Summary
Art pervades Dorothea Tanning's life; not only have the many images, objects, and texts that she created become worthwhile art, her very presence transformed photographs and moments in time to make them more artistic. The same whirling energy that followed Tanning as a person is also found in her energetic brushstroke, a phenomenon linked to the day of her birth, "a day of high wind," which was said to terrify her mother and, as a result, Tanning was born. The dominance of a frightening, unstoppable life force characterizes Tanning's entire oeuvre. With ideas too big for rural Illinois, a place "where nothing happened but the wallpaper", the artist left for Chicago, and then, once in New York found that both in style and in company she identified as a Surrealist (she married Max Ernst). With distinct progression through a long career, Tanning began by meticulously depicting her own dreams. This penetrating psychological exploration continued while her work evolved to become more abstract and sculptural. The folds of childhood dresses link these different phases, as cloth transforms from being the depicted subject to the material used. The final phase of the artist's career saw her become the "oldest living emerging poet", alongside collaboration with other renowned poets, and the production of a series of large-scale flower paintings.
Key Ideas
Most Important Art
Self Portrait (1936)
Birthday (1942)
Indeed, this self-portrait by Tanning has much in common with Carrington's Self-Portrait (c.1938). The two paintings fuse together fantasy and reality as the lone artist is portrayed in only creaturely company. Both images present otherworldly framing devices; the door in the case of Tanning and the window in the case of Carrington, and ultimately both herald the significance of a woman's creative and visionary powers. The organic growth that entwines to make Tanning's skirt bears reference to her portrait of the same year, Arizona Landscape, as well as to an earlier portrait of another woman, Deirdre (1940), whose hair is replaced by leaves. Robert Motherwell photographed Tanning herself wearing a crown of leaves in 1945. Like that of her skirt in Birthday, this tentacle/antennae-like feature at once suggests connection to higher realms but also hauntingly recalls a crown of thorns, therefore uniting the pains and joys of life.
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1943)
The painting makes clear reference to the artist's childhood. Along with her sisters she lived in a repressive puritanical Midwestern American environment and cultivated a rich fantasy life by means of escape. The sunflower is a common flower found in her hometown and thus stands as symbol of her identity. As also in a later painting, Palaestra (1949) the children are dressed in the elaborate silks that were favored by Tanning's mother. In both paintings the girls have their tops unbuttoned adding eroticism and sexual intrigue to each of the images. Tanning wrote herself of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, "It's about confrontation. Everyone believes he/she is his/her drama. While they don't always have giant sunflowers to contend with, there are always stairways, hallways, even very private theatres where the suffocations and the finalities are being played out, the blood red carpet or cruel yellows, the attacker, the delighted victim..." The message here is not that there is a literal attack to overcome, but rather an ongoing expedition to survive one's own intense psychology. The motif of closed eyes reveal that it is an inward story here at play, and the painting in composition was likely inspired by Pierre Roy's Danger on the Stairs (1927) that Tanning would have seen in New York at the "Fantastic Art, Dad and Surrealism" exhibition of 1936.
Tempête en Jaune (Tempest in Yellow) (1956)
The painting marks the convergence of Tanning's early and mid-career styles, and marks a move away from the typical Surrealist dreamscape to a fragmented abstraction more akin to the visual representation of music or general emotion. Tanning herself said of this phase in her career, "my canvases literally splintered. Their colors came out of the closet, you might say, to open the rectangles to a different light. They were prismatic, surfaces where I veiled, suggested and floated my persistent icons and preoccupations, in another of the thousand ways of saying the same things."
Pincushion to Serve as Fetish (1965)
As a 'fetish', the object is believed to have supernatural or divine powers. The act of piercing the article with pins is a way of ritualistically releasing and simultaneously connecting with a human life force and nature's rejuvenating energy; it is a way of meditating upon our existence. Equally though, the piercing may suggest sorrow, like Frida Kahlo's The Broken Column (1944), the work could point towards inner suffering. As there was for Bourgeois, there may also be a sense for Tanning that the act of sewing such an object brings with it a process of emotional repair.
Nue Couchée (c. 1969 - 70)
Hôtel du Pavot, Chambre 202 (c. 1970 - 73)
Art historian Victoria Carruthers suggests that the piece was inspired by a popular song known to Tanning in her childhood, "the song laments the fate of Kitty Kane, one-time Chicago gangster's wife, who poisoned herself in room 202 of a local hotel." Tanning remembered the following verse:
In room two hundred and two
The walls keep talkin' to you
I'll never tell you what they said
So turn out the light and come to bed.
Indeed, the work does point towards the possibility of physical violence experienced by women and simultaneously laments and berates this. However, it is the mystery of what has happened and also the fact that actual trauma works well as a tool to expose mental struggle that is more poignant.
Merrillium Trovatum (1997)
All of the flower paintings glow with soft and illuminating depth. There are often areas of dark void complimented by golden highlights. At once suggestive of female genitalia and the far away cosmos, the work of Georgia O'Keeffe becomes an obvious reference at this late point in Tanning's career. The women's flower representations are equally meditative as they both quietly and powerfully uncover secrets that lie in the creases and in between the folds.