A vernacular vanguard: surrealism and the making of American art history

Unrestricted This dissertation contends that Surrealism in the United States came to represent a meeting point of art and society that persistently affected developing theories of modernism and attitudes toward common culture. As such, it represents a major underlying force of American art history, a localized site where ongoing debates -- about abstraction and representation, consumerism, the place of politics in art, the role of the museum, the aesthetics of photography and visual culture -- are all tested and contested. Approaching Surrealism from the perspective of the audience -- the networks of critics, collectors, and the public, who all come together not only in the context of an exhibition, but also in the market -- this dissertation re-evaluates the impact of Surrealism in themaking of an American artistic culture, as it was used both to define and dismantle dominant critical theories in American art history, from Alfred Barr and Clement Greenberg in the 1930s, to William Rubin, Max Kozloff and Harold Rosenberg in the 1960s and Rosalind Krauss, Douglas Crimp and Hal Foster in the 1980s. Because Surrealism represents an important site of debate for contemporary artistic practice, especially as a crossroads of high and low culture, this dissertation explicitly takes on the question of Surrealism's value not as much as an art movement in and of itself, but for art criticism, mass culture, and the art market in the United States. Broadly conceived, this study asserts that the landscape of American art history would look fundamentally different without Surrealism's persistent presence, buttressing, and coming up against, the arguments that make art modern.