Mimi Parent,80: surrealist artist (Independent obit)
GS
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
1948 Jean Benoît; died 14 June 2005.
The artist Mimi Parent was described by André Breton, leader of the
Surrealist 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
the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Montréal, where she met the artist Jean Benoît,
her future husband. Together with Pellan and Benoît, Parent formed the
short-lived 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.
In 1948 she won the Cézanne medal, including a stipend which allowed her to
travel. Parent and Benoît, by now married, decided that October to move to
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 2 December, two weeks before the exhibition was to
open, Benoît performed a 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 played, Breton read de Sade's testament and
Parent gradually removed Benoît's costume. In a dramatic finale to the
performance, Benoît burned the word "SADE" 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". These works were Boîte alerte: missives lascives (1959), a small
green postbox into which ideas could be "posted" and Maîtresse ("Mistress",
1996), a whip 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
Hyfler/Rosner
"GS" <
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> 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
> 1948 Jean Benoīt; died 14 June 2005.
Her wild art:
http://forum.psrabel.com/beitraege/parent/parent3.html