In this painting, Tanning returned to themes she had explored in the late 1930s after being introduced to Surrealism at The Museum of Modern Art’s 1936 Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition. As she later explained, “I’ve always been drawn towards esoteric phenomena: the illogical, the inexpressible, the impossible.” Here the notion of domestic order, symbolized by the white tablecloth, creased in a grid pattern, which Tanning has recalled from her Lutheran childhood in rural Illinois, is turned on its head. Bodies and limbs are so contorted that they are difficult to distinguish and, at times, nearly dissolve into the tablecloth.

Gallery label from

2021

Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 50 × 62" (127 × 157.5 cm)
Credit Gift of Alice and Tom Tisch
Object number 709.2019
Department Painting & Sculpture

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Dorothea Tanning

Dorothea Tanning

American, 1910–2012 17 works online

In 1936 Dorothea Tanning visited The Museum of Modern Art on the occasion of Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism , an exhibition of nearly 700 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and films that each presented a radical departure from day-to-day reality.

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