When the American artist Dorothea Tanning discovered Surrealism in 1940s New York, she described it as “the infinitely faceted world I must have been waiting for”. Soon she was plumbing the depths of her own unconscious to offer up a bold new take on the movement’s dream-tapping aesthetic, from a uniquely feminine point of view. Where many of the male Surrealists depicted women as objects of desire, Tanning’s paintings tackled themes of domesticity and female sexuality with satisfyingly strange results. This eye-wielding protagonist and other Tanning works feature in the Fantastic Women exhibition, now on display at Copenhagen’s Louisiana Museum, celebrating the myriad contributions of female artists to Surrealism.
