I hadn't really any Surrealist woman (apart from Frida Kahlo) until now. It's kind of a shame because their paintings are just fantastic! My favourites, however, are reduced to Dorothea Tanning and Kay Sage (It's funny that her husband Yves Tanguy rejected her as a Surrealist because I think Sage's paintings are way better than his). Tanning and Sage both give a mysterious and thrilling atmosphere to their paintings, they are alarming, and somehow disturbing, and they don't make any sense either but they are just so beautiful, and one can easily notice the high skills of these two women. Even though I feel proud of Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington and Frida Kahlo, their paintings are not so aesthetically nor emotionally attractive to me... they're actually somehow depressive in a no delightful way. These women's paintings are really personal, and thus reflect the pain and dissatisfaction that, for example, Frida Kahlo had in her life.
By the way, Meret Oppenheim's design is just disturbing, I didn't like it a lot, but it is certainly Surrealist.
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| Tanning's 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik' |
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| Sage's 'Danger, Construction Ahead' |
I'm very glad that you like Kay Sage! She usually gets left out and dismissed as minor, but the more of her work that I looked at - it was kind of new to me as I was doing my research - I thought she was major.
ReplyDeleteThat's one reason why this course is so "thick." I go deeper into figures who are on the fringes of the art history books, and think, OMG, I can't leave him or her out. Maybe 15% of the material is generated that way. I do get to the point where I simply can't fit any more in (or I just run out of time).
I do like Tanguy better than you do - he was another favorite from my high school days. He creates his own curious visual world. However, I'm disturbed that he abused his wife.