Yves Tanguy and Surrealism Jonathan Stuhlman
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Navigating a Constantly Shifting Terrain: Yves Tanguy and Surrealism Jonathan Stuhlman Charlotte, NC B.A. Bowdoin College, 1996 M.A. School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1998 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Art History and Architecture University of Virginia December, 2013 ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ II © Copyright by Jonathan Stuhlman All Rights Reserved December 2013 III Abstract: Yves Tanguy (1900-1955) was one of the first visual artists to join the Surrealist movement and was considered one of its core members for the majority of his career. He was also a close friend and longtime favorite of the movement’s leader, André Breton. Yet since his death, there has been surprisingly little written about his work that either adds to our understanding of why he remained in favor for so long and how he was able to do so. The aura of impenetrability that his paintings project, along with his consistent silence about them and a paucity of primary documents, has done much to limit the ways in which scholars, critics, and the public have been able (or willing) to engage with his work. As a result, Tanguy has been shuffled to the edges of recent developments in the critical discourse about Surrealism. This dissertation argues against the narrow, limited ways in which Tanguy’s art has been discussed most frequently in the past. Such interpretations, even those penned for exhibition catalogues and monographs supporting his work, have tended to be broad, diffuse, and biographically- and chronologically-driven rather than engaged with the works of art themselves and a critical analysis of the context in which they were created. This paper seeks to re-engage Tanguy’s art with the historical debates about some of the core issues that defined Surrealism, particularly those concerning proper technical approaches, subject matter, and paths of artistic development for its members, and to do so through theoretical mechanisms utilized by recent scholars to produce rich analyses of the work of Tanguy’s colleagues. IV Each of this dissertation’s three chapters is organized around an issue that was central to Surrealist ideology but that has not yet been discussed in depth in relation to its impact on Tanguy’s artistic practice and career. Each chapter will address a significant set of tensions at play in Surrealism and will explore how they influenced Tanguy’s mature work. Of particular importance to this project are the relationships between: figuration and abstraction (addressed in chapter 1); automatism and dream illusionism (explored in chapter 2); and artistic development and stagnation (discussed in chapter 3). These issues were central to the Surrealism’s development during Tanguy’s lifetime and have had an important role in shaping current writing on the movement (and his work) to this day. I will argue that with careful formal analysis, a sensitive consideration of social, political and biographical contexts, and the use of a variety of interpretive tools, his paintings can be understood as a rich and complex works of art that bear witness to Tanguy’s active engagement with the ideas that shaped the cultural landscape of his era. V This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Hester and Byron Stuhlman, my wife Megan, and my sons Justin and Finnian. VI Acknowledgments This dissertation is the culmination of an interest in Tanguy’s work that began after encountering his painting Fear at the Whitney Museum of American Art when I was six or seven years old. I would not have seen that painting had not my parents, Byron and Hester Stuhlman, encouraged my interest in the arts from an early age. I hope that now, as a parent myself, I can emulate the unwavering support that they have shown me throughout my life in my own interactions with my children. I am extremely grateful to the remarkable faculty at the University of Virginia that stood by my side and offered invaluable support and encouragement over the decade that I have been working on this dissertation. Matthew Affron, Howard Singerman, and Maurie McInnis have all contributed to this project in innumerable ways and have been inspirational professional role models over the years. I also offer my sincere gratitude to Douglas Fordham, who shepherded this project through its final stages, and Ari Blatt, who served as my insightful fourth reader. I would also like to thank those professors who served on committees at earlier points in my career. At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago this includes Kymberli Pinder, Catherine Bock-Weiss, and Kelly Dennis, who supervised my MA Thesis. Sue Taylor was also an inspiration during these years. At Bowdoin College, Larry Lutchmansingh, Linda Docherty, and Susan Wegner oversaw my honors thesis. I would like to recognize VII Dr. Lutchmansingh, in particular, for his dedication to helping me hone my writing and critical thinking