Material Imagination: Art in Europe, 1946–72

Material Imagination examines the interrelated concepts of matter, materialism, and materiality in postwar European art, from 1946–1972. In the postwar period, European artistic experiment prioritized material dimensions over concept or context. These eight essays by art historians and scholars bring together exceptional illustrations and new research to provide a unique perspective on this period, while also paying attention to broader theoretical and historical concerns. The essays explore artists methods and materials in order to better understand the social and cultural environments in which their works of art were made. Taken together, these essays demonstrate how an emphasis on materials can affect artistic thinking and imagination and lead to a richer and more diverse framework for critical interpretation.

Natalie Adamson is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and Deputy Editor of Art History. Her research focuses on the interpretation of abstract painting; surrealism; problems in French painting and political ideology in the post–1945 period; and modernist photography. She is the author of Academics, Pompiers, Official Artists and the Arrière–Garde: Defining Modern and Traditional in France, 1900–1960 (2009) and Painting, Politics, and the Struggle for the École de Paris, 1944–1964 (2009).

Steven Harris is Associate Professor in History of Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Alberta, Canada. He works on twentieth–century art in Europe and North America, and is the author of articles on surrealism, postwar abstraction, and Fluxus. He is the author of Surrealist Art and Thought in the 1930′s: Art, Politics and the Psyche (2004). His current research project, The Poetics of Disenchantment, investigates both the surrealist movement in the postwar period, and how surrealist ideas and values were taken up or challenged by postwar European collectives like Cobra, the College of Pataphysics, and the Situationist International.