Tempest in Yellow

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: The Museum of the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts (the USA).

By the mid-1950s, Tanning experienced a dramatic stylistic shift, which she herself described as the moment when she “broke the mirror.” The artist listens attentively to the mysterious subconscious and visualizes a vortex cloth-like movement. This is how the general sense of dream appears, not embodied in some figures, objects and symbols. The experience of vital energy is transmitted through abstraction, in which a figure shrouded in mist is depicted with closed eyes. It became a multifaceted prism of color and light. Experts trace a parallel between the dynamism of futurism and the artistic vision associated with A. Bergson’s philosophy of on the flow of intuition. The painting marks a departure from typical surrealist plots to a fragmented abstraction, close to the presentation of a common emotion or music.