ISSS Virtual Book Launch: Surrealism and the People’s Republic of China: From Mao to Now (November 30, 2025)

Posted: November 23rd, 2025 | No Comments »

Noting the publication of Lauren Walden’s new book on surrealism in the PRC yesterday….

There’s an upcoming Zoom from the International Society for the Study of Surrealism (ISSS) for Lauren Walden’s new book Surrealism and the People’s Republic of China (Routledge). This work is in some ways a continuation of Walden’s first book, Surrealism from Paris to Shanghai (Hong Kong University Press) – Sunday, November 30, 2025, 19.00-20.30pm UK time (Please check your own time zone). Sign up here…

This book asserts Surrealism resolutely chimed with traditional Chinese thought whilst reflecting and refracting contemporaneous socio-political issues from Mao to now. A ‘historico-intrinsic’ relationship coalesces archival and primary sources consulted in Chinese, French and English, artist interviews as well as cosmopolitan political theory. The purported originality of European modernism is overturned, ascertaining traditional Chinese concepts of spontaneity were cited by Surrealists as redolent of automatism, the notion of creating without forethought.

Surrealist art was officially prohibited under Mao’s rule (1949-1976). However, the book interrogates potent tensions in clandestinely created surrealist artworks by Zhao Shou and Sha Qi, who discovered the movement while studying abroad. Furthermore, Walden explores how several European Surrealists aligned Chinese calligraphy with automatism as well as Michel Leiris and Marcel Mariën’s travels to Maoist China and their diametrically opposed visions of the nation. Amidst post-socialism, the book posits that the ’85 New Wave consciously employed Surrealism to process the traumatic Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and react to newfound societal freedoms. Subsequently, the volume considers why a new artistic tendency of ‘surrealist pop’ emerged in the 1990s. At present, Lauren Walden reveals how Surrealism has become officialised and even promoted by Chinese authorities owing to revolutionary resonances between traditional Chinese art and the western avant-garde.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Chinese studies, and Surrealism. Part of the book is available open access here.

---