The Photography of Andreas Gursky

Hyper reality is the thought that comes to mind when viewing the photography of Andreas Gursky.  I became aware of his large scale somewhat documentary work in the powerful exhibition “Civilization: The Way We Live Now” at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2019.  Sadly, I missed a major survey of his work at the same venue 10 years earlier. 

Born in Leipzig in 1955, Gursky was a student of the famous German conceptual photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher.  He is considered one of the finest photographers at work today and presents an almost overwhelming vision of contemporary life in images crammed with information, the individual reduced to an atom in a vast universe of order, or in some cases, chaos.     

He began to digitally alter his images as soon as the technology became available.  A prime example is 99 Cent, one of his most iconic works.  He altered the position of some of the store’s aisles and created a mirror image in the ceiling to flatten the image.  There is a formalist structure in his work but at the same time there is a sense of reality playing with unreality.  He pioneered the practice of face mounting photographs onto Plexiglas.

99 Cent (1999) 207 x 325 cm

Gursky also presents images of excess and waste, of consumerism having lost its bearings. There is a questioning of one’s place in this world, of man being overwhelmed by a capitalist system that has become a Frankenstein monster. In “Amazon” from 2016, he presents an image of the Amazon warehouse in Pheonix Arizona. This is a composite image designed to present each object in correct size relative to the others. Thus he achieves what has been described as a supernatural clarity to the image.

Amazon (2016) 207 x 407 cm

In Gursky’s imagery the individual becomes a cog in a vast capitalist machine where all semblance of a unique identity is lost in a sterile, regimentally ordered environment. Rather than focus on the individual as such, Gursky is more concerned with the human species and the environments that it has created.

Hong Kong Stock Exchange II (2001) 207 x 323 cm

His images are beautiful and yet in some ways disturbing. There is a political angle to his presentation of reality, to the key issues of our time, but he leaves it to the viewer to decide how to think. His method of using composite imagery dates back to at least 1993 with his image of a huge block of flats in Paris. He positioned his camera at two locations some distance apart so that each window would appear the correct size, free from the distortion of optics in an image over 4 metres wide.

Paris – Montparnasse (1993)

There has always been an element of abstraction in Gursky’s work. In his image “Rhine II” from 1999, he digitally removed the buildings on the far side of the river to present an abstract image of the Rhine near Dusseldorf. It could be considered an image of man’s manipulation of the natural world to create order. Yet there is an emphasis on textures, the contrast between the shimmering light from the river, the softness of the clouds, the lush carpet of the grass and the hardness of the pavement.

Rhine II (1999) 156 x 308 cm

Like other photographs he has produced, there is a detached yet enticing quality to his image making.  He encourages the viewer to enter these scenes yet provides no guidance as to how one should feel. 

Hello, my name is Geoff. You may be interested to know that I am a fulltime artist these days and I regularly exhibit in galleries in Victoria, but particularly in Melbourne. You may wish to check out my work using the following link; https://geoffharrisonarts.com

References; 

Tate.org.au 

Davidcharlesfox.com 

thebroad.org

To Hell And Back With Tracey Emin

The bad girl of British art Tracey Emin was in the final stages of preparing her exhibition for the Royal Academy in 2020 alongside work of her hero Edvard Munch.  Then she was struck down with an aggressive form of cancer and had several organs removed.  She wasn’t expected to survive and just nine days after the opening, the exhibition was closed for six months due to Covid, an experience she found heartbreaking because it had meant so much to her.  The RA describes the exhibition as an exploration of grief, loss and longing. 

In laying down its policy on Covid restrictions, the British Government ranked galleries and museums alongside nightclubs – a strategy Emin found extraordinary and which she attributes to most politicians having never visited a gallery or museum.

A painter, drawer, sculptor, photographer who works in a variety of media, Tracey Emin became the best known and most controversial of the young British artists who emerged in the late 1990’s.  Her work is largely autobiographical and speaks broadly of the female experience.

Emin once claimed that she had been in love with Munch since she was 18.  Munch died in 1944.  His work which she chose for the exhibition is, she argues, more soulful and mournful than his better known work (such as The Scream) and about women and the emotions they go through, which made him a very unique artist in his time. 

