Dorothea Tanning
A Surrealist World
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Yale University Press
Publishing:14th Apr '26
£30.00
This title is due to be published on 14th April, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
This study overhauls canonical accounts of Surrealism, demonstrating how one woman artist expanded its activity and expression in bold new ways for the modern age
Born on the day of a hurricane in Galesburg, Illinois, Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012) would become a figure at the very heart of the avant-garde, among a close circle of contemporaries including Joseph Cornell, Max Ernst, Lee Miller and Man Ray. Her art and philosophical ideas reveal her transformative impact on post-war Surrealism, and her life story reveals how she skilfully navigated her role as a woman artist on the international stage. Alyce Mahon maps Tanning’s extraordinary seventy-year career—from Chicago and Arizona to Paris and Seillans, through to her final years in New York—and traces how these landscapes were reshaped into kaleidoscopic imagined worlds in her paintings, sculptures and writings.
“In this long-awaited, enthralling study, Alyce Mahon shows how Dorothea Tanning brought a new and necessary Surrealism to a war-ravaged world and offers stunning analyses of Tanning's very rich and varied oeuvre.”—Dawn Ades, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art, University of Essex
“Alyce Mahon brings a welcome feminist perspective to a traditionally male-dominated narrative while also deftly analysing Surrealist practice across a broader geographical and historical context in this fascinating new study.”—Frances Morris, former director, Tate Modern
“An absorbing journey through the real and imagined landscapes of Dorothea Tanning that broadens our understanding of Surrealism.”--Manuel Borja-Villel, former director, Museo Reina Sofia
ISBN: 9780300244601
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
264 pages