Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the life and work of Dorothea Tanning. I was stunned in this show to realise that Tanning lived to be 101 was working for most of that life. She seemed to span different art worlds, from being a detailed surrealist in the 1930s to an expressive contemporary artist as the last work in the show was from 1997. I loved her interest in doors in her early work and the hyper realistic way she painted them. She even included the edge of a real door in one of her later works from 1984.   I liked the early self-portrait where she opens a door onto a corridor of other doors. I think they represent the hidden and the revealed but the leaflet says there were “portals to the unconscious”. Like Dali she was a fantastic painter. The pictures were explained well in the commentaries but I would have liked a bit more on some of them as they were complex works. I liked the inclusion of the early graphic work she did for Macey’s and the ...