“Dorothea Tanning: Musical Chairs” will be on view at Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco through May 4, 2024. The exhibition focuses on two paintings – Musical Chairs (1951) and Door 84 (1984) – placed in dialogue with one another and among a group of unique contemporary artist-designed chairs. Together these objects play with the notion of a children’s game, the use and treatment of fabric in art, and the metamorphosis of mundane household objects into more dynamic and engaging agents of a narrative.

"HARD/SOFT: Textiles and Ceramics in Contemporary Art" is open at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna through May 5, 2024.  The exhibition features the work of some 40 international artists who employ a wide range of materials often associated with craft, and addresses their exploration of imagery of the body; feminist ideas and gender stereotyping; the cultural and socio-economic associations attached to the materials; and questions of appropriation in artistic practices. Among the works on view is the installation Hôtel du Pavot, Chambre 202 (Poppy Hotel, Room 202) (1970-73).

"IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism" is open at The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, and will run through July 21, 2024, before beginning a two-year tour to the Musée National d'Art Contemporain, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hamburger Kunsthalle; Fundación Mapfré Madrid; and Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2025.  The exhibition celebrates the centennial of the Surrealist movement, with each partnering museum enhancing the core travelling group of works in all media with a focus on their own collections. Among the works on view in Brussels is the painting The Guest Room (1950-52).

"Désordres - Extraits de la collection Antoine de Galbert" will be on view at the Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon through July 7, 2024.  The exhibition features over 200 works of various media from the fields of modern art, contemporary art, art brut, and ethnography that, presented together in no particular order, challenge the museum and art world's conventional divisions into categories, movements and fields. As the collector has said, "It is really only the gaze of other people that can define a collection – which is actually a mode of expression in itself." Among the works displayed is the drawing "Etude pour Cousins" (1971).

"Surréalisme: Le Grand Jeu," will open at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, Switzerland on April 12 and run through August 25, 2024.  With this exhibition, the Museum marks 100 years since the publication of the first Surrealist manifesto and examines the movement’s fascination with the role of play and specific games together with broader concepts like esotericism and chance in Surrealist art.  Among the works on view will be the painting The Mirror (1950).

"Fantastic Visions: 100 Years of Surrealism from the National Galleries of Scotland" has opened at the Museum of Art Pudong in Shanghai, where it will remain on view until August 31, 2024. Drawn entirely from the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland and featuring over 100 major works by more than 50 artists, this is the first show devoted to Surrealism to be exhibited in China. Among the works on view are the suite of lithographs Les 7 Spectral Perils (1950), the sculpture Primitive Seating (1982), and the painting Tableau vivant (Living Picture) (1954).

Amy Lyford has published Exquisite Dreams: The Art and Life Dorothea Tanning (Reaktion Books, 2023). In this new monograph, Lyford focuses on key examples of Tanning's work in various media from her early Surrealist imagery through her late-career paintings. By discussing them in relation to concurrent topics of 20th-century art, society, and popular culture, and highlighting the artist's own ideas about ways to view her art, including a satirical, fantasy-based, documentary-style film about her paintings, Lyford examines Tanning's singular approach to creating a rich visual experience for the viewer.

Anna Watz has edited a new collection of essays, A History of the Surrealist Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2023).  Her essay "The Mother Figure in the Surrealist Novel" and Catriona McAra's "Feminist-Surrealism in the Contemporary Novel" examine Tanning's novel Chasm: A Weekend, while Katharine Conley's essay "Autobiography" discusses Tanning's memoir Birthday in the context of Surrealist writings. These are among twenty scholarly essays that consider many texts previously left out of critical accounts of the surrealist movement -- texts written by men and women in French, English, Spanish, German, Greek, and Japanese, from its emergence in the 1920s and 1930s, through the post-war and postmodern periods, and up to the present moment.

Kasmin Gallery has published the exhibition catalogue Dorothea Tanning: Doesn’t the Paint Say It All?  Both the show and the book take their title from Tanning’s own essay entitled "To Paint," which is included in the publication. This poetic and impassioned text, first published in 1986, describes the artist's creative process and the nature of the medium itself.   The catalogue also explores the artist's unique surrealist practice and the tension between abstraction and figuration in her work through reflections on Tanning’s paintings by three art historians and scholars of surrealism: Mary Ann Caws, Katharine Conley, and Victoria Carruthers.  Hyperallergic nominated the publication as one of "The Best Art Books of 2022."   

Susan L. Power contemplates the motif of doors in her essay "Portes et miroirs dans le monde surconscient de Dorothea Tanning" in the exhibition catalogue SurréAlice: Lewis Carroll et les Surréalistes (Vol. 1 of 2, Strasbourg: Editions des Musées de Strasbourg, 2022, pp. 75-83). The publication explores the Surealists' interest in Carroll's work as a precursor and inspiration to their own.

Victoria Carruthers has published Dorothea Tanning: Transformations (Lund Humphries, 2020). A definitive study of the artist's life and career, this monograph provides a framework within which to consider the range and depth of Tanning's work and her enduring thematic preoccupations. The book is extensively illustrated and features previously unpublished material from interviews that the author conducted with Tanning between 2000 and 2009. Carruthers discusses the book in an interview found here.

We are looking for information about a number of paintings in the effort to fully document Dorothea Tanning's work for a catalogue raisonné. If you have seen any of these paintings, please contact us.

Concerning Wishes (1942)

Le Petit Marquis (1947)

Angel in Mauve and Orange (Study for Anges gardiens) (1947)

Les Infatigables (The Indefatigables) (1965)