Sunday afternoon I headed down to TATE Modern to check out the recently opened ‘Dora Maar’ exhibition.
If you love old skool photography and miss the skill and delight of darkroom photography then this will get the brain firing + nostrils wishing for that chemical hit that only a darkroom can provide.
If you love a bit of ‘Surrealism’
noun
a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images.
then this is also for you! Original Photographs in all sizes from passport to A4 are displayed together enabling the viewer that intimate experience that only super tiny images can provide and ensuring you stay transfixed upon it, roving each small corner for all the details. Magazine layouts showing the final printed versions and the images on display are intriguing and fun to get close up to + figure out what was going on during their creation and perhaps how each part was layered over, printed, scratched.
There are 9 rooms in total and I literally squealed with delight in the first two rooms! Looking curiously at each image, inspired by their form and tone and technique. A few fireworks went off inside me as I referenced a personal project I’m currently working on - this was such a joy to behold.
The hesitation in writing steps in now because I left rather flattened. Here’s why - I LOVED the first rooms, I loved seeing hand crafted, considered pieces of photography and reading about Dora Maars life was fascinating yet I stalled at room 6 + 7 - I’m not sure if that’s the curators intention.
In these rooms the exhibitions and my attention turned to Picasso.
Because of this interjection I’m afraid my concentration on the beautiful work I’d seen in rooms 1 through 5 slithered away + became diluted. MY NOTE TO TATE Modern - Picasso was obviously an important part of Dora’s life BUT it seems a little unjust to dedicate some of the rooms to his work and her inspiration on him - as if a house hold name would ‘pad things out’ when that was the last thing that was needed. **The exhibition up until this point had been full and robust, inspiring in its freshness and the inclusion of the solarised image which inspired ManRay was sublime.
As a female photographer myself I applaud the ever growing inclusion of female photographers being displayed now because I remember a time in the not too distant past, when my photography history programme wouldn’t include even 1. + yes I realise that in fact makes me sound ancient - I’m not!!! However, I felt the reference to their relationship : single/complicated/married wasn’t needed, it didn’t add to the validity of her work and his work then overshadowed hers because it felt so off piste + random to have two rooms dedicated to it..
If you absolutely needed to, just perhaps one image representative of his painting of Dora during their time together would have sufficed, remove the fact she was having an affair with him and the huge image depicting the painting of both of the women in his life and we would have a gorgeous collection of images, inspiring the viewer to learn more about Surrealism/Photography/Dora.
I felt confused as to what you felt these rooms brought to the viewing experience aside from confusion and a peppering of annoyance?
The following 2 rooms of her return to painting was both textural and fluid although in part also looked like she was thoroughly pissed off their relationship had ended + in all honesty was how I felt that so much of his work had been included. I didn’t go to see Picasso, I went to see a little known female photographer and artist in a celebration of her contribution to the Surrealist movement. Step it up TATE, the work speaks for itself.
**Perhaps the exhibition’s natural ending was in room 5 with a last room (6) full of her sojourns in to painting, her development + experimentation in to this area along with her return to the darkroom + lifting Picasso from his bereft dessert because the exhibition up until this point had been full and robust, inspiring in its freshness and the inclusion of the solarised image which inspired ManRay was sublime.
