Style Imitating Art: “At the Risk of the Sun” by Yves Tanguy

About Style Imitating Art

Style Imitating Art is hosted by Salazar of 14 Shades of Grey, Terri of MeadowTree Style, and Shelbee of Shelbee on the Edge. Style Imitating Art challenges us to draw style inspiration from pieces of art. Every other Monday, one of the hosts, acting as curator, selects an inspiration image that they will each post on their blogs. The following Monday, each host shares her art inspired outfit. Participants are invited to submit their art inspired outfits to the curator by 10:00 p.m. EST on the Tuesday following the hosts’ art inspired outfit posts. The following day, Wednesday, the curator will share all of the submissions on her blog.

You don’t have to be a blogger to join! You are invited to share your images on Instagram or other social media platforms. Just be sure to tag Salazar, Terri, and Shelbee or use #TeamLOTSStyle and #StyleImitatingArt so the hosts know you have joined. Go have some fun in your closets and join the SIA challenge next week!

The Inspiration Artwork

The inspiration artwork was chosen by Terri. You can read why she picked this work here.

The Artwork

“At the Risk of the Sun” by Yves Tanguy

About the Artist: Yves Tanguy

Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy was a French surrealist painter born on January 5, 1900, at the Ministry of Naval Affairs in Paris to Breton parents. His father was a retired navy captain who died in 1908 when Yves was just 8 years old. After his father’s death, his mother returned with her son to her hometown of Locronan, Finistère.

In 1918, Yves briefly joined the merchant navy until he was drafted into the Army where he served until 1922. Upon his discharge from military service, Tanguy returned to Paris where he worked at various odd jobs. During this time, he stumbled upon a painting by Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico that moved him so much he decided to become a painter despite his lack of any formal artistic training.

Tanguy’s first studio was so small that he only had room for one wet painting at a time which led to him becoming completely absorbed in each piece as he was working on it. Around 1924, Tanguy was introduced to a circle of surrealist artists and began to develop his own unique style of painting. He had his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1929 and married his first wife, Jeannette Ducrocq, later that same year.

In December 1930, some of Tanguy’s works were destroyed by right wing activists along with paintings by Salvador Dalí and other well known painters from the era that were on exhibit in a cinema lobby. Throughout the 1930s, Tanguy adopted the bohemian lifestyle of a struggling artist which led to the demise of his first marriage. He began an intense affair with Peggy Guggenheim in 1938 when he traveled to London with his wife to hang his first retrospective at Peggy’s gallery, Guggenheim Jeune. This exhibition was hugely successful, making Tanguy rich for the first time in his life. His affair with Peggy Guggenheim continued until he met his second wife and fellow surrealist painter, Kay Sage.

As World War II broke out, Kay decided to return to her native New York. Tanguy was judged unfit for military service so he moved to the United States with Kay. On August 17, 1940, Sage and Tanguy were married in Reno, Nevada. Tanguy would spend the rest of his life in the U.S. Both he and his wife were heavy drinkers which led to tension in their relationship. Tanguy was known to verbally and physically assault his wife while she never made any response to her husband’s aggression. (Seriously, what is with these artists and their spousal abuse? Picasso was the same kind of arsehole as Tanguy.)

As the war was coming to an end, the couple moved to an old farmhouse in Woodbury, Connecticut, which they converted into studio space. Tanguy became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1948 and the couple lived the rest of their lives in Woodbury. He suffered a fatal stroke at his Woodbury home on January 15, 1955, at the age of 55. His wife died in 1963 at which point a friend scattered both of their ashes on a beach in Tanguy’s beloved Brittany.

About the Art: At the Risk of the Sun

Tanguy’s paintings possess an immediately recognizable style of unique, nonrepresentational surrealism which depicts vast, abstract landscapes in limited color palettes with the occasional flash of contrasting accent colors. He typically populates his alien landscapes with abstract shapes resembling shards of glass and other organic items morphing into each other. His 1947 oil on canvas, “At the Risk of the Sun” is painted in his signature style. It contains the abstract landscape in a limited color palette with bits of contrasting color.

The unframed canvas measures 28 x 16 inches (71.12 x 40.64 cm) and 32 x 20 1/16 inches (81.28 x 50.96 cm) with its frame and it is currently on view at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.

The gallery description reads:

“In foreground, two constructions of a congeries of bonelike forms in grays and faint red. Right: form has a right-angled arm jutting from left side and pointing upward. Dark gray desert-like background, flat stone from right rear, low horizon, green-tinged white sky area.”

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

The gallery label reads:

“Strange, organic forms appear in this dramatically illuminated, desolate landscape. A heart form can be seen on the right. To the left is an imaginative array of stacked shapes, referencing parts of human and animal bodies. Yves Tanguy and other Surrealist artists sought to reveal the contents of the unconscious mind. Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories, they depicted images from their dreams, nightmares, and memories. Tanguy based this image on the prehistoric stone monuments he saw as a child in Brittany, France.”

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

The provenance of the painting is as follows:

• Purchased from the artist by the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, March 1948-November 7, 1958.
• Purchased from the Pierre Matisse Gallery by the Friends of Art, Kansas City, MO, November 7, 1958.
• Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

Resources/References:

• Yves Tanguy: Wikipedia
• At the Risk of the Sun: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

About My Outfit

I was completely stumped by this painting from the drab, muted color palette to the abstract, disjointed forms. So I did what I do when I am stumped by any SIA challenge. I held up a photo of the painting and scanned it along my racks of clothing looking for something to jump out at me. And I spotted this old gray knit dress in a shade that is very close to the light gray background of the painting. The marled knit also really reminds me of brush strokes on a canvas.

Sticking with the marled effect to resemble paint on a canvas, I layered a black and white marled sweater vest over the dress. The dress is rather shapeless so I first tried a belt with and without the sweater vest but I liked the vest with no belt better.

The apparent child looking at a sculpture in the painting inspired the rest of my outfit. She is wearing a dark red hat and looks to have a green bag or backpack so I wore my red beret and carried my green Teddy Blake bag. I also added a green and red thrifted neckerchief and my preloved L’Artiste boots in shades of green and brown. I also appreciate the relevance of wearing my L’Artiste boots for a French art inspired outfit. I purposely chose my beret and tied my scarf as a neckerchief to represent Tanguy’s French heritage.

For jewelry, I went with silver stick earrings, a silver beaded tassel necklace, and a sterling silver heart pendant (for the heart in the painting, of course).

This was challenging but I think I succeeded! It’s not an outfit I love but I also don’t hate it. I am just in a very colorful stage of life and prefer to wear brighter, cheerier hues these days. What do you think?

If you enjoyed my sartorial interpretation of this artwork, be sure to also check out Terri’s interpretation of the artwork as well as Salazar’s take on it. If you would like to participate in this challenge and have your photo included in Terri’s round up post on Wednesday, September 27, 2023, be sure to email your photos to her at meadowtreestyle@gmail.com by 10:00 p.m. EST on Tuesday,September 26, 2023. I look forward to seeing your creative art-inspired styles. 

Keeping it on the edge,

Shelbee

Linking up with these Fabulous Link Parties.

Outfit Details: Dress, Sweater Vest, Necklaces, and Earrings-Old / Boots-Thrifted (L’Artiste) / Scarf-Thrifted / Beret-Wona Trading / Handbag-Teddy Blake