L'amour fou : photography & surrealism /

The authors persuade us that ``photography is at the very core of surrealist art.'' Livingston's essay-the least new, revisionist, or useful-declares Man Ray's uniqueness. Dawn Ades's essay is most pertinent: ``If there is any site where ... the life of the movement ... is to be found, it is in the surrealist periodicals ... {{where}} the range and resources of photography ... are most fully realized.'' Krauss's two essays are the most perplexing as they weave the subject around her well-known agendas: ``Technically and semiologically speaking, drawing and paintings are icons, while photographs are indexes.'' Surrealist photographers, she says, produced ``the paradox of reality constituted as a sign....'' Later, she makes a clever transition from photograph as trace to photograph as construction. Her major contribution is a significant exploration of the differences between the Breton and Bataille factions of surrealism. Incredibly, one of Krauss's conclusions is that the ``frequent characterizations of surrealism as antifeminist {{are}} mistaken.'' Krauss works too hard to fit surrealist photography into linguistic structure and into current postmodernist and feminist theory. The book provides new photographs and ideas for further research, and includes artist biographies/bibliographies by Winifred Schiffman. The book accompanies a major exhibition of the same title.-C. Chiarenza, Boston University

Andre Breton's surrealist manifestos of the 1920s and '30s, along with his novel concept of ``l'amour fou,'' ascribed to his revolutionary Parisian art movement ``the intensely illogical reality of a dream.'' British and American art educators Krauss, Livingston and Ades in this rich picture book examine the very extensive role of photography (an unlikely medium on the face of it) in the surrealist movement. Shown here are photographs by Man Ray, Brassai, Tabard, Ubac, Boiffard and others whose choice of subject and/or photolab manipulations leave in no doubt their surrealist competence and intent. Illogical juxtapositions, twisted imagery (e.g., Hans Bellemer's ``Doll'' sequence), light-and-shadow cutouts, and coldly unerotic dissections of the female form boldly assert surrealism's quest for an ultimate truthits own ``psycho-atmospheric-anamorphic'' knowledge. A scholarly tour de force, this is the catalogue of a traveling exhibition. December 27 (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved