#dorotheatanning

Tempest in Yellow, Dorothea Tanning, 1956, Minneapolis Institute of Art: Paintings

abstracted image with figure in LRC with well-defined face; figural elements in LLC; predominately yellow with tans, browns and cream in LLC, blue in top center, and orange and pink in ULC; grey strip frame Size: 38 1/4 x 57 1/2 in. (97.16 x 146.05 cm) (canvas) 39 7/8 x 59 1/4 x 2 9/16 in. (101.28 x 150.5 x 6.51 cm) (outer frame) Medium: Oil on canvas

Seventh Peril (Septième péril) from The 7 Spectral Perils (Les 7 périls spectraux), Dorothea Tanning, 1950, MoMA: Drawings and Prints

Purchase Size: composition (irreg.): 14 3/8 × 10 7/16" (36.5 × 26.5 cm); sheet: 19 13/16 × 12 3/4" (50.4 × 32.4 cm) Medium: One from a portfolio of seven lithographs

TANNING, DOROTHEA ( Estados Unidos, 1910)

This is my favorite painting, and I’ll explain why: 

I first saw Dorothea Tanning’s Children’s Games when I was 15. The painting embodied both a playfulness and an emerging unknown in me, yet I couldn’t grasp it. As I grew older, I better understood my connection in its desperate chase, femininity tearing down layers of lust and vulgarity beneath the surface. Her painting captures young girls’ desperate confrontation with the erotic unknown, how I felt evading temptation and still brutally longing for it. 

Maintaining fantasies of innocent romance, I felt restricted by a femininity I was just as eager to embrace. By depicting girls’ growing pains with the foresight of a woman who’s found her balance, Tanning’s art showed me the perils of defining womanhood. Seeing her painting, I learned her balance. I am not kept by my sexuality or femininity, and I now choose to tear down the walls that define it so strictly. 

I wish to see if digital media can create pieces like this, or whether there is a kind of rawness of something made without technology.