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Article: Surrealism in Exile and the beginning of the New York School.
- Article from:
- Art in America
- Article date:
- January 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The scene is a 1935 "Dream Ball" at the Coq Rouge, a New York nightclub: the room is decorated with "the carcass of a large steer embracing a bull fiddle (the steer's cavernous innards propped open with crutches ... and housing a photograph)." Flash forward six decades to the 1993 Venice Biennale: British artist Damien Hirst exhibits a cow and a calf, sliced in half and preserved in formaldehyde tanks. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme vache.
If the current vogue for "abject" work like Hirst's demonstrates Surrealism's continuing relevance today, the movement's connection to Abstract Expressionism has long been acknowledged by critics and art historians. Thus the ...