In an interview to accompany the exhibition The Loneliness Of The Soul, it was suggested to her that Munch’s work portrays the tragedy of women whereas Emin’s work speaks of their resilience.  She responded by saying that she has experienced tragedy in her life which has featured in her work. One only has to think of works such as “My Bed” which she entered in the 1998 Turner Prize.  The bed is littered with condoms, cigarette butts, empty vodka bottles etc. and references disastrous sexual experiences and the aftermath.  She refers to the hostility and derision that her work received – one irate critic complained that anyone can submit a bed to an exhibition.  Emin’s response is a classic “well they didn’t, did they”.

My Bed, 1998

She believes that 30 years ago, Munch’s paintings weren’t taken seriously and that The Scream was regarded as a cartoon joke.  But now that there is a greater awareness of the issues many women have to face, there is a greater respect for his work.

Emin explained that what she went through with her cancer treatment was like surviving a plane crash, and she is so grateful to have survived and for every single moment. She now seems a happier and content person.

When I slept I longed ForYou

The issue of rape and sexual violence that appears so often in Emin’s work was raised during the interview.  She came up with an interesting expression.  When she was at school in the 1970’s  school girls would speak of being broken into last night, and they weren’t referring to burglary.  They were referring to their first (most likely unwanted) sexual encounter and this was taken for granted.  Emin claims to have been raped more than once back then and the real issue for her was the aftermath, which included wanting to sleep with just about every guy in her home town of Margate as a revenge and to empower herself sexually.  But she realised that this was diabolical for her self-esteem.

Tracey Emin at White Cube Gallery

After viewing her work, many girls and young women have written to Emin discussing their own disastrous sexual experiences which often resulted in abortions.  Now with the Me Too movement and with women being more open about discussing these issues, she believes that people are starting to pay attention.  But with her confronting work dating back decades Emin was, arguably, well ahead of the whole movement.

Now that she has recovered from her cancer, which included being bed ridden for 3 months, she is planning to open her own art school and residency in Margate where smoking and excessive noise will not be tolerated.  The new Tracey. 

References;

BBC Newsnight

The Royal Academy

ZCZ Films

Goya - A Journey Into Darkness

It all seemed to be going swimmingly for Francisco Goya – until his nervous breakdown in 1792.  After that, he is credited with tearing up the rule book and reinventing what art can and should do and what it means to be human. 

He had been court painter to the Spanish royal family, who admired the rococo tapestries he had designed for the royal court in Madrid.  So they invited Goya to paint their portraits, and in the great tradition of telling it like it is, he did just that.  The result was a display of royal mockery never seen before in the history of art.  And yet, somehow he got away with it.  Flattery was not to be found on Goya’s CV.

The Parasol, a tapestry design painted by Goya, c1777

But the evil and the stupidity he saw in the world around him soon came to the surface in his art.  The catalyst for this was the nervous breakdown and physical illness that he suffered in the early 1790’s.  The exact nature of Goya’s illness has never been properly diagnosed but it left him functionally deaf and in fear of his own sanity.  Suddenly the light has gone out in his art and darkness has crept in as he explored the depths of his own imagination.

An example is “St Francis Borgia Attending a Dying Impenitent” of 1795.  From the saint's crucifix spurt drops of blood that land on the sinner's torso.  This painting is thought to represent Goya’s growing disillusionment with Christianity and its inability to explain the inhumanity in the world.

St Francis Borgia Attending a Dying Penitent, 1795, oil on canvas

In 1794, Goya painted the “Casa De Locos (The Madhouse)”, a stone gaol where all manner of appalling acts are being witnessed.  It is thought that these works represented, at least in part, all of Goya’s disappointments with the world around him.

Casa De Locos (The Madhouse). 1794, oil on panel

Around 1794, Goya painted “Yard With Lunatics”.  “The work stands as a horrifying and imaginary vision of loneliness, fear and social alienation, a departure from the rather more superficial treatment of mental illness in the works of earlier artists such as Hogarth.” Wikipedia

From commissioned portraitist, Goya had made the remarkable transformation into an artist exploring his own bleak view of the world. He claimed the painting is based on something he witnessed in Zaragoza where a yard was filled with lunatics, and two of them were fighting completely naked while their warder beats them.

Yard With Lunatics, 1794, oil on tinplate

In his book “Goya”, written shortly after his near death experience on a highway near Broome, Western Australia, author Robert Hughes discusses the profound isolation that engulfed Goya as a result of his deafness.  “Any trauma makes you think of worse trauma.  It sets the mind worrying and fantasizing about what else might be in store, and whether you can bear it if it comes.”  And with Goya’s illness not being properly diagnosed, he had no idea if the illness was temporary or permanent and what impact it would have on his career.  And all this was exacerbated by his increasing deafness.

