Although one of the most popular artists of the twentieth century, Salvador Dal� has typically been considered no more than peripheral to the dominant practices of modernism. Roger Rothman?s Tiny Surrealism argues that this marginal position itself should be examined as a coherent response to modernism. It demonstrates how Dal�?s practice was in fact organized around the logic of the small and the inconsequential and considers in this context Dal�?s identification not only with the literally small (ants, sewing needles, breadcrumbs, blackheads, etc.) but also with the metaphorically small (the trivial, the weak, the superficial, and the anachronistic). In addition to addressing Dal�?s imagery, Tiny Surrealism demonstrates that the logic of the minor and the marginal was a fundamental factor in Dal�?s adherence to the techniques of miniaturist illusionism; long derided as antimodernist and kitsch, Dal�?s style was itself a strategy of the small aimed at subverting the dominant values of modern painting. Dal� constructed his practice as a parasite on the body of modernism: a small but potentially virulent intruder.

Because Dal� was a prolific and complex writer, Rothman makes extensive use of Dal�?s writings, both his public pronouncements and private correspondence. By attending to the peculiarities of Dal�?s technique and examining overlooked aspects of his writings, Tiny Surrealism is the first study to detail his deliberate subversion of modernist orthodoxies.

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