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

Waiting

Back then, with time on my hands
and in our back yard, I waited for the future.
The Future. For me as for everyone else,
the very words had a whiff of promise.
If things were not going too well at present

they would surely delight us in the future.
Long in coming, the future, it never came
to the back yard, front yard, palace yard,
church yard, prison yard, and especially
the junk yard that prefers the past.

Later I understood that waiting is an art
and the best place to practice it is in waiting
rooms where you can wait for hours on end
for the train you've already missed, for the
sky to fall, the doctor, for hell to freeze over.

The sky hangs higher than ever and
at night is studded with stars
"The Doctor had an emergency.
He'll be here tomorrow."
And hell? Nobody goes there anymore.

Still later, when I was more in touch with
the world, they told me, "You have a future."
I thought that over. Even if I believed them,
what did my little future, whatever that was,
have to do with the real thing, whatever that is?

Surely this everywhere present is real
enough and eager, yet unable, to tell me
what I am waiting for now.

                 – Dorothea Tanning, 2011
 

The Dorothea Tanning Foundation together with its partner The Destina Foundation wish everyone good health and safety during this difficult time. As many museums temporarily close to protect the public against COVID-19, we encourage you to enjoy their art and exhibitions through their websites, video tours, and publications.  The following are some of the current and upcoming exhibitions that feature the work of Dorothea Tanning:

"Dorothea Tanning: Worlds in Collision" at Alison Jacques Gallery in London has been extended for online viewing while the Gallery remains closed.  The exhibition presents works from the 1980s with a focus on imagery of the bicycle as a symbol of the pace of modern technology and the fragility of humankind.  Among the works in the show is Between Lives (1989).

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.

Claire-Louise Bennett is releasing Fish Out of Water, published by Juxta Press as part of its Words for Portraits series of essays and short stories from English- and Italian-language authors written on a portrait of their choice. Drawing inspiration from the painting Self-Portrait (1944), this book is a meditation on Tanning's life, art, and portraiture, and the rebellious internal worlds and nascent creativity that defined the childhoods of the artist and the author.

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.

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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)