Esra Plumer

Unica Zürn (eBook, ePUB)

Art, Writing and Post-War Surrealism

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 1950s, German writer and artist Unica Zürn produced a wealth of remarkable textual and visual material within psychiatric institutions across Germany and France. While Zürn is often discussed in relation to her partner, the controversial artist Hans Bellmer, this innovative book moves beyond the familiar model of the overlooked 'significant other' and re-introduces her as a member of the French Surrealist group. This is the first monograph on the life and work of the Unica Zürn in English. Esra Plumer presents Zürn's life and work in light of the artist's individual experiences with WWII, Post-war Surrealism and mental illness, at the same time revealing wider aspects of her artistic practice in relation to her contemporaries. She also reveals how the techniques of anagrams and automatism (writing and drawing methods designed to unlock the subconscious mind) form the pillars of Zürn's artistic creative output, which carry her work into the wider theoretical circles of psychoanalytic theory and post-structuralist thought.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK
• Seitenzahl: 272
• Erscheinungstermin: 26. Februar 2016
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780857739728
• Artikelnr.: 58530204

Autorenporträt

Esra Plumer is Assistant Professor of Art
History at the Arkin University of Creative Arts
and Design, Cyprus. She completed her PhD on
the work of Unica Zürn and her development of
the technique of automatism as an artistic
strategy at the University of Nottingham. Her
wider research focuses on 20th-century
modernist narratives, with an extensive
background in the history of psychoanalysis and psychiatric treatment methods. Other
publications include monographic accounts of
Hans Bellmer, Robert Desnos and
contemporary Cypriot art and artists.

Inhaltsangabe

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Foreword by Mary Ann Caws
Introduction 1. Beginnings of Change 2. Exhibitions and Exposure 3. 'Femme
de Bellmer': Critical Reception from 1984 to 2014 4. Anagrams 5. Automatism
after 1945 6. Notes on Unica Zürn's The Man of Jasmine and Other Narratives
Epilogue Appendix Notes Bibliography Index