Compulsive beauty. Foster H.

“wonderful”, “objective accident”, “convulsive beauty”-what unites these concepts-dalismans of surrealism? And what connects them with diverse practices and hobbies of the surrealists themselves-automatic writing, metaphysical painting, symbolic objects, collage novels and modern mannequins? The famous American critic and art historian Hal Foster decides to move away from the traditional way of analyzing the aesthetics of surrealism through the prism of dreams and automatism. Instead, as a key, the author introduces the concept of “unhealthy”, which not only helps to problematize this course in a new way, but also to associate it with the leading philosophical ideas of that time from Freudism to Marxism. For the first time published in 1995, Foster's book played an important role in the rethinking of surrealism as one of the fundamental phenomena in the history of modernist art.

Hal Foster - an American historian and art critic, a specialist in modernism and modern areas in painting, architecture and criticism, professor of Princeton University.