Dorothea Tanning: From Sedona to Seillans

Dr. Alyce Mahon "DOROTHEA TANNING: FROM SEDONA TO SEILLANS."

As part of our community educational speaker series, Dr. Alyce Mahon continued our tradition of bringing world class experts in the museum and art field to the Verde Valley by speaking to a full house at the luncheon held April 9, 2019 at the Sedona Rouge Hotel banquet room. The audience included museum professionals and art lovers and supporters of the museum.

Dr. Alyce Mahon, is Associate Professor in Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Surrealism & The Politics of Eros (Thames & Hudson, 2005); Eroticism & Art (Oxford University Press, 2007) and The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde (forthcoming with Princeton University Press in 2020). She is currently completing a new book on Dorothea Tanning for Yale University Press.  She was doing research on Tanning while she was in Sedona.

Alyce has been involved in international exhibitions of Surrealism for over twenty years. She curated Dorothea Tanning: Behind the Door Another Invisible Door for the Reina Sofia, Madrid, (Oct. 2018-Jan. 2019), now showing at the Tate Modern, London as Dorothea Tanning until June 9, 2019. She is also the curatorial advisor for Leonor Fini: Theatre of Desire, 1930-1990 (Museum of Sex, New York, Sept 2018- March 2019).  She has advised on and written catalogue essays on Leonora Carrington (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism (Manchester City Art Gallery), Surrealism & Design (Victoria & Albert Museum) and Surrealism: Desire Unbound (Tate Modern).

Dr Mahon spoke about Tanning’s Sedona period and her obsessive interest in the landscape, body and desire, within her long career as a Surrealist. The speaker drew on her research for the Dorothea Tanning retrospective exhibition that she curated for the Reina Sofia, Madrid and the Tate Modern, London for 2018-19. Her talk and powerful photographs included descriptions on the surrealist movement and some of the major artists involved in the movement. She spoke about how Ms. Tannings art changed over the years and how she was impacted by her time in Sedona. The talk included information on Tannings work in poetry, short stories, and novels, along with her work in regards to stage design and costumes for the ballet.

The presentation was followed by a Q&A session and time for various people who knew Dorothea Tanning when she lived in Sedona to meet Dr. Mahon.