Dorothea Tanning is probably more famous for being a woman artist than for the artwork she produced throughout her 70-year career.
Born in Illinois, she first encountered surrealism in 1930s New York, moving on to Paris in the hopes of meeting surrealist artists. She was forced back to New York however, following the outbreak of the Second World War, where many European surrealists eventually settled.
Surrealism emerged in 1920s Paris, an art movement that explored dreams and the workings of the mind. Tanning’s paintings and sculptures too, have a mysterious, irrational quality to them, full of sunflowers, oversized dogs and peculiar shaped sculptures. Here are five facts that you probably didn’t know about the “female surrealist”:
-
She found her husband through her painting
Max Ernst – a fellow surrealist – encountered Tanning’s self-portrait Birthday at her studio in New York in 1942 during the Christmas period, with Tanning later describing Ernst as her Christmas present. The pair married in Hollywood in 1946 in a joint wedding ceremony with Man Ray and Juliet Browner. -
She was obsessed with dogs
The first dog to appear in Tanning’s paintings was Max Ernst’s Lhasa Apso Katchina, with Tanning owning Pekinese dogs throughout her life. The dogs in Tanning’s paintings often have human faces, and appear larger than life, sometimes representing Tanning herself.
View this post on InstagramDorothea Tanning grew up in the small town of Galesburg in rural Illinois where she said “nothing happened but the wallpaper.’ Many of the artist’s paintings explore the traditional image of the family and the home, frequently subverting traditional family values. Join us on 16 March at Tate Modern for a discussion exploring the artist’s fascination with parenting, domestic space and female sexuality and as we broaden our understanding of her surrealist works through this lens. (Link in bio for tickets). The first major posthumous exhibition of Tanning’s work will open at Tate Modern on 27 February 2019 — a celebration of the artist’s seven-decade career.
A post shared by Tate (@tate) on -
Tanning hated being labelled a “woman artist”
Tanning believed in equality, seeing no difference between a male or female artist. Her husband too, rejected referring to Tanning as his wife.
-
As well as painting and sculpture, Tanning also dabbled in set and costume design
During the 1940s Tanning designed sets and costumes for the Russian choreographer George Balanchine, including Night Shadow at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House in 1945. Tanning’s costume designs include illustrations of women with ships for heads and feathered birds with human legs.
View this post on Instagram‘Birthday’ 1942 by #DorotheaTanning marks her ‘birth’ as a surrealist, filtering the dreams and desires of the Surrealist vision through a self-portrait. Although the likeness of the face is astonishing, the artist does more to create a character than to reveal her own. The furry creature, exotic garb and infinite series of doors point to adventures that lie off the canvas. According to Tanning, Birthday was titled by fellow Surrealist artist Max Ernst who found it on her easel, not quite finished. “What do you call it?” he asked. “I really haven’t a title.” “Then you can call it Birthday.” … ‘It was just like that,’ Tanning recalls. Captivated by the model as well as by the painting, Ernst would become Tanning’s husband and lifelong admirer of her work. Dorothea Tanning, Birthday 1942, Philadelphia Museum of Art 125th Anniversary Acquisition, purchased with funds contributed by C. K. Williams, II, 1999 © DACS, London. On display at Tate Modern until 9 June 2019.
A post shared by Tate (@tate) on -
Tanning was a writer too…
Towards the end of her life, Tanning started writing, with her last collection of poems, Coming to That, being published at the age of 101.
Dorothea Tanning is on view at Tate Modern until 9 June 2019
Images via instagram
