Dorothea Tanning exhibition, Tate Modern, London, 27 February – 9 June 2019

This is the first large-scale exhibition of surrealist Dorothea Tanning's work for 25 years, bringing together 100 works from her seven-decade career, from enigmatic paintings to uncanny sculptures. Included are striking uncanny buildings and interiors. The two girls peeling off the dingy wallpaper to reveal body parts underneath, in Children's Games (1942), and the two girls with a large sunflower in a shabby hotel corridor, in Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1943). And doors, either closed or ajar and open to the imagination. There is a wonderful detailed essay (Dorothea Tanning: Behind the Door, Another Invisible Door) in the catalogue by curator and Cambridge University art historian Alyce Mahon, a specialist in surrealism. The essay describes Tanning being drawn to surrealism after seeing the Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition at New York's MoMA in 1936, and development then, with paintings, soft body-like sculptures, ballet stage design and costumes, and a very disturbing installation of a hotel room.  

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/dorothea-tanning

From a dreaming perspective, dream content often refers to houses, rooms, even discovering new rooms. See the disturbing Dilapidated House dream in the Gallery on this site, painted in response to a dream told to us at the Freud Museum London. The painting, including the full text of the dream, is the third artwork down on the November 2018 Freud Museum archive here.

---