Professor Gavin Parkinson

PhD Supervision

Current

• Elina Gudmundsson, ‘Surrealism and Fairy Tales.’

Recently completed

• Grazina Subelyte, ‘Kurt Seligmann, Surrealism and Occultism’ (2021).
• Ambra d’Antoine, ‘Translating Modernity: Surrealism of the Levant’ (CDP with Tate) (2022).
• Emily Christensen, ‘Orientalism in the Early Abstract Paintings of Wassily Kandinsky’ (2022).
• Malgorzata Osinka, ‘The Warsaw Group “Rytm” and the New Classicism’ (2017)
• Kristina Rapacki, ‘Asger Jorn’s Folk: Constructing Peoplehood in Postwar Europe (1941-1965)’ (2017)
• Catherine Howe ‘Francis Bacon’s French Influence(s): From Surrealism to Post-structuralism’ (2018)
• Rachel Stratton, ‘Non-Aristotelian Logic in the Independent Group’ (2018)
• Vanja Malloy, ‘Rethinking Alexander Calder: Astronomy, Relativity, Performance and Play’ (2014)
• Sam Ensor Rose, ‘Formalism, Aesthetics, and English Art Writing, 1918-39′ (2014).
• James Day ‘Studies in Art History Writing and the Revision of Whistler’s Art History (2014)
• Jim Threapleton ‘The Corroded Surface: Portrait of the Sublime’ (2015 (co-supervision, Camberwell))
• Tim Satterthwaite ‘The Visual Language of European Photo-Illustrated Magazines, 1920-34’ (2016)
• William Atkin ‘The Surrealist Object as the Vessel of Alchemy, Sorcery, and “Magic”: Occult Practices in French Surrealism, c.1930-1970’ (2017)

Research interests

• European Modernism, 1848-1960
• Dada and Surrealist Art, Writing and Theory
• Art and Science
• Art and the Novel
• Theory, Methodology, Philosophy and History of Art and Visual Culture
• Science Fiction and Comics
• Magic, the Occult and Alchemy
• Art brut/Outsider Art

Recent publications

Authored Books

• Picasso: The Lost Sketchbook, London: Clearview Books, 2024
• Robert Rauschenberg and Surrealism: Art History, ‘Sensibility’ and War, New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2023
• Enchanted Ground: André Breton, Modernism and the Surrealist Appraisal of Fin-de-Siècle Painting, New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2018
• Futures of Surrealism: Myth, Science Fiction and Fantastic Art in France 1936-69, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015
• Surrealism, Art and Modern Science: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Epistemology, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008
• The Duchamp Book, London: Tate Publishing, 2008

Edited Books

• Surrealism, Science Fiction and Comics (ed.), Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015

Co-edited Issue of Journal

• Art History (co-edited with Genevieve Warwick), vol. 40, no. 4 (‘Art History 40: Image and Memory’), September 2017

Articles, Essays and Chapters in Press and Forthcoming

• ‘‘Woe to the Sperm Whale That Fought Against a Louse!’ On the Surrealist Reception of Tex Avery in the 1950s,’ Abigail Susik (ed.), Beyond Still Life, forthcoming 2025.

Recent Articles, Essays and Chapters

• ‘Coral as Corollary: Preliminaries to a Study of Matta and Science Fiction/Il corallo come corollario: preliminari a uno studio su Matta e la fantascienza,’ Roberto Matta 1911-2002, Venice: Ca’ Pesaro – Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, 2024, 50-59 (ex. cat.).

• ‘Recontextualising L’Art magique: Surrealism, Modernism and the History of Art,’ Alessandra Buccheri, Giulia Ingarao and Emilia Valenza (eds.), From the Visual to the Visionary: Surrealist Trajectories in Art, Milan: Mimesis International, 2024, 19-38.

• ‘Twentieth-Century Revolutions in Art and Science,’ James Fox and Vid Simoniti (eds.), Art and Knowledge After 1900: Interactions Between Modern Art and Thought, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2024, 46-68.

• ‘Hilma degli spiriti, né insider né outsider,’ Osservatorio Outsider Art, no. 26, autumn 2023, 24-44.

• ‘“The Constantin Guys of the Atomic Era”: On the Poetic Reception of Robert Rauschenberg by Alain Jouffroy and Surrealism,’ Word & Image, vol. 39, no. 2, 2023, 176-91.

• ‘Surrealism and the Science Fiction Novel,’ Anna Watz (ed.), A History of the Surrealist Novel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023, 205-25.

