HODGSON, Andrew
SURREALISM IS DEAD, LONG LIVE DEATH!

SURREALISM IS DEAD, LONG LIVE DEATH! traces the activities of the Surrealist Group in England in the years following the death of André Breton, focusing on the brief yet intense resurgence of surrealism in Britain between 1966 and 1972. At its centre stands John Lyle (1932–2002), a pivotal but still understudied figure whose archive forms the backbone of this volume.

Drawing on previously unpublished materials from the John Lyle collection, the book offers an annotated exploration of this previously unseen material: correspondence, manifestos, manuscripts, fragments of avant-garde journals, exhibition programmes and heterogeneous traces of this fragile, often chaotic moment. Together, they sketch a picture of the very last convulsions of artistic and literary modernism—already anachronistic for several decades and still then largely lacking coherent narration within art history.

This publication is the product of research supported by a SAES doctoral grant, awarded in 2022 for the project “E. L. T. Mesens, Jacques Brunius and the English Language: The Long-History of Surrealism in Britain.”

[publishers' note]

Published by Goswell Road, 2026
Art History / Art Theory / Documents / Facsimile & Reprints