The 79-year-old woman who can barely see over the podium was haunted by her work. "Surrealist art is about being haunted by something. If you want to work on surrealism you must, by golly, be haunted," said Mary Ann Caws, who gave a lecture called "Looking After Surrealism" on Tuesday night at the Rose Art Museum. Surrealism is a cultural movement that flourished in Europe beginning in the 1920s. Surrealist art and writing contains an element of surprise including nontraditional juxtopositions, and non sequitors. Caws obsessed about the openness of surrealist art such as the drawn curtains that pervade Ren?(c) Magritte's work or the wide open planes of Salvador Dal?<>'s canvases. Each painting she showed in her presentation included a poem. Caws read several verses from her favorite French poets, Pierre Reverdy and Andr?(c) Breton.

The lecture was sponsored by the Departments of Fine Arts, French and Francophone Studies, Comparative Literature and Philosophy. In fact, Caws is fluent in all of these subjects.

In addition to authoring many publications on surrealist and modernist art and literature, she has written about poets and novelists such as Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf and Henry James. She also wrote biographies of Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dal?<>, and in 2008, published a cookbook of Provencal cuisine. Caw's expertise consists of a range of different literary and art historical periods, however she has always been captivated by surrealism. She served as the president of the Association for Study of Dada and Surrealism from 1971 to 1975.

But Prof. Michael Randall (FREN), who introduced Caws, remembers her as the chair of the French department at the City University of New York where he studied. Caws was also a Professor of French, English and Comparative Literature at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Randall referred to her as "a true renaissance woman ... with insatiable curiosity which has led her to explore many different intellectual territories." Since his college years, Randall has always been impressed by the "rare creature who can write on different nationalities of arts from many [aspects]. It's not the [curriculum vitae] ... it's the woman behind the CV which is so compelling." Randall also stressed the importance of cross-disciplinary programming at Brandeis. Through interdepartmental events we can appreciate arts and culture through many different lenses and foster a greater sense of community at Brandeis, he explained.

With all of Caws' writings on surrealist artists and artworks, one may think she seeks the meaning of surrealism. However, Caws asserted, "We do not care what it means, we care how it is ... how it makes us feel." The energy of surrealism must paradoxically feel like "always for the first time." Caw's philosophy on viewing surrealist art stood true as she examined many artworks from the Rose's own collection including Judy Pfaff's "Untitled," 1933 and Juan Gris' "The Siphon," both of which Caws admires for their "fizziness," or effervescensce. When looking at Gris' "The Siphon," the color palate looks very comfortable. While the image of the siphon and table are fragmented, the shapes in the painting look solidified on the canvas. However, Caws pointed out many exciting elements in "The Siphon." She highlighted the lines in the painting with a laser pointer and followed them down to the edge of the canvas. "This excites me," she exclaimed. In surrealism, the images are presented as if they have always existed that way, as if the viewer should think nothing of a wine glass sliced in half placed next to a perriwinkle blue siphon. However, the strange juxtopositions in the composition make surrealism a very refreshing and unique period in art history.

As a scholar of literature and art, Caws supplemented many of the artworks she lectured on with complementary poems, explaining that "Art helps text [and] text helps art." Caws explained how surrealism is unique because it puts a series of ordinary objects into a different context, which catches the observer off-guard. The element of surprise in surrealist art stemmed from the writing of that period. According to Caws, writing inspired the light and openness that pervades surrealist art. She read a short exerpt of a Pierre Reverdy poem and closed the the lecture with an appropriate quote from her favorite French poet, Andr?(c) Breton, "Never pierce the mystery in the heart of the Rose." Her poems gave the paintings she discussed a deeper meaning. The combination of painting and poetry samples in Caw's lecture enforced her claim that surrealism is not only pertinant to visual art, it is also relevant in writing. 

The mystery behind the strange and exciting paintings Caws discussed will haunt lovers of surrealist art lovers always, for the first time.