Absent mindedness about grapes: surrealism and contemporary art

This article for fashion/art magazine considers the way Surrealism continues to influence contemporary art. I discuss how the ideas and practices of the Parisian avant-garde re-emerge, mostly consciously and deliberately, in artists like Urs Fischer, Sarah Lucas, Louise Bourgeois, Jeff Koons and others. I look especially at the use of black humour, on the subject of which Andre Breton once published a seminal anthology. Artists like Sarah Lucas and Louise Bourgeois use Surrealist black humour against itself, I argue, developing a feminist sensibility from Surrealism's misogyny, recovering female desire from the inert bodies of doll and mannequin artists Hans Bellmer and Andre Masson.