Event date: Friday 19 April 2002, 12-1pm

This week's guest in the Humanities Institute magic seminar is Alyce Mahon, Lecturer in History of Art and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

One of Britain's foremost young art historians, Dr Mahon is a 1999 Courtauld Institute Ph.D. Her dissertation, 'The Politics of Eros: Surrealism and Post-War France 1944-68', has lead to publications on Klossowski, Blanchot, and the decadence of the nude, eroticism in modern art, and neo- Dadaist Jean-Jacques Lebel. Mahon is a contributor to the Desire Unbound catalogue accompanying the surrealist exhibition recently at Tate Modern and now at the Metropolitan, New York.

Her seminar contribution, 'In Search of Other Dimensions: Surrealism and Magic', will look into surrealism's use of magic as the means of approaching the unknown by means other than those of science or religion, and will focus on the reinvention of the public exhibition as a space of enchantment, ritual, initiation.

The seminar will take place at 12 noon, in the Department of Art History, 7 University Gardens. All welcome, lunch follows.

Those who would like to prepare for the talk may consult:

Andre' Breton, 'Manifesto of Surrealism', in Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans. by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1972, pp. 3-47. ON RESERVE GUL Walter Benjamin, 'Surrealism: Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia', in One-Way Street and Other Writings, trans. by Edmond Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter. London: NLB, 1979, pp. 225-39. ON RESERVE GUL

Amy Wygant, Director Arts and Humanities Research Institute The University of Glasgow 0141-330-4588 (phone) 0141-330-4234 (fax)

Previous press releases on earlier Magic seminars can be viewed at: http://www.newsdesk.gla.ac.uk/pressreleases/stories.asp?id=705

Media Relations Office (media@gla.ac.uk)

First published: 30 April 2002