How Meret Oppenheim reinvented herself through art
When Meret Oppenheim left Switzerland for Paris, she turned a room at the Montparnasse Hotel into her studio, sporadically studying painting at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. After sculptors Alberto Giacometti and Hans Arp visited her makeshift studio, she was invited to show her work in a Parisian surrealist exhibition. Surrealism was where Oppenheim shone, routinely surprisingly even the most avant-garde set in art with her bizarre behaviour. But she was never aligned with one kind of art, constantly evaluating what she was inspired by and shifting her style to match.
She’d later meet André Breton in Paris and start fully integrating herself into the surrealist circle, going to their meetings until she was well acquainted with the likes of Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Max Ernst. The conceptual scope of their work really appealed to Oppenheim, who carried it into her later work. “Every notion is born along with its form,” she once said. “I make reality of ideas as they come into my head.”
1936’s teacup, Object (or “Le Déjeuner en fourrure”, meaning “Lunch in fur”) catapulted her to fame, which triggered artistic celebrity – she was dubbed the “First Lady of MoMA” – but also a creative block. Objected touched on familiar themes for Oppenheim, female sexuality and the surreal. It was simple but evocative, a fur-lined teacup completely with a fuzzy fur spoon that critics concluded was meant to mimic genitalia. It was reportedly inspired by a conversation with Pablo Picasso, who breezily commented once that everything could be covered in fur.
In that sense, she totally fulfilled the surrealist goal – separating a simple cup from its original context. But on an artistic level, she felt she’d failed. She didn’t want to be associated solely with the surrealists, and the public perception that it was all she was capable of felt suffocating.
Her frustration was palpable, particularly considering she is now widely considered to have had an almost undefinable art style. She made jewellery, paintings, mixed media images, and drawings – but somehow, everything seemed to circle back to the teacup. Although much of her career was spent in the throes of creative blocks, when she did create artworks, they were always coloured by a fluidity that reflected her need to experiment.
She addressed this most famously in an acceptance speech for the 195 City of Basel Art Prize. While musing about her position as a female artist, she told the audience she firmly believed in “androgyny of the mind”. Just as she didn’t want to be tied to surrealism, she didn’t want her gender to be the defining quality of her work.
“Freedom is not given to you,” she professed. “You have to seize it.”
