http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/story.jsp?story=649399
Mimi Parent
'Incorrigibly wild' Surrealist
25 June 2005
Marie "Mimi" Parent, artist: born Montreal, Quebec 8 September 1924; married
movement, as one of the "vital forces" of Surrealism. Penelope Rosemont,
writing in Surrealist Women: an international anthology (1998), the most
comprehensive review of Surrealist women's writings to date, rates Parent's
"gardens of earthly desire and other assorted delights and terrors amongst he
most splendorous paintings of our time, or any time". "Her Surrealism," she
says, "has always been incorrigibly wild and absolute."
Mimi Parent was born in Montreal in 1924, the eighth of nine children of the
architect Lucien Parent. From 1942 to 1947 she studied with Alfred Pellan at
Prisme d'Yeux, an organisation of Quebec artists whose common concern was
freedom of expression.
The period from 1944 to 1959, during the term of Maurice Duplessis as premier
of Quebec, was known as the Grande Noirceur ("Great Darkness") and was Canada's
"McCarthy" era, characterised by extreme conservatism from government and from
the Catholic Church. Probably as a result of this conservatism, Parent was
expelled in 1947 for "insubordination", related to the staging of an exhibition
at the school.
Her first one-person show, which was praised by Time magazine, was held at the
Dominion Gallery in Montreal in 1947. Whilst in Montreal she took part in
evenings of playing cadavres exquis, a favourite Surrealist pastime in which
several artists would work together on a picture, without knowing what the
others had already drawn.
Paris, which would become their home for the rest of their lives.
Although she had been involved with Surrealism from early in her work, it was
not until 1959 that Parent joined Breton's group in Paris and became involved
in its activities, which included the organisation of the event Exposition
inteRnatiOnale du Surrealisme (EROS) at the Galerie Daniel Cordier in Paris. On
piece entitled The Execution of the Testament of the Marquis de Sade at the
apartment of the Surrealist poet Joyce Mansour. Whilst a thunder soundtrack
on to his chest with a branding iron.
The exhibition "Surrealist Intrusion into the Enchanter's Domain", which opened
in New York in November 1960 and at which Parent showed, was the last official
International Surrealist Exhibition organised by Breton and Duchamp. Breton
recognised Parent's contribution to the movement by reprinting the preface to
one of her solo shows in his book Surrealism and Painting (1965). After
Breton's death in 1966 and the dissolution of the Surrealist group in 1969,
Parent continued her work in the creation of what were known as "picture
objects", hybrids between painting and sculpture.
From the late 1960s onwards Parent took part in numerous group shows, including
the exhibition "Surrealism Unlimited", organised in 1978 by Conroy Maddox at
Camden Art Centre in London and set up as a counter to the Hayward Gallery's
"Dada and Surrealism Reviewed", a retrospective which Maddox felt did not
properly represent Surrealism.
Two of Parent's works were shown at the Tate Modern in 2001 as part of the
Surrealist retrospective "Desire Unbound", an exhibition founded on the basis
of Breton's belief that desire is the "only master that man must recognise".
whose leather fronds are replaced by plaited human hair.
"Mimi Parent was one of the most vibrant and provocative of post-World War II
Surrealists," says Alyce Mahon, who discusses Parent's work in her forthcoming
book Surrealism and the Politics of Eros, 1938-1968:
Her innovative use of found objects to create exquisite sculptural boxes
displaying mythological tableaux, and her subversive approach to the themes of
sexual desire and gender politics, were vital to the evolution of Surrealism
and to the increasingly important role women played within it. A vivacious lady
with a wicked sense of humour, Mimi's passion for life and art inspired
everything and everyone she touched.
Marcus Williamson
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