• ‘Monogram in Front unique: Robert Rauschenberg and Jean-Jacques Lebel at the Limits of Surrealism,’ Dada/Surrealism, no. 24, no. 1 (‘Prismatic Fringes: Periodicals and the Borders of Surrealism’), 2023, 1-27.

• ‘Jasper Johns/Robert Rauschenberg,’ Amitiés: Créativité collective, Marseille: Mucem and Wolfsburg: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2023, 140-47 (exhibition catalogue).

• ‘Convulsive Beauty and Mad Love,’ Kirsten Strom (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Surrealism, New York and London: Routledge, 2022, 37-45.

• ‘Towards L’Art magique: Surrealism and Magic in the 1950s,’ Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity, Potsdam: Museum Barberini and Venice: Peggy Guggenheim Collection, 2022, 83-97 (exhibition catalogue).

• ‘“To Be a Painter Means to Oppose”: Exhibiting and Politicizing Robert Rauschenberg, 1959-65,’ Elliott H. King and Abigail Susik (eds.), Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance, University Park PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022, 92-113.

• ‘A Surrealist Manifesto of Symbolism: André Breton, Charles Filiger and Dessins symbolistes,’ The Savage Eye: Symbolism and Surrealism, Oslo: Munchmuseet, 2022, 258-69 (exhibition catalogue).

• ‘Modern Science,’ Natalya Lusty (ed.), Surrealism: Cambridge Critical Concepts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, 78-93.

• ‘Violence and Revolution,’ Surrealism Beyond Borders, New York and London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Tate Modern, 2021, 292-5 (exhibition catalogue).

• ‘From Paris n’existe pas to Berkeley Square: Surrealism, Time Travel and “Second Sight,”’ Kristoffer Noheden and Abigail Susik (eds.), Surrealism and Film After 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021, 128-46.

• ‘On “Sensibility”: Art, Art Criticism and Surrealism in New York in the 1960s,’ Journal of Art Historiography, no. 23, 1 December 2020, n. p.

• ‘Blind Summit/Models of Subjectivity: Surrealism, Physics and Psychoanalysis,’ Ed Juler and Alistair Robinson (eds.), Post-Specimen Encounters Between Art, Science and Curating: Rethinking Art Practice and Objecthood Through Scientific Collections, Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2020, 119-39.

• ‘Georges Seurat in the Twentieth Century: From Classicism to Surrealism,’ Grace Brockington and C. F. B. Miller (eds.), Of Modernism: Essays in Honour of Christopher Green, London: Paul Holberton, 2020, 105-27.

• ‘Between the Viaducts of Your Dream,’ Dominic Shepherd: Downstream, London: Charlie Smith London, 2019, 10-27 (exhibition catalogue).

• ‘Unraveling Surrealism’s Entanglement with Physics,’ Entangled: Physics and the Artistic Imagination, Umeå: Bildmuseet, 2019, 41-9 (exhibition catalogue).

• ‘Everyday Magic: Surrealism and Parapsychology,’ Jake Poller (ed.), Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century, London: Routledge, 2019, 78-96.

• ‘Antonin Artaud,’ Michael Richardson (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Surrealism, vol. 2, New York: Bloomsbury, 2019, 29-37.

• ‘Yves Elléouët,’ Michael Richardson (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Surrealism, vol. 2, New York: Bloomsbury, 2019, 273-5.

• ‘We Are Property: The “Great Invisibles” Considered Alongside “Weird” and Science Fiction in America, 1919-43,’ The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945, vol. 14 (‘Dada and Surrealism: Transatlantic Aliens on American Shores, 1914-1945’), autumn 2018, n. p.

• ‘Revolutions in Art and Science: Cubism, Quantum Mechanics, and Art History,’ Vanja Malloy (ed.), Dimensionism: Modern Art in the Age of Einstein, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2018, 99-113 (exhibition catalogue).

• ‘Henry Darger, Comics, and the Graphic Novel: Contexts and Appropriations,’ Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey and Stephen E. Tabachnick (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 139-54.

• ‘Painting as Propaganda and Prophecy: André Breton and René Magritte in the Shadow of Socialist Realism,’ The Oxford Art Journal, vol. 41, no. 2, August 2018, 249-69.

• ‘Magic, Folklore, and Rural Tales in Le Pouldu: André Breton, Paul Gauguin, and Charles Filiger, Word & Image, vol. 34, no. 2, 2018, 75-87.