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Fantasy Art History
Fantasy Art Work | Van Gogh | Hieronymus Bosch | Paul Gauguin | Paul Cezanne | Auguste Rodin

  Meret Oppenheim   

       Meret Oppenheim was an important surrealist Swiss painter and sculptor born in 1913. She was the daughter of a German-Swiss Jungian psychologist and grand daughter of the author Lisa Wenger. Meret was named after Meretlein, a free-spirited character from a German novel, and she grew up with characteristics of her namesake. At the age of eighteen she decided to study art and in 1932 arrived in Paris, making friends with Giacometti and Hans Arp. Soon she was in the company of the Surrealists Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and Max Ernst.
       Initially, women were important to the Surrealists not as artists but as muses and lovers. As sexual beings who inspired creativity they were loved, but as real women they were misunderstood and feared. The women surrealists were attracted to the male Surrealists' open mind and creative spirit. Most of the women, including Meret Oppenheim were a generation younger than their mates.

The women were adored as long as they remained the femme-enfant, the Surrealist ideal of the child-woman.
      The women developed strong friendships with each other and found strength and encouragement for expressing themselves in their artwork. Meret Oppenheim became friends with Leonor Fini and Leanora Carrington in Paris and later, in Mexico with Remedios Varo.            Meret Oppenheim made Surrealist objects which surprised and outraged audiences. At twenty two years old she made her most well known surrealist sculpture the fur lined cup, saucer, and spoon. Her fur cup became the object of sensation when it was exhibited in Paris in 1935 at the Charles Ratton Gallery. The next year Oppenheim exhibited Ma Gouvernante, My Nurse, made of a pair of shoes bound together on a platter in a position simulating that of a nude woman on her back with her legs spread and dressed with paper frills. The shoes caused as much excitement as the fur cup. But the fur cup would live on to be a symbol for the Surrealists and the most reproduced of any of Oppenheim's artwork.
       The caused so much fame for Oppenheim that it was hard to assimilate the success at such a young age. The publicity had the effect of depressing Oppenheim, intensifying her self doubt and artistic confusion. She spent the next twenty years trying to make paintings and artwork that would live up to this early success and suffered from anxiety and depression. It was not until many years later she understood how important materials were for her artmaking success. Instead of illustrating an idea in a painting, the symbolic mix of objects was her genius. It was not until 1954 that Oppenheim felt like she no longer had her hands tied and could finally make art again! She began to design objects again that spoke about potent dreams of the unconscious.


 
 
 

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