skills. During my professional career I have been fortunate to have worked with a wide range of supportive colleagues and mentors. I thank Judy Barter, Vivian Bullaudy, David Park Curry, Beth O’Leary, John Ravenal, Martica Sawin, Leah Stoddard, Andrew Walker, Roger Ward, Pavel Zoubok, and last but certainly not least, Stephen Robeson Miller and Kevin Sharp, for their encouragement and assistance. I would also like to recognize my current and former colleagues at The Mint Museum, particularly Annie Carlano, Brian Gallagher, Carla Hanzal, Kathleen Jameson, Charles Mo, Amber Smith, and Brad Thomas, for their encouragement. The Kress Foundation provided a grant to facilitate my travel to Paris at a critical juncture in this project; a fellowship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts also supported my graduate work. Staff members at the Morgan Library; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Museum of Modern Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Musée national d’art modrne; the Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet; the Getty Research Center; the Archives of American Art; and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as Louis Reyes-Tanguy, all provided guidance and facilitated various aspects of my research. VIII Finally, I could not have seen this project through without the love and encouragement of my amazing wife, Megan, who is a constant source of inspiration and with whom it is a joy to raise our two sons, Justin and Finnian. IX Table of Contents Introduction . 1 Chapter 1: Figuratively Speaking: The Persistence of the Human Form . 15 Early Development: The Body in Focus . 19 The Surrealist Context: Figuration and Transformation in the 1920s . 26 Dream Illusionism, Dalí, and the “Disappearance” of the Figure . 48 In Search of a Subject: Interpretations of Tanguy’s Art . 56 Finding the Figure: From Paper to Canvas . 67 Conclusion . 94 Chapter 2: Tracing the Unconscious? The Place of Drawing in Tanguy’s Oeuvre . 97 Evidence, and the Historical Role of Drawing . 104 Bait Is Laid . and Taken . 114 Surrealism and Automatism: Uncomfortable Bedfellows? . 118 Further Evidence . 140 A Context for Re-evaluation . 144 Possibilities . 162 Chapter 3: The Value of Consistency / The Compulsion to Repeat . 172 The Modern and Surrealist Contexts . 182 Tradition versus Originality and Their Role in Mid-century Criticism . 213 Alternative Views: Authorship, Signature Style, and a Different Kind of Progression . 237 Conclusion . 253 X Conclusion . 257 Figures . 265 Works Cited . 370 Introduction Yves Tanguy’s paintings do not offer themselves up to easy interpretation. The aura of impenetrability that they project, along with the artist’s consistent silence about them and a paucity of primary documents, has done much to limit the ways in which scholars, critics, and the public have been able (or willing) to engage with his work. As a result, his paintings have been shuffled to the edges of recent developments in the critical discourse about Surrealism. Populated with an astonishing variety of biomorphic forms, Tanguy’s fantastic landscapes have nonetheless staked out a unique terrain for themselves in the fields of Surrealist and modern art. Take, for example, Dame à l’absence of 1942 (fig. 1). It is representative of Tanguy’s work of the early 1940s (the period immediately following his arrival in America), in which a large, meticulously-depicted, multi-part form dominates the foreground of a horizonless landscape, throughout which are scattered various other smaller and equally mysterious forms. Despite their ambiguous morphology and the enigmatic relationships between them, each of these forms is painted with great attention to detail and endowed with a distinct sense of sculptural solidity, giving them a powerful presence not typically associated with such abstract forms. How can one begin to interpret such a painting? If following the direction typically prescribed by André Breton, the Surrealist leader who was Tanguy’s earliest and most consistent advocate, one might conclude that poetic metaphors are the best (and only) method. Such an approach mirrored what Breton perceived to be the most salient features of Tanguy’s paintings—their impenetrability, their link to the world of the artist’s 2 subconscious, and their ability to suggest rather than to tell or merely illustrate. Since Tanguy’s death, however, paintings like Dame à l’absence typically have been interpreted as being part of a repetitious, hermetic oeuvre that showed few signs of internal development after the first few years of the artist’s career. Their subject matter is usually explained as little more than a quirky product of the artist’s inner world, while his technique and compositional sensibility are most often dismissed as retrograde and academic. Each of these factors has done much to limit new avenues of interpretation of his work. This dissertation will argue against the narrow, limited ways in which Tanguy’s art has most frequently been discussed in the past.