Dorothea Tanning, by Gilles Plazy

Dorothea Tanning, by Gilles Plazy. 1979 softcover. 72 pages, good condition (bent corner on front cover). RARE.

Dorothea Margaret Tanning (1910 – 2012) was an American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet, primarily known for her work in the surrealism genre. Tanning discovered Surrealism at the New York Museum of Modern Art's seminal 1936 exhibition, Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism. In 1941, she was working as a commercial artist. Impressed by her creativity and talent in illustrating fashion advertisements, the art director at Macy’s department store introduced her to the gallery owner Julien Levy, who immediately offered to show her work. Levy gave Tanning two solo exhibitions (in 1944 and 1948), and also introduced her to the circle of émigré Surrealists whose work he was showing in his New York gallery, including the German painter Max Ernst, who was married to Peggy Guggenheim at the time. The pair fell in love and Tanning and Ernst were married in 1946 in a double wedding with Man Ray and Juliet Browner in Hollywood. They were married for 30 years, until Ernst's death in 1976, after which Tanning continued to create studio art in the 1980s, then turned her attention to her writing and poetry in the 1990s and 2000s, working and publishing until the end of her life. Her artwork is a pure joy to discover.

This book is wonderful volume of essays by Gilles Plazy which address the basic chronology of Tanning’s life, illustrated with a range of artworks in various mediums as well as personal photographs. His approach is poetic, lush with metaphors and psychoanalytical readings of her artwork. In one essay, titled “Some Roses and Their Phantoms,” he defines Tanning’s significance by her ability to connect to the collective unconscious (comparing her with “little Alice” stepping through the looking glass); and he describes her work as a manifestation of Breton’s concept of “convulsive beauty,” matched with idiosyncratic humor and free-flowing lyricism – all key features of Surrealism.