Description
Artist, poet, traveller and 20th-century surrealist visionary, Valentine Penrose was highly regarded as a poet and artist during her lifetime, but is yet to receive the critical attention given to her surrealist peers. Bringing to life the artist in her own right, this is the first English-language book dedicated to Penrose's genre-defying oeuvre and its poetic quest to understand the shifting world of the 20th century from multiple perspectives.
This volume explores Penrose's accomplished visual and literary work, relating it to her creative, often unconventional, philosophical ideas. It shows how her work emerged from encounters with global cultures and political issues: she travelled widely (frequently solo) through India, the Canary Islands, Africa, and across Europe - protesting against the Spanish Civil War, driving British soldiers during the London Blitz, and stationed in Algiers during the Second World War. The contributors highlight a range of unique motifs throughout Penrose's work, covering ecology, spiritualism, folklore, mythology, lesbianism, the Gothic, the occult, and life during war. Reflecting on Penrose's practice during a time of immense global change, the chapters provide insight into the bold practice of a female artist working against patriarchal, heteronormative, and capitalist power structures.
Bringing these unpublished archival materials as well as Penrose's published works into dialogue with works by better-known artists such as Eileen Agar and Alice Rahon, the volume offers new and creative ways of thinking through feminism, female collaboration, and queerness in surrealism. Introducing a dynamic personality to the modernist canon, it will be a vital addition to studies on British, French, and non-Western surrealisms, and to scholarship on female surrealism.
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Table of Contents
The Editor
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Preface Valentine Penrose – a reminiscence, Antony Penrose (Lee Miller Archives, Farley Farm, Sussex, UK)
Introduction 'The World Itself Stretches': Valentine Penrose, Beginnings, and Moons at Midday, Felicity Gee (University of Exeter, UK)
1. Framing the Voyage: Valentine Penrose, India, and the Geo-poetical, Felicity Gee (University of Exeter, UK)
2. Architecture of an Œuvre: Castles and Creative Constructsin the Work of Valentine Penrose, Karen L. Humphreys (Trinity College, Connecticut, USA)
3. Valentine Penrose: An Archivist's Memoir, Fiona Menzies (Archivist, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK)
4. Fleeing the Heterosexual Norm: Gothic Tropes and Illicit Lesbianism in Martha's Opera (1946), Beth Kearney (University of Queensland, Australia)
5. Valentine Penrose's Collages: Myth and Metamorphosis as Visual Explorations of Identity, Caterina Caputo (Università Iuav di Venezia, Italy)
6. Valentine Penrose, the Dark Star of Surrealism: Letters from the Roland Penrose Archive and Fondo Westerdahl, María Ángeles Aléman Gómez (Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain)
7. Europe, 'bleeding out its life': Valentine Penrose's Wars, Felicity Gee (University of Exeter, UK)
Chapter 8: Sapphic Surrealism: Valentine Penrose's Dons des féminines, Rachel Silveri (Assistant Professor, University of Florida, USA)
Chapter 9: Gothic Nature, Vampirism and the Power of the Moon: Valentine Penrose's The Bloody Countess as site of queer, feminist protest, Tor Scott (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Vignette: A Botanical Fire of Love, Maria Lusitano
Vignette: I met Valentine at Farley Farm, Penny Slinger
Valentine for Valentine
Vignette: Of Penrose and a Particular Kind of Stone, E.C. Belli
Coda: Valentine Penrose's Futures: A Clairvoyant Relevance, Felicity Gee (University of Exeter, UK)
Index
Product details
| Published | 07 Jan 2027 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 240 |
| ISBN | 9781350437081 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Visual Arts |
| Illustrations | 61 colour illus. |
| Series | Transnational Surrealism |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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