This text, which accompanies an exhibition organized by the MIT List Visual Art Center, explores specific aspects of the relationship between historic and contemporary work in the context of Surrealism and the self-images of female artists.

The contributors re-examine art historical assumptions about gender, identity, and integenerational legacies within modernist and postmodernist frameworks. Questions raised include: how did women in both groups draw from their experiences of gender and sexuality? What do contemporary artistic practices involving the use of body images owe to the earlier examples of both female and male Surrealists? What is the relationship between self-image and self-knowledge.

An infinite play of empty mirrors - women, surrealism and self-representation, Whitney Chadwick
"Vous Pour Moi?" - Marcel Duchamp and transgender coupling, Dickram Tasjian
in or out of the picture - Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman, Katy Kline
Frida Kahlo - the self as an end, Salomon Grimberg
orbits of the savage moon - surrealism and the representation of the female subject in Mexico and postwar Paris, Dawn Ades
dialogue and double allegiance - some contemporary women artists and the historical avant-garde, Susan Rubin Suleiman
the self and the world - negotiating boundaries in the art of Yayoi Kusama, Ana Medieta, and Francesca Woodman, Helaine Posner.