Abstract

Dorothea Tanning’s painting Fatala (1947) reveals a solitary female figure reaching her hand through a door. This borrows plainly from an artist renowned for rendering women as statues or storefront mannequins: the Greek-born Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico, whose early corpus formed one of Surrealism’s most prominent—and fraught—precedents. Yet Tanning’s canvas also conjures up another of the Surrealists’ elected forebears: Marcel Allain’s series of detective fiction books, titled Fatala: Grand roman policier (1930–31). Co-authored with Pierre Souvestre, Allain’s first series of pulp novels, Fantômas (1911–13),had proven enormously popular in Parisian avant-garde circles, first in the circle of the poet-critic Guillaume Apollinaire, and later among the Surrealists. Michel Nathan has described Allain’s Fatala as “Fantômas in a walking skirt” (“Fantômas en jupe trotteuse”). This cast-off epithet offers a fitting aegis under which to consider both Tanning’s use of various Surrealist modes in Fatala and their resonance in the context of the movement’s late iterations and sexual politics. For with Fatala, Tanning takes on a higher mathematics of masculine precedent—both Metaphysical painting and the detective novel—as well as their adoption by a host of male Surrealist artists. It is on the male-centered ground of the Metaphysical cityscape and the roman policier that Tanning sets her femme fatale in Fatala, finding in it a readymade stage for the apparition of other identities.

摘要

多萝西娅·坦宁( Dorothea Tanning) 的画作Fatala (1947) 展示了一个孤独的女性形象，她的手穿过门。这很明显地借用了一位以将女性描绘成雕像或店面人体模型而闻名的艺术家：希腊出生的意大利艺术家乔治·德·基里科 (Giorgio de Chirico)，他的早期语料库是超现实主义最突出和最令人担忧的先例之一。然而，坦宁的画布也让人联想到另一位超现实主义者推选的前辈：马塞尔·阿兰 (Marcel Allin)的侦探小说系列丛书，题为《法塔拉：大罗马警察》 (1930–31)。与 Pierre Souvestre 合着，阿兰的第一部低俗小说系列，Fantômas（1911-13 年），在巴黎的先锋派圈子里非常受欢迎，首先是在诗人评论家纪尧姆·阿波利奈尔的圈子里，后来在超现实主义者中。米歇尔·内森描述了阿兰的Fatala为“ Fantômas在步行裙”（“ Fantômas恩朱浦trotteuse ”）。这个废弃的绰号提供了一个合适的支持，在此支持下，可以考虑 Tanning 在Fatala 中使用各种超现实主义模式及其在该运动后期迭代和性政治背景下的共鸣。与法塔拉, Tanning 接受了男性先例的高等数学——包括形而上学绘画和侦探小说——以及他们被许多男性超现实主义艺术家采用。正是在形而上学的城市景观和罗马警察以男性为中心的基础上，坦宁将她的蛇蝎美人置于法塔拉，在其中找到了一个现成的舞台，可以让其他身份的出现。