About this episode
Alyce Mahon discusses the life and work of Surrealist artist Dorothea Tanning.
TODAY on the GWA Podcast, is art historian, Alyce Mahon discussing the great Surrealist, Dorothea Tanning. Born in Illinois in 1910, where she said “nothing happened but the wallpaper”, Tanning immersed herself in gothic literature to escape to other worlds. Travelling to Paris to hunt down the Surrealists, Tanning “entered” or “birthed” herself into art in 1942 with her self-portrait “Birthday”, which sees her bare-breasted and standing in front of slightly ajar doors that seemingly lead to nowhere. Settling in NYC, where she exhibited with Peggy Guggenheim, it was then to the wide-open landscape of Sedona Arizona, where she painted Caspar David Friedrich-like paintings of herself standing before nature – ”asserting the centrality of woman” (as Mahon wrote in her new book). She then returned to postwar France and, switching up her style, moved into a cloud-like and splintered abstractions, before turning to bodily-like soft-sculptures. Although she famously said, "don’t ask me to explain my paintings". Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and a Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, Mahon is one of the leading scholars on Surrealism in the world today. The…
People in this episode
Host: Katy Hessel
Guest: Alyce Mahon
Topics covered
- Surrealism
- Dorothea Tanning
- Art History
- Feminism in Art
- Modern Art
Keywords
- Alyce Mahon
- Dorothea Tanning
- Surrealism
- Art History
- Feminism
- Modern Art
- Self-Portrait
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Trinity College, University of Cambridge
Books & works: Birthday, Surrealism and the Politics of Eros, 1938-1968, Eroticism & Art, The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde
More episodes of The Great Women Artists
- Joan Snyder · June 3, 2026 · 44 min
- Venice Biennale special: Lubaina Himid · May 5, 2026 · 42 min
- Briony Fer on Sophie Taeuber-Arp · April 29, 2026 · 45 min
- Deborah Levy on Gertrude Stein · April 22, 2026 · 38 min
- Sonnet Stanfill on Elsa Schiaparelli · April 7, 2026 · 48 min
- Diane Apostolos-Cappadona on Mary Magdalene · April 2, 2026 · 54 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Great Women Artists podcast page.