I will return to this book more than once, I'm sure. It contains brief but useful biographies of a number of the surrealists, 32 in all, compiled by an author who was one of them, albeit a late comer. Desmond Morris shows us that some very famous artists, including Francis Bacon, Henry Moore and Picasso, who are not generally described as surrealists were nonetheless closely engaged in surrealism. Morris was part of the British tranche of surrealism and personally knew many of those he writes about, giving the writing sometimes a humorous, gossipy quality. As an anthropologist and the author of The Naked Ape, he knows about we humans with our quirks and urges.. Some people have criticised this slightly irreverent take but he says himself, in his introduction, that his intention was not to contribute to the vast quantity of tomes on Art History, but to tell briefly the human lives of his chosen Surrealist artists, which he does in a readable and entertaining way. He's also been criticised for the inclusion of only one work of art by each artist. Anyone who has ever tried to compile such a book about artists will understand why he hasn't included more; getting permission to include works by known artists is incredibly difficult and printing good colour reproductions is expensive.
Just a shame he didn't chose to write about a few more of the women involved in the movement. To include Roland Penrose with barely a mention of Lee Miller is impolite and to largely ignore such artists as Toyen, Ithyll Colquhoun, Dora Maar, Remedios Varo, Kay Sage and Claude Cahun - not to mention Frida Kahlo, which he doesn't - is almost inexcusable.
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