Right in the middle of the van Gogh hullabaloo, a small exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Dorothea Tanning sneaked quietly into the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Tanning is not only considerably less famous than van Gogh, but she's not even as well known as she deserves to be. Perhaps that's because for 30 years she was married to Max Ernst, a preeminent surrealist, and had to work in his considerable shadow. Tanning also is a surrealist, but surrealism, involved with dreams, fantasies and the subconscious mind, has never been popular in this country.
Concrete reality is more to American taste.
As this concise exhibition demonstrates, Tanning's art has always favored the mind over the senses. It's a deeply emotional and psychological art that, particularly in her later work, is totally impressionistic, and consequently open to the broadest possible interpretations. The exhibition celebrates the museum's acquisition of one of Tanning's best-known and most important paintings, Birthday. Painted in 1942, it announced her to the art world as a serious and talented artist with a distinctive agenda. The museum bought Birthday from the artist with money given by Charles K. Williams 2d as his contribution to the institution's current 125th anniversary campaign to solicit gifts of major artworks.