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Anne Umland: There was something about Surrealism,
with its emphasis on the dream, and on fantasy,
and on the unconscious, and of reshaping society,
that gave any number of women artists
this sense of freedom and possibility.
There were a number of female artists
who worked within Surrealist circles
and with Surrealist ideas and with concepts.
And today I'm going to show you just a few
of my favorites of those.
So Claude Cahun was a French artist
who moved to Paris in the early 1920s,
was involved both with experimental theater
companies and an outspoken member of the Parisian lesbian
community between the two World Wars.
So here, we're looking at this tiny, jewel-like, black and
white photographic self-portrait.
You see Cahun's face reflected--
or is it trapped--
in the glass surface of a bell jar,
which is an everyday object typically used
for protecting delicate things.
Another of my favorites in the collection
is Meret Oppenheim's carefully fur-covered teacup, saucer,
and spoon.
With this simple gesture of lining these items, normally
associated with genteel domesticity, with gazelle fur--
according to legend, this object was inspired by a conversation
that she had with the artists Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso.
At the time, she was wearing a fur-covered bracelet
that she had designed,
and Picasso looked at that and said, "Oh, you
can cover anything with fur these days."
To which Meret Oppenheim replied, "Even this cup,
saucer, and spoon."
Oppenheim transforms the everyday
into something that is at once seductive,
invites us to touch it, and repulsive,
because the moment you begin to think of this on your breakfast
table in the morning and drinking out of that,
things rapidly become very strange.
So another work in the collection
by a woman artist associated with Surrealism
is Frida Kahlo's Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair.
This is a characteristic work by Kahlo in the sense
that it is autobiographical and it is a self-portrait.
But it is unusual in the way that she is depicting herself.
It is, I think, best described as the aftermath of a hair cut.
This is painted in 1940, immediately
following Kahlo's divorce from her husband, Diego Rivera.
And in fact, the oversized gray suit
she wears and the crimson red shirt are attributes of Rivera.
And here you see her donning them
in what is both perhaps an act of mourning
but also one of self-assertion, and of autonomy,
and of setting out on her own.
Kahlo is someone who always resisted
the label "Surrealism."
She didn't like to be categorized that way,
although she appreciated the French Surrealist poet--
and Surrealism's leader--
André Breton's great enthusiasm for her work,
which he described, I think, as akin to a ribbon wrapped around
a bomb.
And I think that gets at the peculiar combination
of both delicacy of realization here
and the implicit violence of this act of cutting
your hair completely off, as evidenced
by all of these writhing tendrils scattered
across the floor, and even a little braid draped over here.
So another work that I could spend hours looking at
is Remedios Varo's meticulously painted dreamscape,
The Magician, or The Juggler.
And it's really worth getting in close
to the figure of the magician here,
both to see how she's rendered this fantastical outfit of his
that seems to sparkle and glow with light
and to get a close look at the facial features that
are in the shape of a pentagram, a five-sided shape that
is a sign of enlightenment.
And that, in fact, in this picture,
is made of mother-of-pearl inlaid
into the surface of this painting.
And that, for Varo, was also a material
that symbolized enlightenment.
In the early 1940s, she fled Europe, fascism, the war,
and settled in Mexico City.
And there she became part of a vibrant group of émigré,
exiled artists and intellectuals.
Varo, in fact, along with Frida Kahlo and her great friend
Leonora Carrington, are the three great women
artists associated with Mexican Surrealism.
And because Varo painted relatively few works
and there are virtually none in public collections
in the United States, she is the furthest thing from a household
name here in this country, whereas in Mexico, she's
very well-known.
In traditional art histories, you
might read a lot about the way that the male Surrealists
celebrated women as muses, as their inspiration,
as passive objects.
And I think what is important to remember
is that women played just as much of an important role
as active makers, as creative forces,
as poets or playwrights or painters or collagists.
Here at the museum and elsewhere,
we all want to do everything that we
can to make that aspect of women's involvement
with Surrealism more widely known.
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