Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning's Chasm

<p>In <i>A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning</i>'s Chasm Catriona McAra offers the first critical study of the literary work of the celebrated American painter and sculptor Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012). McAra fills a major gap in the scholarship repositioning Tanning's writing at the centre of her entire creative oeuvre and focusing on a little-known short story Abyss a gothic-flavoured desert adventure which Tanning worked on intermittently throughout her creative life finally publishing it in 2004 as <i>Chasm: A Weekend</i>.</p><p>McAra performs a major reassessment of the visual and literary principles upon which the surrealist movement was initially founded. Combining a groundbreaking methodological approach with reference to cultural theory and feminist aesthetics as well as Tanning's unpublished journals and notes McAra reveals Tanning as a key player in contemporary art practice as well as in the historical surrealist milieu.</p>