Object number2022.17.3
Bâteau bleu (The Grotto)
Date1950
Artist
Dorothea Tanning
(American, 1910 - 2012)
Publisher
Guilde de la Gravure
CultureAmerican
MediumLithograph in colors, on Arches paper
EditionEdition 117 of 200
Regular Edition of 200
DimensionsImage: 19 1/2 x 13 15/16 in. (49.5 x 35.4 cm)
Sheet: 22 1/4 x 15 1/8 in. (56.5 x 38.4 cm)
Framed: 29 x 22 1/2 x 1 1/2 in. (73.7 x 57.2 x 3.8 cm)
Sheet: 22 1/4 x 15 1/8 in. (56.5 x 38.4 cm)
Framed: 29 x 22 1/2 x 1 1/2 in. (73.7 x 57.2 x 3.8 cm)
Credit LinePurchase, gift of Mrs. Frederick Ferris Thompson, by exchange
On View
Not on viewPeriod20th c
Classification(s)
SignedOn recto, signed lower left margin and on verso, center in pencil: Dorothea Tanning
InscribedOn recto, by artist, lower right margin in pencil: 117/200; lower center margin: Bateau Bleu; on verso, by unidentified hand, lower left corner: Bateau Bleu / 1950
MarkingsPartial ARCHES watermark in upper left
BibliographyBailly, Jean Christophe. Dorothea Tanning. New York: George Braziller, 1995, pl. 302, p. 283
Carruthers, Victoria. Dorothea Tanning: Transformations. London: Lund Humphries, 2020, pp. 107-109
Carruthers, Victoria, and Catriona McAra. Mermaids and Metaphors: Dorothea Tanning’s Surrealist Ocean: Framing the Ocean, 1700 to the Present. Surrey, U.K.: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2014, p. 221
Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. Visionary States: Surrealist Prints from the Gilbert Kaplan Collection. Los Angeles: Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, University of California, 1996, fig. 132, cat. 125, p. 102
Jacometti, Nesto. Nesto Jacometti Editore. Locarno, Swtizerland, 1996
McAra, Catriona. A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning’s Chasm. London: Routledge, 2017, p. 91
Pech, Jürgen. Max Ernst: D-paintings: Zeitreise der Liebe. Exhibition catalogue. Brühl, Germany: Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR, 2019, pp. 75-76
Ruud, Brandon K. and Gregory Nosan, ed. Works on Paper from the Collection of the Sheldon Museum of Art. Lincoln, NE and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2016, cat. 104, pp. 210-211
Waddell, Roberta, and Louisa Wood Ruby, eds. Dorothea Tanning: Hail Delirium! A Catalogue Raisonné of the Artist’s Illustrated Books and Prints, 1942-1991. New York: The New York Public Library, 1992, cat. 5, pp. 19, 88-89ProvenanceCollection of the artist;Estate of Dorothea Tanning;
The Destina Foundation, New York;
Vassar Exhibitions
Label TextDorothea Tanning discovered Surrealism in 1936 at the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism. By 1950, she was producing her first major print series in France, working across three lithographic stones to produce this grotto scene. She described this technical process as liberating: “The lithographic crayon draws them all tightly together to produce an event or an enigma, take your choice. The boat, the waves and the timepiece can take you anywhere you want to go . . .” A female figure stands in the grotto’s center, her left arm raised, a pocket watch suspended in her hand. The space refuses clear measurement, its textured walls press inward while opening outward. Small idiosyncrasies populate the scene: an eye with double pupils, a bird’s nest, fabric that suggests avian form. The lithograph sustains Tanning’s investigation of thresholds and time suspending forward motion.
DescriptionDepiction of stacked, crumpled forms in blues, oranges and browns with discernable images of eye, eggs in a nest, a pocket watch, arms, and the profile of a woman in the center. Terms
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