Surrealism and Animation

For the 100th anniversary of surrealism, Susik has assembled an extraordinary collection that reinforces the cross-cultural longevity of the movement. Ranging across film studies and the plastic arts, it gathers fresh insights into canonical figures while bringing a range of exciting new voices into the conversation. This is solid historical scholarship that greatly expands on contemporary theoretical debates around the nature and uses of animation writ large. * Andrew V. Uroskie, author of Between the Black and the White Cube: Expanded Cinema in Postwar Art (2014) *
Susik’s groundbreaking collection proudly situates animation as the heart of surrealist cinema. It pencils in a fascinating web of links between artistic traditions going far beyond the graphic arts. Unfettered by parochial conceptions of history, these essays embrace a shared pool of inspirations drawn upon by the pioneers of truly fantastic cinema. * Daniel Bird, Friends of Walerian Borowczyk, Paris, France *
Surrealism and Animation is a major contribution that boldly expands our understanding of moving image media’s centrality to the ongoing, transnational surrealist enterprise. But across each section it also vitally demonstrates how much surrealism and its interdisciplinary study still have to teach us about the moving image, the diversity of its forms, and its essential role in art practices that affirm life and human liberation as both a political and an aesthetic value. * Jennifer J. Wild, Associate Professor, Cinema and Media Studies, The University of Southern California, USA *
Surrealism and Animation offers a dynamic exploration of a 'living art form' that has rarely seen the full critical attention that it deserves. Unearthing analogue and digital treasures, the essays in this collection show the myriad ways in which surrealism, craft, philosophy and technology can intersect. * Felicity Gee, Associate Professor of Modernist Literatures and Avant-Garde Studies, University of Exeter, UK *
An outstanding collection on the rich relationship between surrealism and animation that truly does justice to the subject’s transnational breadth, the manifold nature of animation, and the various histories and applications of surrealism. * Jonathan Owen, author of Avant-Garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties (2011) *
Drawing up an international panorama (America, Europe, Japan...), these richly illustrated essays explore the formidable world of animated film and its fertile forays into the realm of surrealism, as well as the interest shown by the Surrealists in the phenomenon of the animated image. * Bertrand Schmitt, author of Jan Švankmajer Dimensions of Dialogue (2013) *