2017

Readymade, seal fur

 

In 1936 Meret Oppenheim, one of the few women surrealists, made a fur cup, saucer, and spoon of soft gazelle fur. Though beautiful and unique, the sculpture was not unlike other surrealist objects of the movement - an everyday object made surreal and evoking contradicting, perhaps confusing and 'convulsive' sensations, thoughts, and fears when the viewer imagines using it. The work was wildly successful, and became the first artwork by a woman obtained by MoMA. The art world saw it as a sexual object, hailing it as a great feminine contribution to the movement. The sudden attention and other factors of the time drove 23-year-old Oppenheim into a depression and an absence from the art world for many years. 

 

Shaved breakfast is a performative sculpture: the performance in 2017 featured the drinking of tea and shaving of a seal fur cup with a women's razor. Perhaps it operates as a humorous continuation of the objectified lens placed on Oppenheim's work and points to beauty standards, fear of the feminine grotesque, of body hair and woman as object.