Meret Oppenheim serious, sexy, famous art

Meret Oppenheim, Object,1936
Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Meret Oppenheim (1913-85) was born in Berlin. Her father Dr Erich Opp­enheim, a German psychoanalyst, was conscripted into the army when WW1 started. So Meret and her mum moved to live with the maternal family in Swit­zerland where Meret greatly admired her aunt’s devotion to art and modern life­style. After the war, Dr Oppenheim opened a medical practice in the southern German town of Steinen and sent for his family. Meret began to write down her dreams, inspired by her father who regularly attended Carl Jung’s seminars in Zurich. Throug­hout her life she used Jung's analytical approach, to address basic life questions.

Soon she was introduced to art works of various styles eg Expressionism, Fauv­ism and Cubism. Mer­et disliked the concept of “fem­inine art” and adopt­ed Jung's ideal, “and­rogynous creativity”. And Paul Klee’s work in the 1929 re­t­ro­spective at Kunsthalle Basel provided an­other strong abst­ract­ion­ist in­fluence

In 1932 at 18, Oppenheim moved to Paris from Basel and moved into the Académie de la Grande Chaum­ière. Her first Paris studio in Mont­par­nasse Hotel was where she created paintings & drawings. Then she met Hans Arp and Alberto Giacom­etti who visited her studio to saw her work. They invit­ed her to part­ic­ipate in Paris’ Surreal­ist exhibit­ion in Salon des Sur­indép­end­ants in Oct-Nov.

Happy to pose for photog­r­aph­ers, Man Ray’s popular photo ser­ies depicted Meret’s per­s­onal stance on femininity, and her care in exposing it.  In his photos, she posed grace­ful­ly eg Meret Oppenheim at the Printing Wheel (1933). 

Meret posing for Erotique Voilée by Man Ray, 1933,
Museum of Fine Arts Houston
dailyartmagazine

Op­p­en­heim later met André Breton and socialised at the Café de la Place Blanche with Surreal­ists. She experimented with Surrealism, seeking approval for her life­style. She was scep­tic­al of any concrete ideology, and Sur­realism al­l­owed her to experiment. But whereas other Surreal­ists used dreams to un­lock the sub­conscious, Oppen­heim used art and dreams in their sub­con­sciousness forms. Meeting Breton and his fr­iends, Oppenheim's circle joined other Surreal­ists eg Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia and Man Ray. Man Ray was asked to exh­ib­it her best work at NY’s Museum of Mod­ern Art (1936), hanging along­side Paris and New York artists, includ­ing Sal­vador Dalí and Giacom­met­ti.

In 1936, Meret Oppenheim had her first solo exhibition at Basel’s Gal­er­ie Schulthess. Her best known artwork was Object-Breakfast in Fur (1936), con­sisting of a teacup, saucer and spoon, covered with fur from a Chinese gazelle. The hol­low round cup suggested wealthy female genit­al­ia; the phallic shaped spoon further eroticised the hairy obj­ect.  Meret was en­couraged by a con­versation she had about fur items with Pablo Pic­asso and his lov­er Dora Maar in Café Deux Magots. Obj­ect-Breakfast in Fur was quickly bought by Alfred Barr for the MoMA New York collection and was included in the mus­eum's 1st Surreal­ist exhib­it­ion, Fantastic Art: Dada and Surrealism (1936-7).

Meret Oppenheim's My Nursemaid, 1936

Surrealist sculpture high-heeled shoes, bound by string & on a metal platter.
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Forbes

In 1937 Oppenheim returned to Basel, struggling with her artistic de­v­el­op­ment. She us­ual­ly worked episodically and sometimes destroyed her own work. So she took a career-break in 1939, af­ter a Paris Exhibition at Galerie René Dr­ouin with Max Ernst.

And see Meret’s furniture. Her whimsical Table with Bird’s Feet based on birds legs, on display at a fantasy furniture exhibition at Place Vend­ôme in 1939, was praised by the leaders of Italian design in Mil­an, and has now become an model of stylish interior design.

Bird Feed table, 1939

1stdibs

When her father was unemployed in 1939, Meret needed to do con­ser­v­ation for financial and emotional relief. She ret­ur­n­ed to Basel, train­ing as an art conservator to ensure her financial stability. But this marked a creative crisis that lasted for years. Although she had some con­­tact with her Par­isian friends, she created little art and dest­roy­ed much of what she had. In 1949, Oppenheim married Wolfgang La Roche and moved with him to Bern.

In Basel she became a mem­ber of Gruppe 33 and participated in their shows in Kunst­museum Basel. But Oppenheim was strugg­ling and did not present any public art exhibitions till the 1950s. Then she re­verted to with her new works to her original style and earlier creations. Oppenheim befriended the direct­or of the Kuns­t­hall Bern; his exhibitions helped her explore internat­ion­al arts.

In 1956, Oppenheim designed the costumes and masks for Picasso’s play Le Désir attrapé par la queue in Berne. In 1959, she organised a Spring Banquet in Bern for friends at which food was served on a naked woman. It caused contro­versy, with Oppenheim accused of treating the female body as dinner. With her perm­is­sion, Andre Br­eton restaged the perform­ance later that year at the op­ening of the Ex­pos­

it­ion inter­nat­ionale du Surrealisme, at the Galerie Cordier Paris. But Oppenheim felt her orig­inal aims were lost.

Surrealism was changing. In the 1960s Oppenheim felt she belonged with the younger, post-war generation and so she dist­anced herself from the older Surr­ealists. True to herself, she undertook fresh pic­torial lan­g­uage and in 1968, had a solo exhibition at Galerie Martin Krebs, Bern. Her pieces were everyday items that al­l­uded to female sexuality and ex­ploitation by men, perhaps confronting life and death. In this int­imate bronze sculpture (1977), folded layers ?referenced female curves.

Twist weave brooch by Meret Oppenheim, 1985

perfold

In 1982 Oppenheim won the Berlin Art Prize! That was the year that Meret Oppenheim: Defiance in the Face of Freedom was publ­ished, and she was commissioned to make a public fountain by Berlin's art commission. Her fountain was cast in 1983, receiving mixed reviews. In 1983 Oppen­heim was in a touring exhibition through the Goethe Ins­titute in Italy. In 1984 she had a solo exhibition in Kunsthalle Bern along with Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris. International recognition.. at last! She passed away in 1985.

Meret Oppenheim: My Exhibition will move to the Menil Coll­ection in Hous­ton Texas (till Sep 2022), before moving to MoMA in New York (from Oct 2022). The 200 ob­jects started from her smart 1930s Paris debut: from abstract works to jew­­ellery, paint­ings, sculptures and collages in Bern. See the catalogue.