Surrealism looks beyond the post-1945 period to survey all of the twentieth century's major art movements. Mary Ann Caws is an internationally respected scholar of Surrealism who has translated many of its major texts and published extensively on the Surrealists' art and writings. Aside from academic studies and museum catalogues, this is the most comprehensive, art book format survey on Surrealism to date, as it provides an essential overview of the links between the Surrealists' famous artworks. Mary Ann Caws is uniquely qualified to do this; reviewing one of her previous books, Rosalind Krauss, Columbia University's Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art, writes: The specialization of critical labour has meant that gifted readers of surrealist texts are rarely in contact with canny viewers of surrealist objects Mary Ann Caws brings her readerly skills on both sides of the divide, producing an analysis that, in its generosity, erudition and originality, greatly enriches our experience of the movement.

Author Biography

Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, English and French, at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her many publications include writings on surrealist and modernist art and literature and translations of writers and poets such as Andre Breton, Rene Char, Stephane Mallarme and Tristan Tzara. Her books include Robert Motherwell: What Art Holds (Columbia University Press, 1995); The Surrealist Look: An Erotics of Encounter (MIT Press, 1997) and Picasso's Weeping Woman: The Life and Art of Dora Maar (Little, Brown/Thames & Hudson, 2000). Books she has edited include Joseph Cornell's Theatre of the Mind: Selected Diaries, Letters and Files (Thames & Hudson, 2000); Manifesto: A Century of Isms (University of Nebraska Press, 2000); and Surrealist Love Poems (Tate/University of Chicago Press, 2002).