Alyce Mahon on Dorothea Tanning

The Great Women Artists

Katy Hessel

Arts

4.8 • 944 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 author of numerous books including Surrealism and the Politics of Eros, 1938-1968 (2005), Eroticism & Art (2005), The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde (2020), Mahon has also curated or advised on exhibitions on the likes of Leonor Fini, the great Argentine-born artist known for her meticulously rendered, proto-punk renaissance-like works, who she discussed with us on episode 48, as well as the Indian-born, once Cornish-based Ithell Colquhoun. Mahon was the curator of the monumental exhibition at Tate Modern in 2018, and now – has just published a brilliant, extensive book: Dorothea Tanning, a Surrealist world – our with Yale UP this month – that charts her life story across the places she lived in America and France and the place she imagined in her art, bringing alive her works, steeping them in history, and introducing us to Tanning’s surreal world – and I can’t wait to find out more. Alyce's book: https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300244601/dorothea-tanning/ Get 20% off Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World by Alyce Mahon when you purchase via the Yale University Press London website www.yalebooks.co.uk (RRP £30, offer price: £24) Enter code ALYCE when prompted in the checkout. UK orders only. Includes FREE UK P&P. Offer expires on 8 June 2026. This is an exclusive offer that will only be honoured on yalebooks.co.uk (and not through other retailers) and cannot be used in conjunction with other promotions. –– THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: www.famm.com/en/ www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome back to the Great Women Artists podcast. I'm very excited to bring you
0:06.6	today's episode, but just before we get to our sponsor, I am delighted to say that my new book,
0:11.7	The Story of Art Without Men, an illustrated guide to amazing women artists for younger readers,
0:17.8	or anyone, to be honest, is out now. You can buy it from your local bookshop
0:22.7	or wherever you get your books. And I'm thrilled to say that this series is supported by the
0:27.7	Levit Collection, a vast and varied art collection, and which in the last eight years has become
0:33.6	entirely focused on works by women artists. You can find much of this made up of
0:39.2	impressionists, surrealist, abstract expressionists, contemporary artists and more at FAM in Mujan in
0:45.6	France, the first museum in the world outside of the USA to have a permanent collection
0:50.9	dedicated to major female artists. It's spearheaded by Christian Levitt,
0:55.5	who has published three research books in this area. Located in the heart of the historic village
1:01.1	of Mujan Nican in the south of France, FAM features a stunning collection of nearly 100 works
1:07.0	by 90 internationally acclaimed and emerging female artists. The impressive exhibition of
1:12.5	paintings, sculptures and photographs from the Levitt Collection highlights the creative brilliance
1:17.6	of women who have played pivotal roles in shaping some of the major artistic movements,
1:22.7	from Impressionism to contemporary art. It's only 30 minutes away from Nice Airport,
1:29.0	and FAM, which stands for Female Art artists of the Mujan Museum, is open every day. And for further information and bookings,
1:35.3	please visit www.famfamfablem.com. I hope you enjoy this episode.
1:47.0	Hello, everyone. I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello everyone and welcome to The Great Women Artist podcast with me, Katie Hessel.
1:53.0	Some of you might know me from The Great Women Artists, an Instagram account I set up in October 2015,
1:59.0	which celebrates female artists on a daily basis, ranging
2:02.5	from young graduates to old masters. Well, in a similar fashion to the Instagram, this podcast
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