Self Portrait, c.1815, oil on canvas

Hughes tells us that the eighteenth century was the heyday of the prison as isolator, long before the concept of prison as a reformatory was to creep into minds of European governments.  Whilst madhouses were even worse because no one had any idea of how to treat the mad, so they were simply dumping grounds for the psychotic, the deranged and the wayward.  No doubt, this fed into Goya’s exploration of the dark side of human existence.

What was to follow of course, was his famous Caprichos, his disasters of war series (inspired by Napoleon’s invasion of Spain) and the black paintings of his final years.  Interestingly, Spain went into a coma (artistically speaking) for over 50 years following Goya’s death in 1828.  Perhaps his successors were intimidated by the sheer power and darkness of his vision.

References;

Rococo  -  BBC TV

Something Wicked This Way Comes -  The Independent

Wikipedia

Bill Henson - Art & Politics

“Meaning comes from feeling”, is a favourite quote from Bill Henson. To describe Henson as a photographer seems to understate the significance of his work and the motivations behind it.  He lives in a world within a world, “a retreat of quiet contemplation and dark imaginings”. Although there are classical overtones in his work, his imagery is often dark, mildly disturbing and gritty.  Henson believes the best art can be life-affirming but perhaps also disconcerting and confronting and it’s this paradox that brings an edginess to his art.  He claims that the images that have had the most profound impact on him artistically are paintings, not photographs.

Henson’s photograph of conductor Simone Young from 2002

The portrayal of children at around the age of puberty in much of Henson’s work requires explanation.  It’s an age of transition where the person is neither child nor adult.  It’s a time, says Henson, for experimentation, for self-examination when things can go very well or very badly.  The late Edmund Capon thought that Henson’s portrayal of adolescents was about vulnerability, about being on the cusp of knowledge where one is aware of things but doesn’t know how to deal with them.

Untitled 2001, 127cm x 180cm

His career dates back to the 1970’s and has courted controversy within the art world from time to time.  That controversy spilled over into the broader community as a result of an exhibition Henson held at Sydney’s Roslyn Oxley Gallery in 2008 – an exhibition that attracted the ire of then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The exhibition featured images of naked adolescents (some aged only 13) that were seized by police and an argument raged over whether the exhibition was art or child pornography.  Kevin Rudd described the exhibition as revolting and stressed his belief that children need to have their innocence protected. 

Interestingly, then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, who owned a Henson work, called for level heads to prevail.  He was concerned about police “tramping through art galleries and libraries” being an attack on freedom. But reports that Henson had been allowed to scout for models at a local school complicated the debate.  Two things need to be emphasized here; firstly he was ALLOWED to scout for models. Secondly, where else was he meant to find them?  Go doorknocking?  Roam around sports grounds?

Untitled 1994, 250cm x 244cm

I have no recollection of any journalist having the courage to ask Rudd if he actually saw the exhibition, nor did any of them remind Rudd that Henson had been Australia’s representative at the Venice Biennale with similar work.

A few years after the Sydney show, I attended a talk at the Gippsland Art Gallery given by Henson during an exhibition of his work there.  Someone asked him to comment on the controversy and his response was quite enlightening.  As he was flying off to Sydney for the opening, a New South Wales state Labor politician was jailed on child sex charges.  Henson believes that Rudd was looking for a distraction and someone got into Rudd’s ear about the exhibition, which was just what the Prime Minister was looking for.

Untitled 2017

The police carried out interviews with the parents of the children depicted in Henson’s work and no one was prepared to lay charges.  So the story promptly died – at least as far as the 24 hour news cycle is concerned. 

Sensibly, Henson remained silent at the time whilst many in the art community passionately came to his defence.  The issue of freedom of artistic expression became central in the debate.

At the opening of the Melbourne Art Fair in 2010, Henson broke his silence over the controversy.He called for politicians to make art available for everyone in the community, not to stop people from seeing it.“We need a politics that makes the world safe for art.Art itself can never be entirely safe as it is a form of truth and truth is a wild thing for us to tame.”

Untitled 2008, 127 x 180 cm

“We see a new growth in censoriousness and an impulse to restrict the conditions under which art is produced - an absurd attempt to conflate artistic freedom and child welfare as an issue.  The idea that the two can be mutually exclusive is absurd.  Everything we know about the world comes to us through our bodies, the idea of banning the human body at whatever age as a subject for art is ridiculous when you look at it in a historical context.”  One only has to think of the paintings of Balthus decades earlier.

