Wolfgang Paalen was a central figure in internationalist surrealist circles in the late 1930s. Artist and intellectual, he was a European whose fascination with archaic cultures led him finally to Mexico, where he founded the influential magazine DYN in 1941. In the bold texts from DYN that make up Form and Sense, we encounter a unique artistic mind and an oracular voice. Paalen’s book is an intellectual delight with essays on cubism, surrealism, the universality of forms in architecture, and the relationships that exist between art and science. He weaves together the new ideas and archaic inspirations in twentieth-century painting and sculpture. His nuanced and original considerations of some key figures—Mondrian, Kandinsky, Picasso—marked Paalen in turn as a significant thinker in the world of modern art. This painter’s book, illustrated with carefully chosen examples of the art he examines, makes us not only understand but also experience the rich interplay between idea and image that informs the art of our own time. A new introduction by the scholar Martica Sawin examines Paalen’s career, particularly his influential writing on surrealism and abstraction.

This book of photographs, accompanied by poetic insights, shed light on our search for meaning in the contemporary world. The backdrop is exile, that ancient and modern reality that afflicts many in our search for justice and compassion. Whether our leave-taking is geographic, political, cultural or religious, exile is our plight. The prophetic, our difficult guide, is also our companion. Those in exile find hope in what the author calls the New Diaspora, the community whose exiles gather and find new life. The New Diaspora seeks a vision of beauty amid the ruins, hope among despair. Walking the beach of Cape Canaveral and traveling to troubled spots around the world, the author's images of the New Diaspora are startling. We are encouraged to reflect on our own journey and join our prophetic exile with others around the world.

Mendelson Joe was born in Toronto at the Western Hospital less than a year before Canada joined the Allies in ending World War II. Although Joe grew up in Maple, a feedmill town twenty miles north of Toronto, the city of Toronto was always his home - even during his itinerant years in London and Los Angeles as an electric troubadour. When Joe fe...