writing on art/photography
Neil Matheson - Writing
This section includes writings produced between 2006-23, while working as an academic with the University of Westminster. These publications include peer-reviewed books, book chapters, research articles and catalogue contributions. Topics range across photography and contemporary art, with a particular focus on the history of surrealism.
Books
Neil Matheson (ed), The Sources of Surrealism
Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Lund Humphries, 2006. 853pp.
Neil Matheson and Sas Mays (eds), The Machine and the Ghost
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013. 230pp.
Neil Matheson, Surrealism and the Gothic: Castles of the Interior
London and NY: Routledge, 2018. 255pp.
Book Chapters
‘He Who Has Never Dreamt of Mae West: Surrealist Masculinity and the Late Collages of E.L.T. Mesens’
In Patricia Allmer and Hilde Van Gelder (eds), Collective Inventions: Surrealism in Belgium, Leuven: University of Leuven, 2007.
‘Gursky, Ruff, Demand: Allegories of the Real and the Return of History’
In Damian Sutton, Ray McKenzie and Sue Brind (eds), The State of the Real: Essays on Aesthetics, I.B. Tauris, 2007.
'Desert Islands: Magic and Modernity in the Work of Ithell Colquhoun’
In Patricia Allmer (ed), Intersections: women artists/modernism/surrealism, MUP, 2016.
‘The Surrealist Novel and the Gothic’
In Anna Watz (ed), A History of the Surrealist Novel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
‘Amazing Stories from the Future that Never Was: Neo Rauch and the Haunted Spaces of Science Fiction’
In Maria Holmgren Troy (ed), Space, Haunting, Discourse, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008.
Fear of Reflections: the photographs of Paul McCarthy
In Mieke Bleyen (ed), Minor Photography, Leuven: University of Leuven Press, 2012.
Title
Journal Articles
‘Hiroshima-Nagasaki remembered through the body: haptic visuality and the skin of the photograph’
Photographies, Vol.11 no.1, February 2018, pp.73-93.
‘The Phantom of Surrealism: Photography, Cultural Identity and the Reception of Surrealism in England’
History of Photography, ‘Surrealism and Photography’ Special Issue, Summer 2005, pp.149-162.
‘Fragments anatomiques : Magritte, le traumatisme et la gâcheuse’
Mélusine, No.XXXVI, ‘Masculin/Féminin’, March 2016.
‘Aerial Warfare, National Identity and the Melancholy of Ruins’
Journal of War and Culture Studies, No.1 2010.
‘E.L.T. Mesens – Dada Joker in the Surrealist Pack’
Image and Narrative (online - University of Leuven), Issue 13, December 2005
http://www.imageandnarrative.be/surrealism/matheson.htm
‘The Ghost Stamp, the Detective and the Hospital for Boots: Light and the Post-War Battle Over Spirit Photography’
Early Popular Visual Culture, Vol.4 No.1, April 2006, pp.35-51.
‘Material Ecstasy: Cultural alienation and the influence of the nouveau roman in the work of Nakahira Takuma and J.M.G. Le Clézio’
Photographies, Vol.14 no.2, 2021, Taylor and Francis.
'Touched by Light: Photography’s Return to Matter'
In Material Light (exh. cat.), online - available at: https://www.materiallight.net/essay-touched-by-light-dr-neil-matheson/
Catalogue Contributions
Contributor to René Magritte: The Pleasure Principle (exh.cat.), Tate Liverpool/Albertina, Vienna, 2011.
Contributor to Magritte: A bis Z (exh.cat.), Tate Liverpool/Albertina, Vienna, 2011.
Title
Title