In her own words...



Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now.

– Dorothea Tanning, 2002 Notes for an Apocalypse, 1978

Oil on canvas, 50 x 62 in.

The Museum of Modern Art, NY

In her own voice...



Dorothea Tanning: Insomia – a short film made in 1978 by the German director Peter Schamoni – offers the opportunity to hear the artist's observations about her life and work and to see her in her home and studio in Seillans, France. The film can be viewed on Vimeo, courtesy of the Schamoni Film & Media Archive in Munich.



Poetry

Graduation He told us, with the years, you will come

to love the world.

And we sat there with our souls in our laps,

and comforted them. – Dorothea Tanning, 2004



Art

Publications

Victoria Carruthers has published Dorothea Tanning: Transformations, released by Lund Humphries. A definitive study of the artist's life and career, this monograph provides a framework within which to consider the range and depth of Tanning's work and thematic preoccupations. The book is extensively illustrated and features previously unpublished material from interviews which the author conducted with the artist between 2000 and 2009. The author discusses the book in an interview found here.



Claire-Louise Bennett has written Fish Out of Water, published as one of Juxta Press's Words for Portraits series of essays and short stories by English- and Italian-language authors based a portrait of their choice. Drawing inspiration from the painting Self-Portrait (1944), the book is a meditation on the affinity the author finds with the artist in her life and work. The author can be heard speaking about the book in an interview What the Hell/Heaven Are We Doing? – Claire-Louise Bennett.



Max Ernst – D-paintings – Zeitreise der Liebe, an exhibition catalogue published by the Max Ernst Museum Brühl, celebrates a set of paintings created by Ernst from the time he first met Dorothea Tanning in 1942 until his death in 1976. Every year Ernst gave Tanning a work for her birthday, almost always hiding the letter D for Dorothea. Dr. Jürgen Pech examines all 36 "D-paintings" together with important contemporaneous works by Tanning and numerous photographs, letters, and other documents in a fully illustrated double biography that portrays their extraordinary love story. De kloof – een weekend, a Dutch language version of Dorothea Tanning's novel Chasm: A Weekend, has been publiished by Uitgeverij Orlando, Amsterdam.



The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid has published a fully illustrated catalogue in conjunction with the exhibition "Dorothea Tanning: Behind the Door, Another Invisible Door." The catalogue includes essays by exhibition curator Alyce Mahon, who gives an overview of the artist's career, and Tate curator Ann Coxon, who explores Tanning's work in light of the legacies of Surrealism and contemporary art practice. The catalogue is published in Spanish and English.





Ongoing Projects