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The Surrealists in Paris
Tanguy was regarded as a curiosity, an
eccentric, by his Surrealist friends. Many of the titles of his
paintings were given by poets who felt in sympathy with his world, as it
inspired flights of fancy without the need to enter the critical arena
of Modern Art. The marvelous prose and poetry of Andre Breton on the
world of Yves Tanguy ran unwaveringly parallel to his paintings.
Tanguy was addicted to alcohol. After a drink or two he entered a state
of serenity for which no words would be adequate. The next morning,
after an evening about which he remembered little, he sometimes made a
small gouache painting with minute details to show that he still had a
steady hand.
When Andre Breton first came to my studio in Paris to see my paintings,
he asked me whom I would like to meet. I said I would like to meet Yves
Tanguy. Breton replied, "Come to the Deux Magots tomorrow and
Tanguy will be there." When I first met Tanguy I called him Maitre
(Master). He was astonished, as he had not attached much importance to
his accomplishments.
The Surrealist gatherings in the afternoons at the Deux Magots were
occasions for airing the latest insights, ideas, and creations. The
conversation was brilliant and often irreverent. Here attitudes towards
life in the changing times were formed. What was said there reverberated
out, in widening circles, into the intellectual life of Paris.
At the Deux Magots, Yves Tanguy was content to sit in serene silence and
let others talk. He welcomed the ideas of Andre Breton to which he
unwaveringly gave support. Tanguy was above it all and beneath it all in
a state of deep simplicity.
Matta and I were the first painters to appreciate the importance of Yves
Tanguy as a painter in the context of the evolution of Modern Art. He
had started the direction which, ten years later, we, on our own and in
our own ways, had continued.
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Crisis in Modern
Art: 1930s
By the mid 1930s the world as perceived by
the senses had been explored extensively by modern painters, and had
been reinvented with greater freedom in the rendering of space, time,
light, line, color, and the human image in the modern world. Surrealist
paintings had expressed the interplay between images of the dream world
and the waking state. A certain level of consciousness had been reached.
The haunting question was: in what direction did the next stage in
modern art lie?
Miro had placed a ladder on the ground pointing up into the sky, but he
remained below on earth in the company of his exotic women and playful
birds and insects.
Abstract painting had not found a way to become integrated with the
dance of life and so existed in a state of splendid isolation.
Picasso in desperation tore his shirt and stitched a piece to a canvas.
The next direction of Modern Art already had a modest beginning in the
paintings of Yves Tanguy. The importance of those paintings at that time
in the 1930s, in initiating the quest of the inner worlds, was only
partially appreciated by a very few.
Once in the Café de Flore, Jeanette Tanguy, Picasso and Dora Maar were
sitting together at a table. To tease Jeanette, Picasso said jokingly,
"It's easy to make a Tanguy," and on a piece of paper he
quickly made a drawing in the manner of Tanguy. Jeanette was naturally
furious, picked up a chair and hit, not Picasso, but Dora Maar. (That
taught Picasso a lesson that he was incapable of learning.) Picasso's
paintings were derived from the outer world as seen by the senses.
Tanguy's paintings were derived from an invisible inner world that, in
order to be seen demanded a growth in consciousness. Picasso could
easily imitate the appearance of a Tanguy painting, but he had not
achieved the Open Mind needed to enter the spirit of the Inner World
expressed in the paintings of Tanguy.
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![Gordon Onslow Ford :: Bishop Pine Preserve, California. 1970 [close up photo taken by Ted Lindberg for the Exhibition at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, BC]](../images/gof_detail_drawing.jpg)
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