Balthus, Therese Dreaming, 1938

Henson has remained in contact with many of the children (now adults) depicted in his work and their parents, and they have expressed pride in their involvement.

Henson wants politicians to be more statesmanlike and lead, rather than pander to fear (real or imagined) about the portrayal of the human body in art.  Well, given the current crop of political “leaders” in this country, I would suggest that Henson shouldn’t hold his breath.

References;

ABC TV – 7:30

ABC TV - Lateline

The Art of Bill Henson, Obsessions documentary

Emma Minnie Boyd

As author Brenda Niall tells the story in her 2002 book “The Boyds”, Australia’s most famous artistic dynasty began with four men; Victoria’s first Chief Justice, a convict turned successful brewer, a military officer and a doctor/squatter. Initially, reading this book brought back memories of Tolstoy’s War and Peace in that the reader is confronted with an enormous family tree that runs to three pages.

The scale of that tree can be attributed to the simple fact that most of them bred like rabbits.  What is remarkable is the proliferation of artistic offspring produced by these various alliances; painters, potters, sculptors, writers and architects.

For this blog, I am focusing on the career of Emma Minnie Boyd (1858-1936) arguably the first significant artist of the dynasty.

Minnie Boyd; Interior With Figures - The Grange, 1875, watercolour

With the a’Beckett fortune behind her (William a’Beckett was Victoria’s first Chief Justice), Emma Minnie lived a privileged existence both in Victoria and the UK.  She spent six years at the Gallery School in Melbourne, as well as private lessons with none other than Louis Buvelot – the finest landscape painter of his generation.  Her early interior scenes are my favourites, they depict scenes at the Boyd’s Tudor style mansion “Glenfern” in East St Kilda (which still exists) and “The Grange” at Harkaway (which doesn’t).  They are small in scale but very intricate.

Minnie Boyd; Corner Of A Drawing Room, 1887, oil on canvas

Minnie and Arthur Merric Boyd, were contemporaries of the Heidelberg school artists; Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder etc. but being married, they remained on the fringes of that movement.  Life in the male dominated artists’ camps of the late 1880’s was not a proposition for a lady and besides, the others were all single.  She was fortunate to have a painter-husband who encouraged her in her career.

The Boyds moved to the UK in 1890 and their work was shown at the Royal Academy.  They lived in relative comfort, but the poverty of rural England began to disturb Minnie.  The industrial revolution had effectively destroyed cottage industries and Minnie was encouraged by a local vicar to take part in village life and charitable work.  Her painting “To The Workhouse” is a reflection of these times.  But they also toured Europe, largely on the proceeds of Emma a’Beckett – Minnie’s mother.  They moved back to Victoria in 1894.

Minnie Boyd; To The Workhouse, 1891, oil on canvas

Niall writes that their experiences in Europe didn’t change the Boyd’s greatly as artists, although being exposed to rural poverty awoke a social conscience in Minnie and she became deeply religious.  Back in Melbourne, Minnie and Arthur Merric attempted to live a more independent existence but were still heavily reliant on Emma’s “bounty”.

In 1902, the Boyd’s held a joint exhibition in the ballroom of Como House which was regarded as an enviable coup.  The exhibition, which was organised by wealthy patron Caroline Armytage was considered a commercial success.

Arthur Merric Boyd; Pastoral, 1899, watercolour

Yet it appears that their status as artists was hard to define.  Their perceived privileged background was an uneasy fit with the (romanticised) bohemian image of the serious artist.  And these artists may have envied their connections.  Yet among the wealthy upper class of Melbourne they were both insiders and outsiders.  There appeared to be a slight vein of eccentricity that ran through the Boyd Dynasty and certainly Minnie and Arthur Merric felt awkward about using friendships for money.  Yet the more they needed to sell their work the harder it became.  Eventually, Minnie began teaching.

Minnie Boyd; Harkaway, 1879, watercolour

Looking at Minnie’s early work, I’m left wondering why she didn’t become a more prominent artist, as she had been exhibiting her work from the age of fifteen.  Being a woman in a male dominated profession only provides part of the answer.  Once again, the family tree provides the other – she had five children and was a devoted mother.  Still, she was one of those rare artists who was able to combine an artistic career with raising a large family.  She was equally adept at watercolours and oils and was quite versatile in her output.

