Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World with Alyce Mahon

A talk with Alyce Mahon, author of Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World. About the book This study overhauls canonical accounts of Surrealism, demonstrating how one woman artist expanded its activity and expression in bold new ways for the modern age. Born on the day of a hurricane in Galesburg, Illinois, Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012) would become a figure at the very heart of the avant-garde, among a close circle of contemporaries including Joseph Cornell, Max Ernst, Lee Miller and Man Ray. Her art and philosophical ideas reveal her transformative impact on post-war Surrealism, and her life story reveals how she skilfully navigated her role as a woman artist on the international stage. Alyce Mahon maps Tanning’s extraordinary seventy-year career—from Chicago and Arizona to Paris and Seillans, through to her final years in New York—and traces how these landscapes were reshaped into kaleidoscopic imagined worlds in her paintings, sculptures and writings. About Alyce Mahon Alyce Mahon is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History and a Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Surrealism and the Politics of Eros, 1938–1968; Eroticism and Art; The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde, and numerous essays on Surrealism and the international avant-garde. Accessibility • Buckingham House is located away from the college's main building, situated on Buckingham Road - directly opposite (across the road from) the turning circle/main entrance to the college. • The entrance is accessible via a power-assisted door with a 'Push to Open' button. Past this door, in the entrance vestibule, is a set of manual glass double doors, which can be pushed or pulled. • Gendered toilets and one accessible toilet are located at the rear of the conference centre, to the right of the servery. • The lecture theatre is located at the very end of the foyer via manual wooden double doors with pull handles, leading to a vestibule. • Turning left, there is a route to a lift, which provides access to the front row of seating and the stage. • Use of the lift must be pre-arranged as a key is required to operate it. See here for more information about College accessibility: https://cambridgemeetingspace.com/accessibility-information Please get in touch if you have any further queries or requirements: [email protected] or call the Porter's Lodge at +44 (0)1223 762100.