Although there have been many books and exhibitions on Surrealism in Belgium, they have always been limited in scope, concentrating on the 1950s or on particular personalities.
Surrealism in Belgium provides the first account of the entire movement from the 1920s to the present day. Lavishly illustrated and drawing on many previously unpublished documents and accounts by those involved, it explores the persistent attitude of mind that gave Surrealism in Belgium its sustained originality.
The activities of the Surrealists in Belgium were always different from those of their exact contemporaries in the Paris group. In their own ways Paul Nougé, René Magritte, Marcel Mariën and their associates in Brussels and Hainaut were all engaged in the questioning of images, language, meaning and sounds, which they regarded with extreme distrust. For them the only acceptable purpose of creativity was to change the world. Their continuing work and thought has had lasting influence on new generations of artists. It is an important characteristic of the Belgian surrealist movement that it never published a birth or a death certificate. In this book Xavier Canonne convincingly demonstrates that, in Nougé's words, 'the experiment continues'.
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