Edited by Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler, Matthias Frehner. Text by Simon Baur, Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler, Matthias Frehner, Wanda Kupper, Isabel Schulz, Nicole Schweizer, Werner Spies, Lisa Wenger.
Hardcover, 9 x 11 in. / 360 pgs / 243 color / 69 bw. | 4/1/2007 | Not available $65.00
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Edited with text by Nina Zimmer, Natalie Dupêcher, Anne Umland.
Over the course of her protean career, Meret Oppenheim produced witty, unconventional bodies of work that defy neat categorizations of medium, style and subject matter. “Nobody will give you freedom,” she stated in 1975, “you have to take it.” Her freewheeling, subversively humorous approach modeled a dynamic artistic practice in constant flux, yet held together by the singularity and force of her creative vision. Published in conjunction with the first ever major transatlantic Meret Oppenheim retrospective, and the first in the United States in over 25 years, this publication surveys work from the radically open Swiss artist’s precocious debut in 1930s Paris, the period during which her notorious fur-lined Object in MoMA’s collection was made, through her post–World War II artistic development, which included engagements with international Pop, Nouveau Réalisme and Conceptual art, and up to her death in 1985. Essays by curators from the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Menil Collection and the Museum of Modern Art critically examine the artist’s wide-ranging, wildly imaginative body of work, and her active role in shaping the narrative of her life and art, providing the context for her creative production pre– and post–World War II. Meret Oppenheim was born in 1913 and lived in Germany and Switzerland during her childhood. At the age of 18, she moved to Paris to study art, and there exhibited alongside members of the Surrealist group. Oppenheim returned to Switzerland in 1937, where she trained as a conservator at the Basel School of Design. Already a storied member of the pre–World War II avant-garde, in the last two prolific decades of her life she was embraced by a younger generation of artists for her conceptual approach to art and progressive views on gender. Oppenheim died in 1985.
Published by Skira. Edited by Guido Comis, Maria Giuseppina Di Monte.
Meret Oppenheim (1913–85) is one of the most recognized 20th-century artists. This catalog examines her entire career, from the 1930s to the late works, revealing the creative network of relationships she nurtured with her peers during her time in Paris. Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Hans Arp and others are documented in this publication through some of their most significant works.
What emerges is the extent to which the artist influenced the Surrealist vocabulary in which objects turn into fetishes, oneiric and erotic fantasies intermingle and women are seen as innocent or evil, enveloped in mysterious nature. Her creative freedom and the extraordinary evocative power of her works have made her a key figure for many generations of artists, as can be seen here through parallels with creations by Daniel Spoerri, Birgit Jürgenssen, Robert Gober and Mona Hatoum.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Text by Carolyn Lanchner.
In 1936, invited by André Breton to contribute to an exhibition of Surrealist objects, Meret Oppenheim (1913–85) decided to act upon a café conversation she had recently had with Pablo Picasso and his then companion Dora Maar. Commenting on a fur-covered bracelet that Oppenheim had made for the designer Schiaparelli, Picasso remarked that one could cover just about anything in fur, to which Oppenheim had responded, “Even this cup and saucer.” The resulting sculpture was “Object,” a teacup, saucer and spoon purchased from a department store and lined with Chinese gazelle fur.
In this volume of the MoMA One on One series, an essay by Carolyn Lanchner, a former curator of painting and sculpture at MoMA, explores the subversive nature of this sensual yet disturbing work.
Published by Kerber. Edited by Thomas Levy. Text by Simon Baur, Belinda Grace Gardner, Christian Walda, Werner Spies, Lisa Wenger.
Iconic as a photographic subject and influential as a creator of iconic objects, Meret Oppenheim (1913–1985) was both artist and muse, and was uniquely liberated in both roles. In celebration of the centennial of her birth, Mirrors of the Mind looks at Oppenheim’s singular position as maker and subject of art through numerous sculptures, prints, paintings and photographs. From the iconic "Object in Fur" to lesser-known pieces, Oppenheim’s consistently poetical and humorous work continues to find resonance in contemporary art through its candor and economy of means. This substantial, handsomely designed monograph shows the artist to have been an inspirational figure in her own era--for artists such as Man Ray, Picasso and Max Ernst--as well as an important feminist artist.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Elisabeth Bronfen, Heike Eipeldauer, Christiane Meyer-Thoss, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, et al.
Over the course of the past hundred years or so, as sculpture has increasingly come to signify objecthood as much as carved or modeled form, Meret Oppenheim (1913-1985) stands out retrospectively as one of the twentieth century's most influential artists. Oppenheim has also long been an icon to feminist artists and art historians, in her self-transformation from "muse" of Man Ray to leading Surrealist, and her fearless insistence on her right to creativity throughout her life. Her fur teacup, titled "Breakfast in Fur" (1936) was inspired by a conversation between Oppenheim and Picasso at a Paris café; admiring a fur-covered bracelet she was wearing, Picasso remarked that one could cover anything with fur, to which she replied, "Even this cup and saucer." Today this work, the definitive Surrealist Object, seems to articulate and inaugurate a whole tradition of its own, in a psychosexual-sculptural vocabulary that has been developed by artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Eva Hesse. Oppenheim's oeuvre, ranging freely across sculpture, painting, design and poetry, shows preoccupations not only with gender-inflected objects and gender roles, but also with Surrealism's enduring concerns-dream, myth, imagination, games. Published for the centenary of her birth, this generous retrospective illuminates Oppenheim's work in all genres, tracing its influence on later generations of artists and exploring her importance as a precursor of feminism.
