Yves Tanguy and Surrealism

Book excerpt: Ur-Surrealist Yves Tanguy belonged to the inner circle of the 1920s Parisian avant-garde, alongside such figures as Salvador Dal', Max Ernst, and Alberto Giacometti, making essential contributions to Surrealist manifestoes, magazines, and exhibitions. Tanguy's artistic obsession was the world of imagination, of dreams and reveries, and his cryptically codified imagery continues to perplex audiences today. His paintings seem to exist in a hazy, oddly beautiful limbo dimension beyond time and space, a world at once vertiginous and calm, disturbing and breathtaking. The central focus of Yves Tanguy and Surrealism is the Surrealist mode, to which Tanguy dedicated himself like no other painter of his time, cementing the movement's place in the history of visual art. On the basis of previously unpublished documents and works, authors discuss Tanguy's otherworldly oeuvre in all its aspects--from his development as an artist to the reception of his work in the United States. With stunning reproductions in full color as well as black and white, Yves Tanguy and Surrealism is an extensive overview of the work of an artist whose forays into the creative unknown continue to resonate.