Just like her mother before her, Minnie became the centre of Boyd family life.  She gave religious sermons to her children, although it was not of the ‘fire and brimstone’ kind.  One of her sons (Martin) believes that the literal earnestness with which Minnie accepted her religion was the result of her need for some unalterable centre of stability.

After being frail for some years, Minnie died in 1936 at the age of 78.  She had been exhibiting landscapes at the Victorian Artist’s Society until seven years earlier.

References;

The Boyds, Brenda Niall, Melbourne University Press, 2002

Wikipedia

Glimpses Of Another World

With my upcoming exhibition at Tacit Galleries in Collingwood, I am returning to an earlier theme in my art practice, that of institutional environments.  The contrast between internal and external light is crucial in this work.  But also, there is the theme of mental incarceration.  The mind can play cruel games with us, imprisoning us with our own thoughts and inner turmoil.  Locked away in our preoccupations, our loneliness, there is a world out there that we sometimes feel unable to engage with.

View From The Attic, oil on canvas, 77 x 71 cm

The windows in these scenes could be computer screens in our so-called “connected” age.  Or they could be transparencies through which we view the world, made semi opaque by our preoccupations and inner turmoil.  But, as Olivia Laing discusses in her book “The Lonely City”, windows can be analogous to eyes.  Thus a sense of being walled off from the world is combined, even exacerbated by a sense of almost unbearable exposure.

Inside The Tower, Willsmere, oil on canvas, 76 x 61 cm

The theme of institutional environments in my art practice dates back to the 1990’s when I was studying art at RMIT University.  Contributing factors to this theme include;

• A history of depression in my family

• Having a half-brother who worked as a publications officer with the Mental Health Authority in the 1970’s & 80’s. He once drove me around the grounds of Willsmere Psychiatric Hospital in Kew. I can recall thinking to myself that if I was mad, I wouldn’t mind spending some time in this place – but of course, I never went inside. Not until the facility was closed which brings me to…

• Attending an open day at Willsmere in the early 1990’s, just after the facility had closed. I can remember it being an overcast drizzly day which set the scene perfectly

• The series “Jonathan Miller’s Madness” which was screened on ABC TV whilst I was studying at RMIT, which discussed the history and treatment of mental illness

• Witnessing the performance piece “Going Bye Byes” where British artist Stephen Taylor Woodrow converted a gallery space in Fitzroy into a hospital ward. This was part of the 1993 Melbourne International Festival

• Working in the state government offices in Treasury Place in buildings of a similar vintage to Willsmere and witnessing these offices being emptied of staff during the Kennett Government era

• Visiting the Cunningham-Dax collection of psychiatric art at the Victorian Artists Society whilst studying at RMIT

• Seeing the closure of psychiatric institutions as a symptom of a less caring society

• Arranging an inspection of the former Aradale Psychiatric facility in Ararat in western Victoria in 1998. Just me, the caretaker and this vast empty complex which is almost identical to Willsmere

Some of these dot points fall under the heading of political influences, but I have to remind myself that I am not necessarily painting “causes”. Instead, I am focusing on states of mind, although those states can be at least partially governed by external factors.

Consulting Rooms, oil on canvas, 42 x 61 cm

The concept of an existence outside the mainstream has always intrigued me, hardly surprising given my somewhat dysfunctional background.  For many years I tried to live a “mainstream” existence and failed.  My art practice gives me the opportunity to explore the “non-mainstream” as well as investigating the psychology of space as a metaphor for states of mind.  Perhaps there is a longing for human company in these works.  Then again, the concept of asylum also means sanctuary, refuge – that is, a safe place to be.

German psychiatrist Freda Fromm-Reichmann was one of the pioneers in the study of loneliness.  Her writings on the subject include, “Loneliness in its quintessential form is of a nature that is incommunicable by the one who suffers it.  Nor, unlike other non-communicable emotional experiences can it be shared via empathy.  It may well be that the second person’s empathic abilities are obstructed by the anxiety producing quality of the mere emanations of the first person’s loneliness.”

Art can play an important role in providing an avenue for artists to express their loneliness, their psychological pain in a creative, non-confrontational way.

Domestic Bliss, oil on canvas, 76 x 56 cm

I was tempted to title this exhibition “Lost Connections”, borrowed from the title of a book written by Johann Hari in which he discusses the causes of depression and some surprising cures.  But as Olivia Laing explains, loneliness can be the catalyst for creativity, for seeing the world with remarkable clarity.

