A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning’s Chasm

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In A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning’s Chasm, Catriona McAra offers the first critical study of the literary work of the celebrated American painter and sculptor Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012). McAra fills a major gap in the scholarship, repositioning Tanning’s writing at the centre of her entire creative oeuvre and focusing on a little-known short story "Abyss," a gothic-flavoured, desert adventure which Tanning worked on intermittently throughout her creative life, finally publishing it in 2004 as Chasm: A Weekend. McAra performs a major reassessment of the visual and literary principles upon which the surrealist movement was initially founded. Combining a groundbreaking methodological approach with reference to cultural theory and feminist aesthetics as well as Tanning’s unpublished journals and notes, McAra reveals Tanning as a key player in contemporary art practice as well as in the historical surrealist milieu. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of illustrations Illustration list Colour plates Figures Appendices Acknowledgements Cast list and key scenes Cast list in Chasm Key scenes in Chasm Introduction: Excavating an abyss: From manuscript to novel (1947–2004) I II III IV Notes Chapter 1: Unpacking Tanning’s library Literary nostalgia and intertextual practice Fantastic art: “A very private matter” Cornellian visual narratives The navel of the text Notes Chapter 2: The alternative reality of Sedona A monumental wonderland Giants and damsels: Gendering the desert “Cleopatra’s Nipple”: Eccentric formations and desert fetishes Tanning’s Medusa: The laughing Chasm Notes Chapter 3: Surrealism in the attic “Dejected paraphernalia”: An Aladdin’s cave Destina’s memory box: A surrealist heirloom Great-grandmother: A Russian doll genealogy Madwomen in the attic Fungal doors, rotting dollhouses: A “failed collage” Notes Chapter 4: The fur of the fairy tale Notes Chapter 5: Quoting “Tanning”: Surrealist heirlooms in contemporary practice Bobbing in the underworld When the artist’s away … Tanning’s astonishing gaze Conclusion: An infinite Abyss? Notes Bibliography Books and Articles Reviews Fiction and poetry Film Appendices Appendix 1 Note Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Index