IMAGO Meret Oppenheim, Part One: 1932-54

Paris of the Surrealists, Creating Crisis and Transformation, Jungian Psychology

An excerpt from 569 (see left), this film begins with Meret Oppenheim leaving home for art school in Paris, seeking `freedom and independence.' She immediately got to know the Surrealist circle, including Giacometti, Hans Arp and Duchamp, and also a number of other women artists whom she admired very much. For her, Surrealism, although dominated by men, was simply the key to a more liberated life, since the Surrealists accepted women as artists without question. For most of her life the question of self-confidence as an artist (particularly difficult for a woman, she always thought) would be a stumbling-block. Man Ray photographed her, and she fell in love with Max Ernst. Her love was returned, but she felt she had to reject intimacy with Ernst, understanding only later that his maturity as an artist would have stifled her fledgling creativity. In 1936, forced for the first time to try to support herself, she began to design jewelry for the haute couture. When she showed Picasso her bracelet of copper lined with sealskin, he remarked that `many things could be covered in fur,' and this was the inspiration for her fur-lined teacup, which made her famous and was bought by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But fame was difficult to handle, and from 1937 onward her frequent depressions intensified into a permanent state. For long years she was gripped by a creative crisis. `I read psychology, primarily Jung,' she said (Jung was a family friend). `I was looking after my little soul ... During my long crisis, my genius, the animus, the male part of the female soul, that assists the female artist, had abandoned me ... But at the beginning of the fifties, I sensed that things were getting better ... '

Slightly shortened version of the first half of 569

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