Fusing the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud with Karl Marx, the Surrealists André Breton, Max Ernst, André Masson and Joan Miro set out to liberate the unconscious from sexual repression. The Surrealists were fascinated by, amongst other things, Charcot’s hysterical patients, Freud’s ‘uncanny’, sexual fetishism, ‘convulsive beauty’ and ‘mad love’. By the late 1920s, the pluralism inherent in the movement became increasingly apparent. While Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali launched Surrealist cinema, Eileen Agar, Claude Cahun, and Meret Oppenhim explored woman’s ‘mad love’ and ‘masquerade’. Drawing upon Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis and Sade’s libertinage, Georges Bataille and Hans Bellmer pursued eroticism, putrefaction and violence.

This course reveal these multiplicitous interwar dimensions, and Surrealism’s diverse legacies ranging from the Situationists, Jim Morrison and The Doors to Mark Dion’s recent Surrealist bureau. Following the mission of the new Centre for Studies of Surrealism and its Legacies, it will explore how Surrealisms lives on and remains a vital touchstone for transdisciplinary artists exploring fetishism, memory and trauma.