Introduction
"Why do artists remain in cities? Must they chum with collectors, attend openings, witness name dropping in the upper East and West-side pastures to make good pictures? No, we will do it the other way." Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst on why they choose to live in Sedona.
In 1943 Sedona, Arizona got two new occupants, something remarkable considering the town only managed a population of two thousand in the 1970s, those occupants were Dorothea Tanning(1910-2012) and Max Ernst (1891-1976), notable surrealist artists. They proceeded to live in Sedona off and on for the next thirteen years with their last visit in 1956 when their efforts to get Max American citizenship failed. Dorthea and Max were both highly notable surrealists artists, Max was one of the creators of the Dada movement and Dorothea was a important American artist. During their time in Sedona, Dorothea created notable works such as Maternity, and even went on to star in Han’s Ritcher’s film Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947). Tanning while having had multiple exhibitons of her various works, has only had one other exhibiton to my knowledge, a digital collection of her works and a timeline of her life, she also praticipated in a oral history project conducted by the Archives of American Art. It's important to discusses and display her life because the stories she was apart of and the works she created, Tanning was a feminist artist in the surrealist movement before that concept was widely popular.
Curatorial Statement:
Before this working on this exhibit, I had no idea who Tanning was, but in a European history class we were discussing the Dada movement, where Max Ernst and his wife came up. I went on to research her and the more I learned, the more I connected with her life. I choose her as the focus for my exhibit and began to research, I started with her two autobiographies and a database created for her by her foundation. Through the database, I was able to find a lot of really great pictures of Dorothea's life, the next part of the process was going through those and selecting which ones I wanted to feature. I found her two autobiographies and a couple of other books in my university library, including one book that turned out to be quite the find, featuring Max Ernst's signature. I found a lot of really great objects and attempted to show as many as I could, but the ones that didn't fit apart of my collection page which displays all the objects I curated for this project. I hope that as you go through this exhibit you get to see what I saw in an American artist who lived a long and incredible life.
Caitlyn Peed