Exterminating angels and gallows children: Meret Oppenheim conquers New York posthumously
The Museum of Modern Art, home of the fur cup, is showing by far the largest exhibition of the artist in the United States to date. An afternoon with Oppenheim’s niece amidst her aunt’s 200 works proves dreamlike in the sense of surrealism.
Meret Oppenheim: “Ma gouvernante – my nurse – my nanny”, 1936/67.
An elegant woman with a wickedly crooked mouth holds a child whose throat has been cut in her red-painted hands; Her blood spills on her starry dress and on the snow. The drawing is terribly funny. Meret Oppenheim painted this “strangling angel” in 1931. She was then only 18 years old. “She didn’t want children. She painted this votive picture so as not to have any”. So says Lisa Wenger, her niece. We are together in the exhibition of her famous aunt at the Museum of Modern Art (Moma). There is something magical in this alone: stand in front of his works with one of his close relatives.In New York.
