Meret Oppenheim: My Exhibition is the new retrospective at MoMA about Oppenheim (1913–1985), the unclassifiable Swiss sculptor, painter, and photographer. Her Object, from 1936 — a teacup, saucer, and spoon lined with fur — drove the chattering classes mute with puzzlement and shock when it was displayed at the London International Surrealist Exhibition and at MoMA’s landmark Fantastic Art exhibition the same year. Also called Breakfast in Fur, it made Oppenheim both a wunderkind and something of a one-hit wonder, undeservedly so. My Exhibition rediscovers Oppenheim as an artist with a long career of strength upon strength. It’s presented with confidence and quiet class. I loved it.
Object, suggesting an anxiety dream about cunnilingus, features in every survey of Surrealism and most Western art-history surveys. What did Oppenheim do with the next 50 years of her life? Most art historians, unless they specialize in Surrealism or, more exotically, Swiss art wouldn’t know much about her, Object aside.
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