My Soul's Dark Imagination: DARING DOROTHEA TANNING

Exploring the Art of Dorothea Tanning

"Am I a surrealist? Must we artists bow our heads and accept a label without which we do not exist? The ideas of surrealism are still very much with me. But I have no label except artist."

Dorothea was born in 1910 in Galesburg, Illinois. She was a self-taught artist and only briefly studied painting in Chicago while haunting the Art Institute where she learned what painting was. She moved to New York City in 1941 and met the most important influence in her life, the artist and painter Max Ernst. He came to visit her studio to look at one of her paintings but stayed to play a game of chess. They had 34 happy years together. Early in their relationship they decide to move out of the United States and lived in France, where she continued to paint her enigmatic versions of life: on the inside looking out.

Dorothea found herself facing a solitary future when Max died on April 1, 1976.

She was quoted as having said after Max's death, " I was a loner, am a loner, good Lord, it is the only way I can imagine working. When I hooked up with Max, he was clearly the only person I needed, and I can assure you, we never, never talked about art. Never."

Soon her paint tubes, brushes, and canvases began calling out to her, telling her to go back home to the United States where she remained for the rest of her life.

Dorothea's early paintings were precisely figurative renderings of dream-like situations. In her youth, Dorothea read many gothic, romantic novels in her hometown of Galesburg. These fantastical stories filled with imagery of the imaginary, heavily influenced her style and subject matter for years to come. Like most Surrealist painters, she was meticulous in her attention to details, building layers of paint with carefully muted brushstrokes. She painted depictions of unreal scenes, some of which combined erotic subjects with enigmatic symbols and desolate space. While in France, her work radically changed as her paintings took on a less erotic approach and her images became increasingly fragmented and pragmatic.

She explains her work with this quote, " Around 1955, my canvases literally splintered...I broke the mirror, you might say."

Her artwork has been exhibited in numerous one-person shows in France, Sweden, and London as well as the United States. In 1992, The New York Library had a showing of her prints and in 2000, The Philadelphia Art Museum held an exhibition of her work.

After returning to the United States, Dorothea found her voice and began writing poetry and short stories, which were widely published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Yale Review.

In an interview for Salon.com and asked, "So what have you tried to communicate as an artist?

She replied, "I'd be satisfied in suggesting that there is more than meets the eye."

In 1997, The Dorothea Tanning Foundation was established with the purpose of preserving the artist's legacy while fostering a broader, public understanding of the artist's art, writing, and poetry. They manage and distribute the art and asset of Dorothea for philanthropic purposes.

"The diversity pf experience and attitude on the part of women artists active in Surrealism has proved both an obstacle and a challenge. In the end, I came to view such diversity as a tribute to these women, an attribution to their strength and a mark of their commitment to a form of creative expression in which personal reality dominates".

Dorethea died in her home in New York City on January 31, 2012. She was 101 years old. She had just published her second collection of poems called, "Coming To That".

ALL HALLOWS EVE

by Dorothe Tanning

Be perfect, make it otherwise.

Yesterday is torn in shreds.

Lightnings thousand sulfur eyes

Rip apart the breathing beds.

Her bones crack and pulverize.

Doom creeps in on rubber treads.

Countless overwrought housewives,

Minds unraveling like threads,

Try lipstick shades to tranquilize

Fears of age and general dreads.

Sit tight, be perfect, swat the spies,

Don't take faucets for fountainheads.

Drink tasty antidotes. Otherwise

You and the werewolf: Newlyweds.

Now it is your turn to immerse yourself in the style of Dorothea Tanning and create your own Surrealist art piece! This is the first artist I have showcased that did not have a tragic life circumstance that influenced her artistic style!! Her life is as described as..."She breathed words as well as air and looked at her paintings in amazement"!