Monday, May 21, 2012

I've always been attracted by the fantastic. - Dorothea Tanning


<i>Portrait de famille (Family Portrait)</i>

Portrait de famille (Family Portrait), 1954

Portrait de famille (Family Portrait)

1953-54
Oil on canvas
39 3/8 x 31 7/8 in.
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

" ....I've always been attracted by the fantastic.  You see I was born in Galesburg, a hamlet of Illinois, which is nothing exciting in itself, but my father, of Swedish origin, a very authoritarian man ...

Marcel Duhamel:   This is particularly evident in Family Portrait, where all the characters are represented in proportion to the importance they had then in your eyes.  Looks like you settled accounts?


Not really ... It is more generally a comment on the hierarchy within the sacrosanct family.  My father, despite everything, brought us a breath of exoticism.  He told stories of distant snows, the fleeing boy skates on the ice, fast, fast ... the wolf at his heels ... I felt the hoarse wolf breath on my neck ... it was delicious.



     —from interview with Marcel Duhamel, Dorothea Tanning: Numéro Spécial de XXe Siècle.  Paris: Editions XXe Siècle, 1977, p. 110.

Source: http://www.dorotheatanning.org/





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