Pawlik, Joanna (2018) Re-membering surrealism in Charles Henri Ford’s Poem Posters (1964–5). Art History, 41 (1). pp. 154-191. ISSN 0141-6790

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Abstract

This article explores Charles Henri Ford’s Poem Posters series of 1964–5 and the ‘Having Wonderful Time Wish You Were Here’: Postcards to Charles Henri Ford exhibition at the Iolas Gallery (New York, 1976). Ford’s editorship of View magazine (1940–7) is well known in scholarship on surrealism’s reception in America, but less frequently explored are the ways in which his later artistic and curatorial practice self-consciously continued the publication’s mission of promoting a queer and partisan identity for the movement. Ford does more than simply enable surrealism to resonate further than its epicentre. He intervenes at the level of historiography, an intervention, this article argues, which is implicated in his efforts to rethink the movement’s sexual politics. Drawing on Elizabeth Freeman’s scholarship on queer temporalities, this article considers how Ford’s anachronistic recourse to surrealism in the 1940s and again in the 1960s, long after the movement had passed its expiry date, aligns linear narratives of avant-gardism with a recalculation of its customary heteronormativity.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	School of History, Art History and Philosophy > Art History
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR > N5300 History > N6350 Modern art > N6447 19th and 20th centuries
Depositing User:	Joanna Pawlik
Date Deposited:	24 Jun 2016 08:30
Last Modified:	22 Feb 2018 10:42
URI:	http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/61704

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