Enchanted Ground

<p><i>Enchanted Ground</i> is about the challenge to modernist criticism by Surrealist writers-mainly André Breton but also Louis Aragon Pierre Mabille René Magritte Charles Estienne René Huyghe and others-who viewed the same artists in terms of magic occultism precognition alchemy and esotericism generally. It introduces the history of the ways in which those artists who came after Impressionism-Paul Cézanne Pierre-Auguste Renoir Georges Seurat Paul Gauguin Vincent van Gogh-became canonical in the 20th century through the broad approaches we now call modernist or formalist (by critics and curators such as Alfred H. Barr Roger Fry Robert Goldwater Clement Greenberg John Rewald and Robert L. Herbert) and then unpacks chapter-by-chapter for the first time in a single volume the Surrealist positions on the same artists. To this end it contributes to new strains of scholarship on Surrealism that exceed the usual bounds of the 1920s and 1930s and that examine the fascination within the movement with magic.</p>