Will Atkin is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Art History at the University of Nottingham, UK
A work of extreme erudition, Atkins’ book and its transnational framework contributes powerfully to long-standing debates on modernist primitivism and ethnographic forms of Surrealism. Slowly but surely, an underground Surrealism emerges, drawing the reader especially into the catastrophic war years and their aftermath. * George Baker, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, UCLA, USA * Illuminating a compelling archive spanning the 1920s through to the 1970s, and covering a wide range of international sources, this book demonstrates that surrealist art had a significant investment in magical practices as a means of reanimating and redeeming certain aspects of modern existence. * Abigail Susik, author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (2021), and Associate Professor of Art History, Willamette University, USA *