Ph.D. thesis. More illustrations of actual artwork would have been helpful, but would've driven up the cost of the book.

Of Value, for a Specialized Audience:
This slender book has an excellent first chapter that does an good job of describing the Romantic era mythos of the visionary artist, who attains wisdom by excess, by disordering the senses, and by breaking through conventional barriers. Chouda shows how this image of the artist continued throught he Surrealist period, and was congenial to an interest in magic and the occult. Subsequent chapters cover a lot of ground quickly, and presuppose a certain familiarity with both major and minor Surrealist artists. The style of these chapters reads like an Ph.D. thesis. More illustrations of actual artwork would have been helpful, but would've driven up the cost of the book.