The Contemporary Art Collection at the Kunstmuseum Bern, Part 2
Published by Kerber. Text by Kathleen Bühler. Preface by Matthias Frehner.
On the centenary of her birth, this volume assesses the legacy of the great Swiss Surrealist Meret Oppenheim. Here, Oppenheim’s works are placed in dialogue with works by Maya Bringolf, Vidya Gastaldon, Tatjana Gerhard, Elisabeth Llach and Francisco Sierra.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Simon Baur, Martin A. Bühler. Text by Belinda Grace Gardner, Annemarie Monteil.
More than any other Surrealist, the Swiss artist Meret Oppenheim (1913-1985) embraced, pursued and defined Surrealism's cult of the object, fashioning such classic works as the famous fur cup (at the age of 23!) and the trussed high-heels, infusing everyday domestic objects with a concise eroticism. Yet many facets of her innovative and wide-ranging practice remain unknown to this day, including her extraordinary fountain projects. From the late 1960s until her death, Oppenheim designed and produced models for a series of freewheeling aquatic sculptures. Only three of these have been realized: the "Meret Oppenheim Fountain" in Bern in her native Switzerland, the "Spiral (Nature's Course)" in Paris and the "Hermes Fountain" located in the garden of artist and onetime collaborator Daniel Spoerri in Seggiano, Italy. Fountain Stories is the first to gather all of Oppenheim's fountain projects, including her drawings and unrealized models, into a single definitive publication.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler, Matthias Frehner. Text by Simon Baur, Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler, Matthias Frehner, Wanda Kupper, Isabel Schulz, Nicole Schweizer, Werner Spies, Lisa Wenger.
Much more than "just" the fur cup: this lavishly illustrated monograph presents the multifaceted work and colorful life of the great artist and Surrealist muse, Meret Oppenheim (1913-1985). Once enmeshed in scandal, known as a mysterious model and a mythical personality, she emerged among the most far-sighted artists of her epoch. Her oeuvre, which includes painting, sculpture, photography, poetry, drawings and design objects, constitutes an important contribution to twentieth-century art. Alongside the legendary Breakfast in Fur, from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York and important pieces from Vienna, Paris and Stockholm, Retrospective: An Enormously Tiny Bit of a Lot includes many never-before seen works from private collections. While Oppenheim's works forbid formal classification, major themes can be distinguished: borders and connections between nature and culture; man and woman; day and night; and, as befits a Surrealist, dream and reality. Here, art historical writing and detailed analyses shed light on gender-specific issues in Oppenheim's work, along with broader concerns and major artistic advances. In addition, previously unpublished fragments of Oppenheim's own writing recollect many of her companions and artistic colleagues, and an illustrated biography completes the picture.
Published by Kerber. Edited by Thomas Levy. Essay by Belinda Grace Gardner. Interview by Daniel Spoerri.
One of the most unusual women of the twentieth century, Meret Oppenheim most famously created the legendary Le Déjeuner en Fourrure, her 1936 assemblage of a tea cup and a fur. But Oppenheim was not just a Surrealist mouthful--though she provided the movement with one of its most recognizable symbols. Like her counterparts Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, André Breton and Man Ray, she used found materials freely in her artworks, often to the point of creating a critical alienation of the viewer from an otherwise familiar object. Her greater oeuvre has often been subsumed by the dominance of the ubiquitous fur cup, a situation which this publication aims to remedy, presenting a career-spanning selection of witty drawings, paintings, objects, collages, poems and designs for “applied artworks”--fantastic clothes, jewelry and furniture. Shortly before her death, Oppenheim and editor Thomas Levy developed the idea of realizing some of her applied artworks; those that were made to appear here through photo documentation. Also included are scholarly essays, an exhibition list, a bibliography and a filmography.
Published by Independent Curators International (ICI). Artwork by Meret Oppenheim. Edited by Bice Curiger. Text by Jacqueline Burckhardt.
This landmark volume examines the life and work of the extraordinary Swiss Surrealist Meret Oppenheim. Although she became famous at the age of 23 for her fur-covered teacup, she subsequently suffered years of critical neglect, and her subversive work has only recently begun to receive the acclaim it deserves. This beautiful catalogue covers the full range of her art, embracing sculpture, painting, drawing, collage, assemblage, photography, fashion and jewelry design, and a selection of Oppenheim's poems. Now available to the trade in a paperback edition.
Meret Oppenheim: Works in Dialogue from Max Ernst to Mona Hatoum
Oppenheim: Object
Meret Oppenheim: Mirrors of the Mind
Meret Oppenheim
Meret’s Sparks
Meret Oppenheim: Fountain Stories
Meret Oppenheim: Retrospective
Meret Oppenheim: From Breakfast In Fur And Back Again
Meret Oppenheim: Beyond The Teacup
