In her own words...
Alain Jouffroy: Your sculptures – Ouvre-toi, for instance – are fragile on purpose, bound to decay. Like the human body. Are you detached from the notion of "duration," from the survival" of your work? Or do you feel compelled to challenge the underlying urge to preserve that exists in art?
Dorothea Tanning: These sculptures do show such a detachment. They will, in effect, last about as long as a human life – the life of someone "delicate." But it isn't a challenge, even though I find that being obsessed with the durability of a work doesn't appeal to me. I am often told, "What a pity your sculptures aren't more solid." They might as well say "dead," or "paralyzed." No, I'm sorry for them that it should have happened that way. But it did. When you fall in love you don't ask the beloved, "How long are you going to live?"
– from "Interview with Dorothea Tanning" in Dorothea Tanning, retrospective exhibition catalogue, Malmö, Sweden: Malmö Konsthall, 1993, p. 59. This interview was originally published as "Questions pour Dorothea Tanning entretien avec Alain Jouffroy, Mars 1974," in Dorothea Tanning: Oeuvre, retrospective exhibition catalogue, Paris: Centre National D'Art Contemporain, 1974.
