Often regarded as an artistic movement of interwar Paris, Surrealism comprised an international community of artists, writers, and intellectuals who have aspired to change the conditions of life itself over the course of the past century. Consisting of a wide range of dedicated case studies from the 1920s to the 1970s, this book highlights the international dimensions of the Surrealist Movement, and the radical chains of thought that linked its followers across the globe: from France to Romania, and from Canada to the former Czechoslovakia.From very early on, the surrealists approached magic as a means of bypassing, discrediting, and combatting rationalism, capitalism, and other institutionalized systems and values that they saw to be constraining influences upon modern life. Surrealist Sorcery maps out how this interest in magic developed into a major area of surrealist research that led not only to theoretical but also practical explorations of the subject. Taking an international perspective, Atkin surveys this important quality of the movement and how it's remained an important element in the surrealist project and its ongoing legacy.

Newly conveys the longevity of the surrealist movement through case studies that go beyond events which have traditionally been used as chronological bookends in academic studies of Surrealism (such as André Breton's death in 1966, and the official dissolution of the movement in France in 1969)

IntroductionList of FiguresList of Colour Plates1. Of Gold, Meteors, Stones and Crystals: Alchemy and the Object in the works of André Breton, Salvador Dalí, and Ithell Colquhoun, 1929-19492. Satanic Sorcery: Black Magic, Demons and Vampires in the Objects and Writings of Gherasim Luca, 1939-19453. Cosmic Magic: Talismans and Ciphers in the Objects of Victor Brauner, 1940-19464. Primordial Myth and Magic in the Writings of André Breton and Benjamin Péret, 1942-19595. Ritual Magic in the Masks and Fetishes of Mimi Parent and Jean Benoît, 1959-1976ConclusionNotesIndex