Exhibit of Dora Maar, Picasso's Muse at Tate Modern (UK)
Dora Maar exhibition review, Tate Modern ★★★★★, 20 Nov 19 – 15 Mar 20, Dora Maar's surreal photographs come to Tate Modern for sweeping retrospective. Culturewhisper, Nov. 19, 2019.
You may not be familiar with the work of Dora Maar, unless you know the details of Pablo Picasso's biography. For decades she has been seen only as his tragic muse, a footnote in his epic career, overshadowed and overlooked. This exhibition at Tate Modern hopes to change all that, to give visitors an insight into her innovative work as a photographer and her later works on canvas. However, Picasso's impact on her life proves difficult to ignore.
Maar was born in Paris in 1907, but her father’s work took the family to Argentina, where she spent her formative years. On her return to France, and to mark the opening of her photographic studio, she changed her name from Henriette Theodora Markovitch to the snappier Dora Maar, taking on commercial assignments for clients including Ambre Solaire and the magazine Rester Jeune.
- Dora Maar, Untitled Fashion Photograph, 1935.
It was while trying to find innovative ways to advertise hair products and face creams that Maar’s talent for surrealism emerged. For a fashion shoot she captured the elegant back of a glamorous model, but replaced her head with a glittering star. For another assignment, presumably commissioned by the makers of an anti-ageing cream, she superimposed the image of a spider’s web (complete with arachnid) over the face of a young woman.
In these images, we see Maar’s playful side. A mannequin’s hand protrudes from the inside of a shell like a nightmarish hermit crab, at once an amusing assemblage while also prompting a sense of mild horror. It was such work that earned her the respect of prominent surrealists, such as André Breton and Paul Éluard, and she soon became a member of this mostly male, macho group.
- Dora Maar, Untitled (Hand-Shell) 1934.
To win admiration from such men, Maar had to be commanding, tough and thick-skinned. But her left-wing views also matched theirs. This was the 1930s and Europe was in the grip of the Great Depression, so feeling the pull of reportage, Maar took her camera to Spain, Paris and London and captured the desperation and hardship she witnessed there with sensitivity and artistry. A whole room is dedicated to this work and it is one of the best in the exhibition. Haggard French artists wrapped in blankets play cards and children play in doorways. All life is here.
In 1935 Maar met Pablo Picasso. While she was at the zenith of her career, he was at the lowest point of his and hadn't picked up a brush in months. He was attracted by her defiant spirit, as well as her beauty, and was reinvigorated by her intelligence and independence. She taught him new methods of photography and printmaking and it was, in fact, the politically minded Maar that persuaded him against fascism and inspired him to paint Guernica in response to the bombing of the Spanish town of that name. Maar then became his muse (he had first become infatuated with a photograph of her taken by Man Ray) and he made hundreds of portraits of her. But while this nine-year relationship helped Picasso, it would ultimately prove devastating for Maar...
Continued, https://www.culturewhisper.com/r/visual_arts/dora_maar_tate_modern_exhibition/14265
More, BBC: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190607-why-dora-maar-is-much-more-than-picassos-weeping-woman
Tate Modern, UK, https://www.tate.org.uk/
- Photo portrait of Dora Maar attributed to Man Ray.
- "The Weeping Woman" (Dora Maar), by Pablo Picasso, 1937, Tate Modern Collection.
"For me she's the weeping woman. For years I've painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism, and not with pleasure, either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me. It was the deep reality, not the superficial one."
"Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman....And it's important, because women are suffering machines." ~ Picasso.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weeping_Woman
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