What can I tell you, O gentle art lovers, O kindly dreamers? Is some help needed? Doesn't the paint say it all? What am I after? A long time ago I said I want to seduce by means of imperceptible passages from one reality to another. The viewer is caught in a net from which the only escape is by going through the whole picture until the exit is found. My dearest wish: to make a trap with no exit at all either for you or for me.
             – Dorothea Tanning, 1986

"The Enchanted Interior" is on view at The Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle through February 22, 2020.  The exhibition examines depictions of the interior as a 'gilded cage' in which women are pictured as ornamental objects – a popular theme in 19th-century painting – together with images that challenge and subvert the idealization of women as captive damsels or passive beauties.  Along with 20th-century and contemporary works, the show features the 1943 painting Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

Dorothea Tanning: Transformations, a new monograph on the artist, will be released by Lund Humphries in January.  Written by Victoria Carruthers, Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art History at Australian Catholic University, this is a definitive study of the artist's life and career, providing 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  The book is extensively illustrated and features previously unpublished material from interviews which the author conducted with the artist between 2000 and 2009.

A new catalogue, Max Ernst – D-paintings – Zeitreise der Liebe, has just been published by the Max Ernst Museum Brühl of the LVR in conjuntion with an exhibition on view through March 22, 2020.  The exhibition and catalogue celebrate 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.   

Catriona McAra, University Curator at Leeds Arts University, has published "Glowing Like Phosphorus: Dorothea Tanning and the Sedona Western" in Journal of Surrealism and the Americas (10:1 [2019], pp. 84-105). In this article, Dr. McAra examines the emergence of the Hollywood Western as a formidable pop cultural format during the 1940s-50s, and the complex role it played in the surrealist art and literature from that period. The author examines the work of Ernst and Tanning created during their time living in Sedona, Arizona, where filmmakers were also drawn to the iconic red rock landscape.

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.

SaveSave

We are looking for information about a number of paintings in the effort to fully document Dorothea Tanning's work for a catalogue raisonné. If you have seen any of these paintings, please contact us.

Concerning Wishes (1942)

Le Petit Marquis (1947)

Angel in Mauve and Orange (Study for Anges gardiens) (1947)

Les Infatigables (The Indefatigables) (1965)