Meret Oppenheim

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In 1936, Meret Oppenheim had her first solo exhibition in Basel, Switzerland, at the Galerie Schulthess. She continued to contribute to Surrealist exhibitions until 1960. Many of her pieces consisted of everyday objects arranged to allude to female sexuality and feminine exploitation by the opposite sex. Oppenheim's paintings focused on the same themes. Her abundant strength of character and her self-assurance informed each work she created, conveying a certain comfortable confrontation with life and death. Her originality and audacity established her as a leading figure in the Surrealist movement. In Oppenheim: Object she was described as having embodied and "personified male Surrealism's ideal of the 'femme-enfant.'

In 1937, Oppenheim returned to Basel and this marked the start of her artistic block. She struggled after she met success and worried about her development as an artist. Oppenheim usually worked in spontaneous bursts and at times destroyed her work. Oppenheim took a hiatus from her artistic career in 1939 after an exhibition at the Galerie René Drouin started by Rene Drouin in Paris. In the exhibition she was featured alongside many artists, including Leonor Fini and Max Ernst. She did not share any art with the public again until the 1950s. Oppenheim then reverted to her "original style" and based her new artworks on old sketches and earlier works and creations.

Oppenheim's best known artwork is Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) [Object (Breakfast in Fur)] (1936). Oppenheim's Object consists of a teacup, saucer and spoon that she covered with fur from a Chinese gazelle. The fur represents an affluent woman; the cup, hollow yet round, can evoke female genitalia; the spoon, with its phallic shape, further eroticizes the hairy object. Originally spurred by a conversation Oppenheim had with Pablo Picasso and his lover Dora Maar in café Deux Magots about a fur bracelet she was wearing, Oppenheim created Object to liberate the saucer, spoon, and teacup from their original functions as consumer objects. Viewers are thus able to feel emotions of joy and wonder when observing Object while also questioning the functionality of each of its components. The artwork's title, developed by Breton, was inspired by both Leopold Sacher-Masoch's novel Venus in Furs and Edouard Manet's Dejeuner sur l’herbe. During the same year of its creation, Object was purchased by Alfred Barr for the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was included in the museum's first Surrealist exhibition titled Fantastic Art: Dada and Surrealism. Oppenheim was willing to sell her artwork for one thousand Swiss francs, but Barr only offered her 250 Swiss francs and she accepted. This was the first Surrealist artwork that the museum acquired, and Oppenheim became known as the First Lady of MoMA.

Oppenheim's Object would be one of the main forces that led to her lengthy artistic crisis due to its spiking increase in popularity after being displayed by Barr in New York. Although it brought Oppenheim a large amount of fame, Object reinforced the public's belief that Oppenheim only practiced Surrealism which she found hindered her freedom of artistic expression and exploration of other artistic styles. In fact, Object became so widely known that many misconceptions about Oppenheim and her art were created because of it. For example, many incorrectly believed that Oppenheim mainly created objects in fur. Being known as the artist of Object, Oppenheim was bounded to Surrealism from public expectation, a connection she was trying to avoid. Decades later, in 1972, she artistically commented on its dominance of her career by producing a number of "souvenirs" of Le Déjeuner en fourrure. Object has also been widely interpreted through a Freudian lens, and has been seen in a symbolic sense as a female sexual reference.

Throughout her life, Oppenheim has been willing to pose for photographers. Her most popular photo-shoot with Man Ray deeply depicts her personal stance on femininity. Contrary to the discretion about the gender of Le Déjeuner's creator, the photographs provided an unmistakable monument to her femininity and a testimony to her unwillingness to expose it.

In 1937, Oppenheim returned to Basel, training as an art conservator in order to ensure her financial stability. This marked the beginning of a creative crisis that lasted until 1954. Although she maintained some contact with her friends in Paris, she created very little and destroyed or failed to finish much of what she created. In Basel she became a member of the Gruppe 33 and participated in their group shows, 1945 in the Kunstmuseum Basel.

Oppenheim began working as an art conservator in 1944 during an eighteen year long depressive episode. Oppenheim was known for struggling with her awareness of the oppression of women in society. Oppenheim was also impacted when her father had to flee to Switzerland before World War II due to his Jewish surname; his credentials and training as a doctor were also discredited, leaving him unemployed. As a result, Oppenheim needed to do conservation for financial and emotional relief. She viewed the works she produced in this time of her life as imaginative and “projections of her fantasy.

Oppenheim kept a studio in Bern since 1954 and lived there permanently from 1967 until her death.

In the 1950s Oppenheim became friends with Arnold Rudlinger, the director of the Kunsthall Bern. The varying programs and exhibitions at the Kunsthall Bern placed Oppenheim in a stimulating artistic environment that enabled her to explore international art trends while working alongside Dieter Roth, Daniel Spoerri, and Markus Raetz.

In 1956, Oppenheim designed the costumes and masks for Daniel Spoerri’s production of Picasso’s play Le Désir attrapé par la queue in Berne. She and artist Lilly Keller were cast as the curtains. Three years later, in 1959, she organized a Spring Banquet (Le Festin) in Bern for a few friends at which food was served on the body of a naked woman. The exhibit cause controversy, with Oppenheim accused of treating the female body as on object to be devoured. With Oppenheim's permission, Andre Breton restaged the performance later that year at the opening of the Exposition inteRnatiOnale du Surrealisme (EROS), at the Galerie Cordier in Paris. Outside its original intimate setting, the performance was overly provocative and Oppenheim felt her original intention for the work was lost. Oppenheim felt surrealism changed after World War II and she never exhibited with the Surrealists again.

In the 1960s Oppenheim distanced herself from the Surrealists. She felt she belonged with the post-war generation, which was younger. Oppenheim was notably “true to herself” and undertook novel topics in her work with “fresh pictorial language.” Despite this, Oppenheim never had her own students, but sometimes would mentor younger artists. In 1968 Oppenheim had a solo exhibition at the Galerie Martin Krebs in Bern.

In 1982 Oppenheim won the Berlin Art Prize and was featured in Rudi Fuchs’ exhibition documenta 7. In this year Meret Oppenheim: Defiance in the Face of Freedom was published, and she was commissioned to make a public fountain by Berlin's art commission. Her fountain was cast in 1983 and had mixed public reviews. Due to the fact it lights up at night, newspapers called it a “lighthouse” and “an eyesore.” Eventually it became covered in algae and moss, allowing the public to accept it. In 1983 Oppenheim also partook a touring exhibition through the Goethe Institute in Italy. In 1984 she had a solo exhibition in Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland along with Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris, France. Thus, Oppenheim was one of the only “female artists of her generation to be recognized internationally while she was alive.”

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