The Art of The Atrocity Exhibition

Cover of First UK Edition of The Atrocity Exhibition-J.G Ballard 1970-Based on Salvador Dali’s City of Drawers

J.G Ballard, the genre busting English science fiction writer responsible for such novels as The Drowned World, Crash, High Rise and Empire of the Sun as well as some of the finest short stories in world literature, frequently remarked that he really wanted to be a painter in the surrealist tradition that he so loved instead of a writer.

This deep reverence and constant engagement with the visual arts can be most clearly seen in his demented and wildly perverse cult classic collage novel The Atrocity Exhibition. Referencing Ernst, Dali, Magritte, Dominguez, Matta, Bellmer, Delvaux, Tanguy as well as Pop Artists Tom Wesselman and Andy Warhol in the frequent free association tests and ‘condensed novels’ that comprise the text, The Atrocity Exhibition could easily be used as a textbook primer on surrealism and popular culture in the sixties.

In 1990 RE/Search Publications issued an expanded edition with four new stories, Ballard’s bizarre yet illuminating annotations, disturbing illustrations by the medical illustrator/graphic novelist Phoebe Gloeckner and photographs by Ana Barrado of brutalist buildings and weapon ranges. It also features a preface by the Hitman for the Apocalypse himself, William S. Burroughs.

Below are some of the many paintings mentioned in the text, some of which are very well known and others less so.

Garden Airplane Trap-Max Ernst 1935

The Annunciation-Rene Magritte 1930

The Disasters of Mysticism-Roberto Matta 1942

Hypercubic Christ-Salvador Dali 1954

The Persistence of Memory-Salvador Dali 1931

Dawn over the City-Paul Delvaux-1940

Decalcomania-Oscar Dominguez 1936

Hans Bellmer

Indefinite Divisibility-Yves Tanguy 1942

The Great American Nude 99-Tom Wesselman 1968

Marilyn Diptych-Andy Warhol 1962