The woman surrealists have always interested me, they are often unknown, not recognised working in the background to their male counterparts. It is why I live in Paris in a Mallet Stevens building that was once the artist studio of
Tamara de Lempicka. Paris was after all the heart of this wonderful movement in the 1920's. Of course it soon moved to the rest of the world to Prague, London, New York, Mexico City and parts of the Caribbean. Women had to move from the social confines of Europe and form their own societies that permitted them to work freely. Often lesbians they gave up normal married lives for this freedom. As stuffy Europe was inhibited so they moved to the Americas. Yesterday I spent a wonderful morning in
LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where they have created an incredible exhibition that anybody interested should go to.
There was so much to see, the work of Lee Miller,
Frida Kahlo, Dorothea Tanning, Kay Sage.
I found I was fascinated and horrified with the breasts on a plate of Lee Miller's and Ruth Bernard's photograph of a baby in a hand. So much to see.
I fell in love with Louise Bourgeois's huge spiders long ago. I wanted to live with one in my bedroom. The terrified men would leave immediately. Here in the exhibition she had made sewn together figures making love into sofas.
I highly recommend this wonderful exhibition and well done Los Angeles for being brave enough to put it on when there are so many strong Male surrealist artists, Dali and Man Ray,
among them..
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