Birthday

The women of the French Surrealist movement are largely forgotten or treated as appendages to their male counterparts. In Birthday, Dorothea Tanning writes herself and, by relation, other women surrealists of the time, including Leonora Carrington, into a fullness of life apart from the men. Dorothea Tanning was a young painter in New York City in the 1930's, where she seduced or is seduced by the expatriated Max Ernst over a game of chess. Ernst offers her guidance and the leverage of his name and reputation in artistic circles, but Dorothea develops her own disturbing surrealist land/dreamscapes in which to allow the viewer to wander. Both Dorothea Tanning and Leonora Carrington are alive and creating art today, although neither receives the attention she deserves. Along with Birthday, I'd recommend any of Leonora Carrington's prose (Down Below, The Seventh Horse, and The Hearing Trumpet among them), as well as the fine book of prints, Women Artists And The Surrealist Movement, which goes a long way toward uncovering the talents of the many women in Surrealism.