New Book Explores Dorothea Tanning's Artistic Path

(MENAFN- USA Art News) A new book by Alyce Mahon,“Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World,” offers a comprehensive examination of the artist's life and work. Mahon, an art history professor, anchors Tanning's biography in her experience as a woman, highlighting how Tanning overcame challenges to establish herself as an artist, despite often being associated with her husband, Max Ernst.

Mahon's academic project provides a detailed overview of Tanning's life. The book traces Tanning's origins as the daughter of Swedish immigrants in Galesburg, Illinois, a town she described as“small and sleepy” where“nothing happens but the wallpaper.” From these beginnings, Tanning pursued ambitious goals, first moving to Chicago and then to New York in 1935.

In New York, Tanning worked as a commercial artist, creating advertisements for clients such as Macy's. Her fascination with Surrealism began after she attended the “Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Her life subsequently took a surreal turn: in 1939, she traveled to Paris with a list of artists she hoped to meet. She found Paris to be an unsettling ghost town, with war imminent. Ernst, one of the artists she had intended to meet in Paris, later crossed paths with her in New York in 1942, and they married in 1946. One of Tanning's works from this period is “Max in a Blue Boat” (1947), an oil on canvas.

Source: Hyperallergic

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