Cubism, Dadaism, & Surrealism

| Amanda Wong

YVES TANGUY (1900-1955)

Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy was highly recognized for his surrealist paintings. Tanguy’s subject matter for his paintings include dreams, childhood memory, hallucinations, and psychotic episodes. Yves Tanguy did not only have a unique style of painting, he was a unique individual who enjoyed eating living spiders. 

Tanguy was a self-taught painter whose precision and skill disguised his lack of training. His lack of experience for being quite a young painter did not seem to affect people’s judgment of him. It rather surprised many to see how such a young artist could have such a mature sense of style to his painting. Tanguy was one of the first surrealist painters who was capable of capturing his unconscious thoughts into an atmosphere.

Early on in his career, Tanguy met Andre Breton. This was his lead way into meeting the group of surrealists at the time, including Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, and Andre Masson. In 1928, Tanguy joined this group of painters to exhibited his work at Paris’ “Galerie au Sacre du Printemps”. Tanguy soon after would exhibit his pieces across the world, he had exhibits in New York, Brussels, Paris, and London.

“Storm” (Black Landscape, 1926). This painting reminds me of the ocean floor. The white strokes look like water waves but also look like clouds (the strokes up at the top). The brown rock on the left looks like a hermit crab shell but also looks like a bird’s head with the eye on the side.
https://www.wikiart.org/en/yves-tanguy/storm-black-landscape-1926

Looking at the work of Yves Tanguy, I can see that his paintings are a self-reflection of himself. As a person and painter, Tanguy has a strange personality that is somewhat admirable. I admire how he does not shy away from the unusual however I do not see myself gravitating towards his art. For me, I like to be able to recognize the subject matter of a painting. When I look at Yves Tanguy, I do not know what I’m looking at. The only thing I know is that this French painter was very good at conveying the depth of field and turning shapes into objects. His paintings almost look sculpture-like. 

“Tomorrow” (1938) is an oil on canvas piece that looks almost desert-like. The green twigs in the background look like cacti, while the shapes in the foreground look like animals and people trying to migrate to a new home.
https://www.wikiart.org/en/yves-tanguy/tomorrow-1938
“Through Birds Through Fire But Not Through Glass” (1943). A lot of Tanguy’s pieces are not supposed to represent anything other than his unconscious mind, however this piece, I am reminded of a circus scene, where the big object in the front looks like an elephant with its trunk out and the red and white balls in the background are the circus balls that the animals play with.
https://www.wikiart.org/en/yves-tanguy/through-birds-through-fire-but-not-through-glass-1943
“I Came Like I Promised” (1926) sounds like a piece that was inspired by World War 1. The diagonal lines that lead my eyes towards the smoke in the foreground and background remind me of some sort of bombing that is occurring. The woman in the background looks like she is standing still. She looks like she is in shock of what is happening before her eyes.
https://www.wikiart.org/en/yves-tanguy/i-came-like-i-promised-1926
“The Hand in the Clouds”(1927). This piece is refreshing to see from Tanguy because it looks like he used the anatomy of a human hand as the main subject of his painting rather than shapes. He also included scattered letters and numbers arising from the smoke which makes me feel like it was a calculated attack on someone.
https://www.wikiart.org/en/yves-tanguy/the-hand-in-the-clouds-1927

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Tanguy

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/yves-tanguy

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/tanguy-yves/

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