The Surreal Journey of Dorothea Tanning
By - Harry Bulkeley
Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning - Inverarity, Robert Bruce, 1909-1999
"Ugh! This town is soooo small! I can't wait to move away." Many Forgottonia parents have heard their children moan that complaint. Some of the parents might have said it themselves when they were younger. It's perfectly natural for a kid growing up out here on the prairie to imagine the great, big world beyond.
Dorothea Tanning was one of those kids. Growing up at 420 Lawrence St., she described her hometown of Galesburg as "a place where you sat on the davenport and waited to grow up" and where "nothing happened but the wallpaper." She decided by age seven that she would go to Paris. Straining to get out, in high school, she found a refuge in her job at the Galesburg Public Library. There, she could get lost among the stacks and read of exotic people and places.
With her library earnings, she rented a cabin at Lake Bracken and for two weeks in the summer she drew and painted what was in her imagination because what she really wanted to do was be an artist. You can guess what her Swedish immigrant parents thought of that idea. They sent her to Knox College in hopes that it would bring some sense to her wild ideas.
Those ideas only grew wilder while she was there, and one day, she took off for Chicago without telling her parents. When she got there, she asked them to send her the trunk she had packed to start life on her own. Hoping to be an artist, naturally, she enrolled in art school. It only took her two weeks to figure out they were trying to teach every student to paint like Picasso, so she dropped out to pursue her own vision. She spent days in the great rooms of the Art Institute to learn the art of painting.
By day, she worked various jobs, such as a waitress and operated marionettes at the Chicago World's Fair. In the evening, she became acquainted with "eccentrics" and their "dubious alcohols." She described going on a date to a jazz club with a gangster. He was called away from the table and never came back. The next day, she read in the paper that he had been gunned down outside the club.
All the time she was painting and drawing and exhibiting her work at small galleries. In 1938 she moved to New York City and got a job as a commercial artist for Macy's. She finally was able to make her first trip to Paris was in the summer of 1939 just before World War II. She had hoped to meet the artists she admired but found the streets deserted and the artists in hiding or exile as the war loomed.
By then, she was producing her own paintings and getting noticed. Her style was surrealism which means I can't explain what they looked like. Today, people use the term "surreal" to describe anything that is not normal. Suffice it to say Dottie's paintings were far from normal.
She did do some things that artists are supposed to do. After meeting famous artist Max Ernst and his wife Peggy Guggenheim (yes, that Guggenheim), Max and Dottie ran off together and eventually got married and moved to Paris That seems like a must-do for any famous artist.
Her career took off from there. Not only did her work become famous and expensive, she and Max ran into the uppermost circles of the art world. Besides their apartment in New York City, they had a getaway in Sedona, Arizona, where they entertained folks like Marcel Duchamp and John Cage. (Trust me, they were famous.)
Finally, in 1949 Dorothea got to do what she had hoped for all those years ago in Galesburg- move to Paris. Not just Paris but she and Max had a place in the Loire valley and later in Provence. Yup, pretty must exactly the life we imagine for an artist.
Tanning was a very big deal in the art world for a long time. She has paintings in the Tate Modern Gallery, MoMA and the Whitney in New York City, the Smithsonian, and lots of other highfalutin museums. She designed sets for Balanchine ballets and avant-garde films. Later, she became a sculptor of "soft materials" like cloth. Just like everything else she did, those became highly sought after (read "expensive")
She also had a literary career, writing for magazines like Poetry, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. She gave $100,000 to endow a prize for the Academy of American Poets.
So, Dorothea Tanner really did live out her dream of becoming a world-famous artist. She died at the age of 101 and is buried in the most famous cemetery in Paris alongside other world-renowned artists like Oscar Wilde, Frederic Chopin, and Jim Morrison. Quite a legacy for a little girl who sat on a Davenport in Galesburg and waited to grow up.