Dear Eva, recently I experienced a real expedition but without ending up on a raft or having to fish with a harpoon. In fact, I went to the museum, yes it doesn't exude adventure although since it was the Surrealism exhibition at the Center Pompidou – it lasts until mid-January, go there if you like the regions wild of the mind. Designed in the style of a labyrinth, this exhibition is a dive into the exceptional creative effervescence of the surrealist movement, founded in 1924 by André Breton, which, broadly speaking, claims to create by freeing itself from the control of reason. And, among the works of Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró or Max Ernst, and suddenly, I found myself a friend. Dorothea Tanning. For many, she was “ above all Max's wife » and, she herself wrote that in the New York of surrealist exiles “ the place given to women among these iconoclasts was hardly different from that which is theirs in the general population, including the bourgeoisie “. This American was born in 1910 in Illinois in a small town where she said “ we spent our childhood on a sofa waiting to grow up “. Then she grew up, moved to Chicago, then New York, and decided to embrace surrealism. One afternoon in 1942, she showed one of her paintings to the man who would become the man of her life. And I imagine what Max Ernst felt, the same thing as me, pure fascination in front of this painting, Birthday : it represents a woman with bare breasts, long hair, a plant skirt, who opens the first door in a series of doors, with, in front of her, a griffin… Salvador can go and get dressed with his soft watches, it's is Dorothea who, in one painting, found the path to fantasies.
Eva: about the status of women, did your friend take trips?
And with a modernity that resonates madly today! Another painting in the exhibition shows two little girls in a corridor with a red carpet and I would swear that Stanley Kubrick was inspired by these two twins from The Shining. I'm trying to describe the craziest one to you: a young blonde girl is sitting very quietly, frightened, in front of a dining room table. In the foreground, a tiny, maid feeds a dog. And behind the table, an enormous man in a suit literally devours the space. This portrait of a family which dates from 1954 is in fact an Alice in the land of patriarchy! All its breaks in proportion sum up the feminine condition, and Dorothea explained that, for her, it was a question of condemning “the hierarchy which is imposed within the sacrosanct family. » I don't think I've ever seen a more feminist painting. Having become very old and a long-time widow, she remained surreal in her daily life. In the old lady's New York dining room, the table was topped… with a huge parasol. Was she having trouble moving? She had designed her walker as a sort of bicycle with handlebars on which a shopping net was attached. Tanning Dorothea died at age 101. Proof that saying shit to reason lasts.
