num_pages: 58
description: Belgian Surrealisms greatest intellectual.Francis PongeFirst edited and published by Marcel Marien in 1968 in a limited edition of 230 copies half a year after Paul Nougs death The Subversion of Images is a miniature classic in both the photobook and surrealist canons. It collects Nougs notes and photographs from 19291930 to form a guidebook to the surrealist image. Noug here outlines his conception of the object and outlines the Surrealist approach to it while also offering an accompaniment to the visual work of his colleague Ren Magritte whose paintings he sometimes titled. How might a tangle of string elicit terror? How might the suppression of an object move one to sentimentality? What is the effect of a pair of gloves on a loaf of sliced bread?Nougs accompanying photographs explore these notions and feature a number of his Belgian Surrealist colleagues. This translation is presented as a facsimile of the original edition with an afterword by Xavier Canonne director of the Muse de la Photographie.Paul Noug (18951967) a biochemist by trade was a leading light of Belgian Surrealism and its primary theorist as well as a decisive influence on such future Lettrists and Situationists as Guy Debord and Gil J Wolman who would take inspiration from his conception of plagiarism for what would come to be termed dtournement. Decidedly unambitious when it came to literary celebrity Nougs guidance nevertheless steered the Brussels Surrealist group toward a more rational approach to visual and verbal language that discarded the Parisian Surrealists proclivity for irrationality and occultism.
language: English
title: The Subversion of Images: Notes Illustrated with Nineteen Photographs by the Author
publisher: Wakefield Press