Magnifying Mirrors: Women, Surrealism, and Partnership

Although notorious for their idiosyncrasies, the surrealists revived artistic collaboration as an honorable and productive practice. Most of the famous surrealists were men, yet almost all were involved with women artists who were much more than sources of romantic inspiration. Precious little attention has been given to this most intricate of partnerships. Magnifying Mirrors is the first study of the complex partnerships that stimulated and provoked these men and women. Each couple collaborated in its own unique way according to the varying importance ascribed to aesthetic, social, and political preoccupations. The twelve couples whom Ren?e riese Hubert describes are Sophie Taeuber and Hans Arp; Valentine and Roland Penrose; Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst; Unica Zurn and Hans Bellmer; Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy; Lee Miller and Man Ray; Aliced Rahon and Wolfgang Paalen; Remedios Varo and Benjamin Peret; Hannah Hoch and Raoul Hausmann; and Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Often the woman in a partnership, far younger than her male companion, had just begun her career as an artist and had entered the relationship as a junior partner in need of support and guidance. Not surprisingly, her association usually resulted in, and often ended with, an intense assertion of independence. In her examination of these partnerships, Hubert focuses on comparing the art that the couples produced, apart or together.