Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes

2024 year marks the centenary of Surrealism, one of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th century, and one that continues to find resonance in contemporary art today.

Published on the occasion of the related exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield, Forbidden Territories explores how Surrealist ideas permeate depictions of the landscape, and serve as a metaphor for the unconscious. The book delves into the relationship between Surrealism and ecology, and examines landscape as a means for expressing political anxieties, gender constraints and freedoms; ultimately reshaping our connection with the world around us.

The development of Surrealism in the 1920s and 30s coincided with that of important new research and knowledge in the sciences, notably in biology. Forbidden Territories explores the unexamined interplay between Surrealism and life science, including the mutual influence of Sigmund Freud, illuminating how Surrealist strategies draw the eye to the astonishing aspects of scientific data and knowledge of the landscape, in ways that are prescient, even revelatory, in the present.

The book looks further at the role of international conflict within Surreal landscapes and how these terrains became a vehicle for political statements and dissent. Finally, it expands on the Surrealist mythologization of the unconscious as a great ocean 'where the sharks of madness cruise', analysing the 'ecology of the mind', examining links between bodies of water and psycho- surreal worlds in poetry, paintings and photographs from the unique perspective of female and gender fluid Surrealist artists.

Spanning the movement, this survey includes works by Eileen Agar, Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Lee Miller and Yves Tanguy as well as interventions by contemporary artists working within the lasting legacy of Surrealism, such as María Berrío and Helen Marten.

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