In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States at Los Angeles County Museum of Art on artrepublic.com
Exhibition running from Jan 29 2012
until May 06 2012
In Wonderland is the first large-scale international survey of women surrealist artists in North America. Past surveys of surrealism have either largely excluded female artists or minimized their contributions. This landmark exhibition highlights the significant role of women surrealists who were active in these two countries, and the effects of geography and gender on the movement. Spanning more than four decades, In Wonderland features approximately 175 works by forty-seven extraordinary artists, including Frida Kahlo, Lee Miller, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tanning, Louise Bourgeois, and more. Surrealism called for the destruction of bourgeois culture and traditional standards and advocated intellectual and political liberty. When promoted in North America, these ideals flourished especially among the supposedly “second sex.” In standard studies on surrealism, female artists have been cast primarily as mistresses, wives, or muses—the inspiration for the male fetishized subject matter. This exhibition however explores the legacy of the movement in the United States and Mexico through its influence on several generations of women artists. Unlike their male counterparts, these artists delved into the unconscious as a means of self-exploration that enhanced an often haunting self-knowledge in their quest to exorcise personal demons. For women surrealists—whether natives by birth, émigrés, or temporary visitors—North America offered the opportunity for reinvention and individual expression, a place where they could attain their full potential and independence. In Wonderland illuminates the work of a diverse group of artists—both well-recognized and lesser known—who were active during a period that witnessed both the internationalizing of surrealism and the professionalizing of women in the visual arts in urban centers such as Mexico City, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The survey presents an extensive range of work, including paintings, works on paper, sculpture, photographs, and film. The works date primarily from about 1930 (the period when Lee Miller and Rosa Rolanda first experimented with surrealist photograph techniques) to 1968 (the year that Yayoi Kusama, working in New York City, presented one of her landmark happenings, “Alice in Wonderland,” in Central Park). A selection of later works is also included to illustrate surrealism’s historical overlap and influence on the feminist movement. OPENING HOURS: Mon, Tue, Thur: 12.00- 20.00 Fri: 12.00 – 21.00, Sat & Sun: 11.00 -20.00 Image Credits: Frida Kahlo, Autorretrato con collar de espinas y colibrí (Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird), 1940, © 2011 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, photo courtesy Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin Kaye Sage, Danger, Construction Ahead, 1940, © Estate of Kay Sage Tanguy, photo © Yale University Art Gallery Rosa Rolanda, Autorretrato (Self Portrait), c. 1945, © Estate of Rosa Rolanda Covarrubias, photo courtesy of Andrés Blaisten, by Francisco Kochen a  |
