The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of May 30, 2026

A vertically oriented abstract oil painting depicts a girl with light skin tone lurching forward from the lower right out of a red-cushioned, straight-backed chair and into the rippling folds and abstract shapes of twisting fabric in shades of golden-yellow. The person wears a black dress fringed in white lace, a red sash around the waist and a white cap over their hair. Their arms sink into the fabric and they curve their back up, eyes closed, mouth slightly open. Another chair with a pink cushion sinks into the folds above and left.

Musical Chairs

1951

Dorothea Tanning

(American, 1910–2012)
America
oil on canvas
116.2 x 88.9 cm (45 3/4 x 35 in.)
Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund 2024.68
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Location: 226B American Modern

Did You Know?

Artist Dorothea Tanning lived to be 101 years old.

Description

In this surreal composition, a pre-adolescent girl—whose mismatched clothing suggests she has been playing dress-up—interrupts her game of musical chairs by daydreaming into a realm where imagination reigns free. Defying logic, she sinks into a sea of fabric that in turn swells up behind her into a haphazard arrangement of folds. Artist Dorothea Tanning started her career as a fashion illustrator, launching a lifelong interest in the expressive qualities of cloth.
  • Dorothea Tanning used a commercially primed linen canvas with a lead white ground as the primary support. The infrared reflectogram reveals a light sketch in a carbon-based dry media that was first used to lay out the composition. Also visible in the infrared spectrum, but not in normal visible light, is a dark shape in the upper right that was painted out by the artist. Areas of retouch varnish were applied throughout the painting, likely to saturate areas that became matte upon drying. An overall varnish was not applied by the artist and the painting remains in its original unvarnished state. The painting is considered to be in overall excellent condition.
  • The artist
    [Alexandre Iolas Gallery, New York, NY]
    1953–2001
    Ann Lampros Apostolakis [1914–2011], New York, NY, purchased in 1953
    James Apostolakis, [born 1942], New York, NY, inherited in 2001
    2024
    [Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, CA, consigned in 2024]
    2024–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, purchased in 2024
  • 60th Annual American Exhibition: Paintings and Sculpture, exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1951), cat. no. 161, as Musical Chairs—Spanish Version.
    Dorotha Tanning, exh. pamphlet. (New York: Alexander Iolas Gallery, 1953).
    Alain Bosquet, La peinture de Dorothea Tanning (Paris: Jean-Jaques Pauvert, [1966]). Reproduced, p. 58.
    L[arry] C[ampbell], “Reviews and Previews: Dorothea Tanning,” ARTnews 51 (February 1953). Mentioned, p. 57.
    Amy Worthen, “Dorothea Tanning,” in Jo-Ann Conklin, ed., The Louise Noun Collection: Art by Women, exh. cat. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1990). Mentioned, p. 92.
    Jean-Christophe Bailly, Dorothea Tanning (New York: George Braziller, 1995). Mentioned, pp. 22 and 209; reproduced, pp. 91 and 97.
    Soo Y. Kang, “Tanning’s Pictograph: Repossessing Woman’s Fantasy,” Aurora: The Journal of the History of Art 3 (2002). Mentioned, p. 91; reproduced, p. 99.
    Amy Lyford, “Refashioning Surrealism: The Early Art of Dorothea Tanning,” Dorothea Tanning, Beyond the Esplanade: Paintings, Drawings and Prints from 1940 to 1965, exh. cat. (San Francisco: Frey Norris Gallery, 2010). Mentioned, p. 5.
    Kate Bernheim, The Complete Tales of Merry Gold (Tallahassee: Fiction Collective 2, 2006). Reproduced on cover.
    Catriona McAra, A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning’s Chasm (London: Routledge, 2016). Mentioned, p. 97.
    Victoria Carruthers, “Between Sound and Silence: John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and the Sculptures of Dorothea Tanning,” in Patrizia Di Bello and Gabriel Koureas, eds., Art, History and the Senses 1830 to the Present (Surrey: Ashgate, 2010). Mentioned, p. 101.
    Alyce Mahon, ed., Dorothea Tanning: Behind the Door, Another Invisible Door, exh. cat. (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2018). Mentioned, p. 29; reproduced p. 138. Reprinted as Alyce Mahon, ed., Dorothea Tanning, exh. cat. (London: Tate Modern, 2019). Mentioned p. 29; reproduced p. 138.
    Victoria Carruthers, Dorothea Tanning: Transformations (London: Lund Humphries, 2020). Mentioned, p. 110; reproduced, p. 111.
    Catriona McAra, “Feminist-Surrealism in the Contemporary Novel,” in Anna Watz, ed., A History of the Surrealist Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023). Mentioned, p. 352.
    Amy Lyford, Exquisite Dreams: The Art and Life of Dorothea Tanning (London: Reaktion Books, 2024). Mentioned, pp. 97, 99, 102, 109, 111-15; reproduced, p. 101.
    Willard Spiegelman, “’Exquisite Dreams’ Review: Dorothea Tanning’s Surreal Vision,” Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2024.
    Tony Bravo, “Two Extraordinary Paintings by Dorothea Tanning at Gallery Wendi Norris,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 15, 2024.
    "New on View.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 64, no. 4 (2024): Back cover. Reproduced and Mentioned: Back cover archive.org
  • {{cite web|title=Musical Chairs|url=false|author=Dorothea Tanning|year=1951|access-date=30 May 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2024.68