The dynamic between sanctuary and confinement, beauty and loneliness often informs my work.  The source material may be a photograph I took a few weeks ago, or many years ago.  Light is used to create a sense of beauty or quiet contemplation in a scene that some may find disturbing.

“Glimpses Of Another World”, opens at Tacit Galleries, 191-193 Johnson St. Collingwood on 23rd March 2022.

References;

“The Lonely City” by Olivia Liang

“Lost Connections” by Johann Hari

Dorothea Tanning - 70 Years An Artist

‘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

In 2019, Tate Modern held the first large-scale exhibition of American artist Dorothea Tanning in 25 years, bringing together 100 works from her 70 year career – enigmatic paintings and sculpture.

Dorothea Tanning (1910 – 2012) was born in Galesburg, Illinois, a town where “nothing happened except the wallpaper”, she said.  It’s claimed her childhood was repressed and tedious and it wasn’t until she arrived in New York and fell in with the surrealists that she found her true self.  She wasn’t keen to explain what the inspirations were for her disturbing night fantasies or what exactly was going on.  But she enjoyed an enduring career as a painter, sculptor and writer.  And this despite living in the shadows of her famous husband Max Ernst for 30 years.

Dorothea Tanning with Max Ernst

It was Tanning’s powerful 1942 self portrait ‘Birthday’ that first attracted the attention of Ernst.  Later he divorced his third wife Peggy Guggenheim and married Tanning in a curious joint ceremony with Man Ray and Juliet Browner in 1946.  Afterwards, Tanning and Ernst moved to Sedona, Arizona where they built a house and immersed themselves in their art.  So harsh was the landscape that sunflowers were about the only flower that could survive there.

Birthday, 1942, oil on canvas, 102 x 65 cm

She said she wanted to depict “unknown but knowable states”, to suggest there was more to life than meets the eye.  She wanted to combine the familiar with the strange to create an unsettling surrealist space. Her most famous painting, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music) from 1943 got its title from a Mozart serenade and it’s not clear if we are looking at 2 girls, or the same girl before and after seeing the threatening sunflower.  It’s thought that the girls are Dorothea Tanning and that the painting was inspired by a nightmare.  The whole painting reeks of subconscious anxiety and the sunflower is thought to be a masculine presence.  Perhaps some childhood trauma is being remembered here.

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1943, oil on canvas 41 x 61 cm

“Please don’t ask me to explain my paintings, I don’t think it’s possible.  I paint, I can only describe this as a drive.”

It no doubt grated with her that for years she was labelled a woman surrealist. From the mid 1950’s, her work became more abstract reflecting her passion for dance, music and performance - perhaps combined with her earlier love of gothic and romantic literature.

Dogs of Cynthera 1963, oil on canvas, 197 x 297 cm

In the mid 1960’s she and Ernst moved to Paris and she declared that she was “fed up with turpentine” after which she began to produce soft sculptures using her Singer sewing machine.  This resulted in her installation ‘Hotel Du Pavot – Chambre 202’ of 1970-73 which consists of figures seemingly trying to escape the hotel room (perhaps the same hotel from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik).  Furniture seems to be metamorphosing into limbs, thighs and the scene is almost macabre.  “I set myself terrible goals” she once said.  “People said these sculptures are too soft, they won’t last.  They might as well have said they are dead”.  Her message may have been that life and love are soft and won’t last forever hence there is a deliberate fragility in her sculptures.

Hotel Du Pavot, 1970-73, installation, wool fabric synthetic fur and ping pong balls

Tanning believes this work to be directly related to a song popular in her childhood.

      In room two hundred and two
      The walls keep talkin' to you
      I'll never tell you what they said
      So turn out the light and come to bed.

The song was written in the 1920’s and laments the fate of Kitty Kane, a one-time Chicago gangster’s wife who poisoned herself in room 202 of a local hotel.

Like so many artists, Tanning’s art was her means of understanding the world around her.  She continued to write until the end – her last book of poems was published when she turned 100.

“I’ve done everything I could to escape my biography, but I think we’re prisoners of our events.”

Tanning at the Tate exhibition.  The painting to her left is 'Tango Lives' from 1977

References;

Dreamideamachine.com

Tate.org.uk

The Art of the Dark, BBC TV

dorotheatanning.org