In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States

Here's part of what Reed Johnson wrote in last Sunday's L.A. Times:

"Almost everyone falls down a rabbit hole sometime in life. A trapdoor opens under your career, your relationships, your beliefs, and headlong you go, like Alice, into the void.

For a few of the 50 female surrealist painters and sculptors represented in LACMA's exhibition "In Wonderland," that descent was a terrifying tumble into mental depression, physical danger, even suicidal despair.

But for others it was a subterranean passage to creative fulfillment, erotic liberation and self-discovery, themes that artists such as Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Lee Miller, Kay Sage, Dorothea Tanning and Remedios Varo visited time and again in their works.

It's an inspirational theme that the show's organizers, Ilene Susan Fort, a LACMA curator of American art, and Tere Arcq, former chief curator at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, think will resonate with many women, and more than a few men. After all, it did with them.

'This show has changed my life and my feelings about my life, my friendships and family, more than any other show I've ever done,' Fort said of the exhibition, on view at LACMA's Resnick Pavilion through May 6. 'And I think it's because these women make you think and explore inside yourself.'"

Now that should make you want to see the exhibit!

Johnson's article is worth reading in its entirety: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-wonderland-20120325,0,969390.story

Just in case you're not familar with Surrealism, a cultural movement that reached the height of its popularity in the 1930s, here's a brief definition:

"surrealism: A literary and artistic movement whose proponents sought to express the irrational, the unconscious (especially as manifested in dreams), and the creative products of their imagination."--The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms

When most people think of Surrealist painting, they tend to think of works by men, such as those by Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Joan Miro, or Max Ernst.  But this current show at LACMA is something different: a look at the contributions of women in both the U.S. and Mexico.  It's definitely worth seeing.

Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940

Here's LACMA's blurb:

"North America represented a place free from European traditions for women Surrealists from the United States and Mexico, and European émigrés. While their male counterparts usually cast women as objects for their delectation, female Surrealists delved into their own subconscious and dreams, creating extraordinary visual images. Their art was primarily about identity: portraits, double portraits, self-referential images, and masquerades that demonstrate their trials and pleasures. The exhibition includes works in a variety of media dating from 1931 to 1968, and some later examples that demonstrate Surrealism's influence on the feminist movement. Iconic figures such as Louise Bourgeois, Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, Lee Miller, Kay Sage, Dorothea Tanning, and Remedios Varo are represented, along with lesser known or newly discovered practitioners." http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/in-wonderland

(Film is briefly--and awkwardly--referenced at the exhibit's entryway.  If you crane your neck and block everyone's way, you can get a taste of Maya Deren's 14-minute masterpiece Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)--a movie you should see away from distractions.)