Robert Rauschenberg and Surrealism

Parkinson’s expansive study opens up poetic, allusive, and sometimes political layers in Rauschenberg ’s works, unearthing important responses from Parisian critics and writers. This approach unexpectedly establishes Rauschenberg’s Surrealist inflected roots, whilst contributing to the recent wave of expanded consideration of post-war, later Surrealism. * Lewis Kachur, author of Displaying the Marvellous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and Surrealist Exhibition Installations (2001), and Professor of Art History, Kean University, USA * With remarkable precision, thoroughness, and generative energy, Parkinson’s book offers an authoritative account of the French surrealist reception of Rauschenberg’s work in the 1960s. Analysing little-known and untranslated texts, Parkinson shows just how enmeshed the aesthetic and political registers were for these writers and artists. * Edward Krcma, Associate Professor of Art History, Department of Art History and World Art Studies, University of East Anglia, UK * This impressive book is more than a study on Rauschenberg and Surrealism, more specifically on the largely unnoticed or forgotten link between them. It is also a reflection on the way we write art history today, as a strange mix of theory, thoroughly documented archival research and, above all, an obsession with linear periodization. -- Jan Baetens * Leonardo Reviews *