Grete Stern
MUSEO DE ARTE LATINOAMERICANO DE BUENOS AIRES (MALBA)
Avenida Figueroa Alcorta 3415
March 18–July 1
Grete Stern, Botella del mar (Sueño Nº 5) (Sea Bottle [Dream Nº 2]), 1950, photomontage, 9 1/2 x 12".
In 1948, a year after Eva Perón’s efforts helped secure Argentinian women the right to vote, Idilio magazine was campaigning for their right to dream. For a column titled “El psicoanálisis le ayudará” (Psychoanalysis Will Help You), the primarily female readership would submit descriptions of their dreams to editor Richard Rest (the nom de plume of philosopher and sociologist Gino Germani), who then decoded the meaning of each vision using popular psychology. Additional commentary—often more cynical than sympathetic—could be gleaned in the accompanying illustrations by Bauhaus-trained émigré Grete Stern. From 1948-51, the artist created over 150 photomontages for the column, the originals of which she would later exhibit as an autonomous body of work, Los sueños (The Dreams). Idilio’s readers tended to be middle-class, upwardly mobile young women who imagined their lives playing out like their first lady’s, a kind of polite cosmopolitan in a modest tailored dress. Stern borrowed this sensibility when staging photos of her friends and neighbors, which she then spiked with surrealistic elements: In Niño flor (Sueño Nº 11) (Flower Child [Dream Nº 11]), 1948, a blond toddler sprouts from the stamen of a calla lily, while in Sin título (Sueño Nº 3) (Untitled [Dream Nº 3]), 1949, a giraffe takes a woman for a joyride in a Buick convertible.
In the selection of images on view here, Stern’s illustrations convey a certain subversiveness, but also a faint annoyance with women whose submissiveness implicated them in their own oppression. She depicts one woman contently sitting cross-legged in a birdcage, a fan folded coyly over her face; another woman is shown curled up in a corked glass bottle, her own little wish sent to sea. A third stands in for the stem of a lamp, a man’s thick finger resting purposefully on the switch at the base of her knee. Three recurring motifs—turtles, trains, and the seashore—converge powerfully in En el andén (Sueño Nº 2) (On the Platform [Dream Nº 2]), 1949, which shows a locomotive with a tortoise head surging out of the ocean, its mouth agape, as a woman on shore draws back in alarm. Sirena del mar (Sueño Nº 16) (Mermaid [Dream Nº 16]), 1950, centers on a female pelvis, washed up in breaking waves. Male hands float over the body as if in the middle of a magic trick, having conjured this derriere divine from the depths of the sea. With women appearing as both subject and object of their fears, desires, and fantasies, what Stern’s collages offer is a psychoanalytical portrait of partial empowerment.