Introduction In search of the marvellous

From November 28, 1960 to January 14, 1961, the D’Arcy Galleries in New York showcased one of the major International Surrealist Exhibitions, which had been central to the increasing impact of the movement’s artistic and cultural ideas across the globe. ¹ Organised by Surrealism’s founder and chief theoretician André Breton (1896-1966) and his colleague Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), the show was titled Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanters’ Domain, and incorporated themes of mythology and magic. In lieu of a preface, the catalogue featured a historical chart that looked to the publication of Isidore Ducasse’s Les Chants de Maldoror (1868-1869) as the beginning of the ‘surrealist field’, but ultimately located the movement’s origins in the domains of Graeco-Latin, Celtic as well as Germanic and Slavonic mythology and folklore (Figure I.1). ² Inspired by the exhibition’s location in New York, the document is perhaps best appreciated as a satirical take on the schematic diagram of avant-gardist affiliation, which had been drawn up by Museum of Modern Art Director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., and famously featured on the back of the catalogue cover of the museum’s 1936 exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art. In a powerful rejection of this formalist vision of the history of art, Breton and Duchamp presented Surrealism as arising out of an eclectic array of mythological, esoteric and spiritual currents - or such is implied by the sorceresses and magicians named.