Surrealism in Shanghai

Resident of the Giacometti Institute Research Residency, Dr. Lauren Walden is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Contemporary Chinese Art at Birmingham City University, UK. Her Phd argued for Surrealist photography as a pivotal vector in the dissemination of non-European iconographies as diverse as Africa, Oceania, Latin America and China. She has been published in Visual Studies, Visual Resources, Visual Anthropology and the Revue Histoire de L’Art.

During May 2022, Lauren Walden will extend her research into the connections between Surrealism in Paris and China, focusing on Western artists around Surrealism who were interested in calligraphy. During her stay, Walden will consult the library and archives of the Giacometti Institute, and several Parisian libraries and archives, including the Bibliothèque Jacques Doucet for its resources on the artists Judit Reigl, Jean Degottex, and André Masson, all of whom used Chinese calligraphy. She will also consult the Simon Hantaï archives in the 14th arrondissement, and Leiris' archives relating to his Journal de Chine.  At the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Lauren Walden will consult the André Masson fonds and the documents concerning Marcel Marien's stay in China. This research extends those published in the collection of the École des modernités, in the book Le surréalisme de Paris à Shanghai.