Photo By Gail
Little Ghost Eating Bread (1934) depicts a mysterious scene within an other worldlylandscape. Animated by Oppenheim‘s dark sense of humor, it portrays a cartoon-like figure about to step off a ledge while merrily nibbling on a loaf of bread. A cloaked form is partially visible on the right. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Merit Oppenheim, Little Ghost Eating Bread
Photo By Gail
Meret Oppenheim drew broadly on stories from the past, including Greco-Roman and medieval sources. She reimagined these narratives and the fates of their female protagonists in ways that reflected her views on the role of women in society. In Daphne and Apollo (1943), she reinterpreted the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne, in which the wood nymph would rather hunt than become the god’s lover. Unable to escape him, she turns into a laurel tree. In Oppenheim’s version, the artist subjects Apollo, too, to a vegetal transformation, depicting him as a potato-like form, surrounded by flies.
Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Photos By Gail
In the early 1970s, Meret Oppenheim (1913 – 1985) began enthusiastically making collages. Octopus’s Garden (1971) is among the largest and most spectacular of those. This work depicts a fantastical underwater landscape, complete with calcified coral forms, trails of bubbles, and cut-out reproductions of peacock feathers.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Meret Oppenheim, Octopus’s Garden
Photo By Gail
This Surrealist object was inspired by a conversation between Meret Oppenheim, (Swiss, 1913–1985) and artists Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar at a Paris cafe. Admiring Oppenheim’s fur-covered bracelet, Picasso remarked that one could cover anything with fur, to which she replied, “Even this cup and saucer.” Soon after, when asked by André Breton, Surrealism’s leader, to participate in the first Surrealist exhibition dedicated to objects, Oppenheim bought a teacup, saucer, and spoon at a department store and covered them with the fur of a Chinese gazelle. In so doing, she transformed genteel items traditionally associated with feminine decorum into sensuous, sexually punning tableware.
Fur-Covered Cup, Saucer and Spoon (1936) is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.