While many creative people pass away far too young, that’s not the case for Dorothea Tanning, known as “the last living Surrealist,” who has sadly passed away at the age of 101. Tanning’s work was another major inspiration for our Fall Winter 2012 line.
Born in Galesburg, IL, Tanning was working as a commercial illustrator in NY until she visited a surrealist show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936 and decided to become a serious painter. Her career took off after she met another surrealist, Max Ernst, which led to her first solo show and a 30 year marriage. The two lived and worked together until his death in 1976, after which Tanning went on to become a sculptor and then a noted novelist and poet.
Some of Tanning’s works are on display at the LACMA “In Wonderland” exhibit, including “Birthday,” a self-portrait considered among her best pieces.
Along with work by other surrealists, including Leonora Carrington, Tanning’s paintings also served as inspiration for Madonna’s Music Video “Bedtime story,” directed by Mark Romanek, who decided to use surrealist motifs after meeting with the Super Bowl singer in a hotel room where she had installed a surrealist work from her art collection.
See the 1:02 mark for reference to Tanning’s sunflower image from a 1943 piece called “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.”
Madonna – Bedtime Story by
When we set out to design the Fall Winter 2012 collection, is was the surrealist movement, and more specifically female surrealist paintings, that found their way onto our inspiration boards. The color palettes of artists like Leonora Carrington led to rich new coated colors and dyed looks, while the deep symbolism of works by the likes of Frida Kahlo inspired our selection of deep, dark denim washes. Across the board, surrealist imagery led to our exciting new print story and influenced color and wash names.
So we were extremely excited to hear about “In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and The United States,” a new LACMA exhibit that pulls together so many of the works and artists we referenced for the line, as well as others we had never seen or heard of before. Walking through the exhibit during member previews, it was a thrill to see works that we never expected to see in person at all, displayed together in the same space.
While Salvador Dali is synonymous with the surrealist movement in Europe, there was also a thriving group of surrealists working in North America around the same time, led by an unexpected segment of the population: women. In the prologue for the exhibit, Whitney Chadwick explains that the show is “the first international exhibition to explore the legacy of surrealism in Mexico and the United States through its influence on several generations of women artists.” This is really a monumental, first-of-its-kind show that everyone who loves (or hasn’t yet discovered) surrealist art should see. Using portraits, self-portraits and even double self-portraits, the female surrealists used their medium to delve deep into the subconscious and the space of their own dreams.
Our favorite painting in the show is Remedios Varo’s 1956 painting ‘Harmony’, whose intricate details and symbolic meaning are a perfect summation of our inspiration and the surrealist movement itself. Varo’s other featured paintings include ‘Celestial Pablum’ and ‘Woman Departing from Psychoanalyst’s Office’. Don’t miss works by the recently passed Leonora Carrington and the more high-profile Frida Kahlo. Also notable are pieces by Kay Sage and Bridget Tichenor, photographs by Lee Miller and sculptures by Louise Bourgeois.
You can catch the show at LACMA through May 6th, before it moves to the National Museum of Fine Arts in Quebec and then to the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City in the fall – right about when the new line hits retail.
We have been meaning to write about Mexican Surrealist writer and painter Leonora Carrington, who passed away last month at the age of 94. We’ve always been inspired by the color schemes and imagination of her work, as well as her own personal confidence and fortitude. She was a bit of a firecracker, and reflecting on her life said, “I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse…I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.”
Carrington was regarded as one of the last great Surrealist painters of her era, and remains one of Mexico’s national treasures. Born in Britain to a wealthy textile magnate, she quickly went against her privileged upbringing – and her father’s wishes – to study art in Florence. She fell in love with the work of Max Ernst, whom she met at a cocktail party, and who introduced her to the prominent Surrealists including Dali, Picasso and Tanguy. Her first important exhibition came in 1947 at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York City. Attracted by the flourishing community of artists in Mexico City, including Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Octavio Paz, she moved there with her husband, Hungarian photographer Emeric Weisz, where they lived for nearly 70 years.
Her work frequently draws on imagery from myth, folklore, the occult, and the animal kingdom. Some of our favorite works are Portrait of Max Ernst, The Inn of the Dawn Horse (below) a self-portrait currently at the Met in NY, and Daughter of the Minotaur. Today, her canvases regularly sell in excess of $1 million. Not many people know that she was also a brilliant writer. In ‘The Hearing Trumpet’, the two main characters are thought to be Leonora herself and fellow female surrealist friend painter and friend, Remedios Varo.
