Customer Reviews

Magnifying Mirrors: Women, Surrealism, and Partnership

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André Breton and other theorists of the Surrealist movement viewed women as muses and subjects of art, not as artists in their own right--yet many male Surrealists had affairs with, or even married, women who ultimately established substantial artistic reputations of their own. A careful study of the personal and artistic relationships within these couples could do much to illuminate, not only the work of the artists themselves, but the gender issues that affected artists, especially women artists, during the period of the 1930s through 1950s. I hoped that this book would present such a study, but unfortunately, it does not. It provides surprisingly little biographical information on the individuals or on their personal interaction, focusing mainly on detailed analysis--but only sometimes direct comparison--of specific works. I was further frustrated to see that most of the illustrations are in black and white, and only about half of the works described in detail appear at all.

I sampled two essays, those on Kay Sage-Yves Tanguy and on Lee Miller-Man Ray. The Sage-Tanguy essay was particularly unsatisfying. It gives almost no biographical information on either artist, and some of what it does give is inaccurate. It analyzes Sage's works in seemingly random order and compares them with those of Tanguy in only a few instances. The chapter on Miller and Ray was better, but concentrates more on their fashion photographs than on their more obviously Surrealist works.

Hubert is to be praised for including some less well known couples, such as Alice Rahon and Wolfgang Paalen, along with famous ones such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. However, her list contains some striking omissions, most notably Max Ernst-Dorothea Tanning. She covers Ernst in connection with Leonora Carrington, but his relationship with Carrington was relatively brief, whereas he actually married Tanning and spent his life with her after he moved to the United States.