Surrealism and Animation

Transnational Connections, 1920-Present

Abigail Susik

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2025
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350475922
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Art

From Betty Boop to Donald Duck, Tex Avery to Walt Disney, collage animation to Japanese anime, and Claymation to 3D animation, Surrealism and Animation is the first book to identify correspondences between the art of animation and the International Surrealist Movement.

Sharing a deep commitment to a reanimation of everyday life, surrealist artists and animators sought a marvellous, living form of art. Cartoons and trick films by pioneers such as Georges Méliès were influential for Salvador Dalí and André Breton, among others; many other surrealists and their associates such as Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell, Hans Richter, Len Lye, Roland Topor, Jan Švankmajer, and Lawrence Jordan turned to animated cinema and theories of animacy to express their surrealist visions.

Surrealism and Animation is the first book devoted to surrealism's vivid engagement with the history, theory, and medium of animation on a transnational basis. Featuring seventeen essays by leading and emerging scholars, as well as interviews with contemporary artists Penny Slinger and Jacolby Satterwhite, this collection investigates a shimmering range of topics on animated surrealism, including black humour, queer subjectivities, ecofeminism, Black surrealisms, and more.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Dedication Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• The Editor
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: ‘Beyond Disorientation’: Surrealism, Animation and the Hidden World
• Part One Activating Still Life and Materializing Dreams: Surrealism and Animation from the 1920s to Mid-century
• Part Two Animacy Transforming the World: Postwar Transnational Surrealism and Animation
• Part Three A Living Art for Critical Re-enchantment: Contemporary Surrealism and Animation
• Interviews
• Index
• Imprint