Dainty Horror. "Australian Surrealism: The Agapitos/Wilson Collection" by Bruce James. [review]

Abstract

When ‘Surrealism’ was first minted, it was easy to find a shower of retrospective applications for it. The congested canvases of Hieronymus Bosch, for one, still spring to mind, though we need to retrace our steps no further than that cauldron of economic and philosophical instability — the period between the two world wars — to pinpoint its official beginnings. If Europe had André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and Surrealism’s most histrionic exponent, Salvador Dali, then Australia had James Gleeson. Bruce James convinces us that, while Gleeson was its sturdiest practitioner, he was the tip of the iceberg.