Womens (Art)Works: Meret Oppenheim, Leonora Carrington, and the Plight of Women Surrealist Artists in Inter-war France
This 15-page graduate essay examines the plight of women Surrealists in inter-war France. The paper argues that women artists were marginalized because they were already being appropriated by male artists as muses, as symbols, and as models. Some women - such as Jacqueline Lamba -were actively discouraged from their work while others were simply not taken seriously as artists. This paper considers the ways in which women were marginalized, as well as some of the recent scholarly work being done regarding these artists. The paper concludes with a closer reading of Meret Oppenheims Le Déjeuner en fourrure (1936) and Ma gouvernante (1936) and Leonora Carringtons Self-portrait: A lAuberge du Cheval dAube (1936-7) and Horses (1941), works which resist the tendency to symbolize women by highlighting the essentially ambiguous and tenuous nature of symbolism.
