The Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series 2024-25 will harness and contribute to a moment of unparalleled interest in Surrealism on the centenary of the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), timed to begin as major exhibitions and events take place across the world. Resistance and the image are its main themes, placing emphasis on the path taken by Surrealists in the period from the Second World War up to our own day and asking how the ‘complete nonconformism’ demanded by André Breton in the Manifesto has been articulated by Surrealists through photography, painting, object-making and collage. Chronological and episodic, the series aims to suggest development and transformation since the Manifesto where art was reduced to a footnote in the years before the Surrealists turned to politics. Eroticism, popular culture, internationalism and trade unionism are among the subthemes to be explored by the lectures. Exploring the ways in which the insubordination that set the tone for the Manifesto has resonated up to our own time across the long global history of the movement, they gauge the capacity of images to discern the ‘superior reality’ sought there by Breton.
