Dora Maar at Tate Modern: “Must do better”
The Dora Maar retrospective at the Tate Modern begins in a dark room full of photographs of the famed surrealist photographer, the side wall dedicated to pictures of her, with 17 of them being photos that others took. For a retrospective to begin with a showcase of images that other photographers took of her instead of a showcase of work she produced herself, was very surprising. As I moved through the exhibit, one theme emerged, the Tate must do better for female artists and allow their work to stand on its own without showcasing what they look like.
The shift from her initial objectifying introduction to her commercial work is stark. The walls go from a dark blue that’s almost black to a lighter, sea-coloured blue, with the back wall lined with nudes. In speaking with an employee of the Tate Modern, he tells me that he, “liked the exhibit, I’m a big fan of black and white photography, although it feels a bit dated, but it was almost 100 years ago,” which can be seen in a few of the rooms particularly. Her commercial works and her surrealist photomontages showcase the “dated” nature of the exhibit. The commercial works depicting a newly liberated woman, while still using quite problematic depictions of women’s bodies in the magazines. Her surrealist works use a lot of eyes placed in strange contexts, a known technique for surrealist photography of the time.
There were quite a few works that weren’t created by Maar and are there in order to give supposed necessary context, but this feels out of place in a retrospective of an artist as prolific as Maar. I questioned the need for them as I walked by them each twice in the strangely laid out rooms. The initial text explaining the curation of the rooms was on the far end, making you move through the room twice. On the comment cards outside of the exhibition, there were three that questioned this layout, one saying, “as a visitor with mobility issue, why is the text panel… the one with explanations about the photographs, at the end of the wall? I can’t keep moving back and forth to check what’s what, too much for my legs. Not well thought out. Must do better.”
This theme of “must do better” is something that stuck with me throughout the exhibition. However, an employee that I spoke to told me that this wasn’t conceived by Tate Modern, the exhibition travelled from France, “not that I’m bashing the French,” he then clarified. In keeping with this “must do better” approach, the Surrealist room begins with an image of Dora Maar made by Man Ray and contains a swathe of images created by nine other photographers that showcase what surrealist photography looks like. It’s in this room where we see her most celebrated and famous works, diminished by the presence of other surrealist photographers.
It leads us into what should be called the Picasso room, since there consisted so much of his work intermingled with her own. It contains 14 works created by Picasso, with many of them being depictions of her. Despite her once saying, “all portraits of me are lies. They’re Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar,” which she once told writer James Lord, the exhibit at the Tate Modern depicts said portraits as if to showcase that she was involved with Picasso, that she was his muse. Although, an employee I spoke to told me, “that doesn’t really bother me, I don’t have much of an opinion on that.”
This show is full of life and incredible artworks, but are diminished by the context the curators attempted to give it. Dora Maar is a fantastic artist in her own right and does not need Picasso, Eluard, or Man Ray to give her that platform. In the height of their careers, Picasso may have, as an employee told me, “given her the backwind,” but this is 2020 and if the Tate Modern can’t give her the credit she is due, then no one will. It must do better.
