My idea for International Women's Day today was to feature several women dog artists from around the world. LACMA's current exhibition In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States seemed like a good place to look for some. That's where I discovered Dorothea Tanning. And that's where I stopped looking. Her 101 years of creating sums up everything I wanted to say about women and art and fearlessness and making choices and sacrifices.
I am embarrassed to say that I had never heard of her. But she knew people weren't hearing about her the same way they were hearing about her husband, Max Ernst. People weren't carving her name in history, even though they were living the same life. She expressed this in a poem:
Many years ago today
I took a husband tenderly
This simple human gentle act
Seen as a hard decisive fact
By all who dote on category
Did stain my work indelibly
I don’t know why that is
For it has not stained his
The Daily Telegraph writes in her obituary, "It is, perhaps, no surprise that Dorothea Tanning consistently refused to have children and instead lavished her attention on Pekingese dogs."
It is no surprise to me that her Pekingese dogs show up in her work.
Learn more about Dorothea Tanning's extraordinary life here.