Customer Reviews

Between Lives: An Artist and Her World

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Indifferent writing, a surprising lack of insight into the incredible milieu in which she moved, and gratuitously catty remarks towards the great Leonora Carrington (an earlier Ernst protege who Tanning apparently feels threatened by 50 years after the fact) mar what should have been a very interesting memoir of a remarkable life. Tanning, Max Ernst's companion of 30 years and a compelling painter in her own right, was at the heart of one of the great artistic movements of the 20th Century, but this work reads like a flat travel log of places gone to and roll call of persons met. The paucity of detail,personal anectdotes, and characterization of any of the luminaries mentioned mark Tanning's bio as a great disappointment.
--A two star book with one star added because any information on this artistic epoch provided by an active participant has to be considered an important contribution.

I love this book. Ms Tanning writes with such a zest for life and creativity that I find it just spills over and communicates to the reader.
She lived an amzing life and came a long way from sleepy small town America. There was obviously a determination or a restless something at work.
Mosty of all I just enjoy the way she writes - it's a lively quircky style but to me it got across the kind of person I imagine Dorothea Tanning to be.
A work of character by a character -

Tanning turns out to be not just one of the most under-appreciated artists of her time, but a thoroughly delightful writer. The book is almost whimsical in its telling of her life with and without Max Ernst. Her descriptions of finding her muse, working against inertia, picking up emotional wreckage and continually finding herself anew are inspiring and told in such flowing prose you find yourself wanting to spend an afternoon with this wondrous woman. At the time of this review, she's still alive and kicking at 101 and I thank her so much for her extraordinary paintings, her delightful poetry (still getting published in New Yorker magazine) and this wonderful account of her life as artist/muse/wife and survivor.