Meret Oppenheim
The fur teacup.
In 1936 Meret Oppenheim made Object, a cup, saucer and spoon covered in fur. It became the most famous object of Surrealism.
Meret Oppenheim was born in 1913 in Berlin. Her father was a German doctor and her mother was Swiss, and the family moved to Switzerland during the First World War. Her grandmother was a writer. As a teenager Meret became interested in psychoanalysis, partly through Carl Jung’s ideas, and she kept a dream diary for much of her life.
In 1932, aged just eighteen, she arrived in Paris. Through Alberto Giacometti and Hans Arp she became part of the Surrealist circle. She modelled for Man Ray’s photographs, including a well-known series in which she stands naked beside a printing press. She was no muse, however, but an artist with ideas of her own.
In 1936 she made Object, a coffee cup, saucer and spoon covered in the fur of a Chinese gazelle. According to an often-repeated story, the idea came to her in a café when she showed Picasso a fur-covered bracelet and he remarked that one could cover anything in fur. The work was bought the same year by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and became a symbol of Surrealism. Covered in fur, an everyday object becomes at once absurd, sensual and unsettling.
Sudden fame became a burden. From the late 1930s she went through a long crisis of depression, and for many years she worked little and destroyed much. Only in the mid-1950s did she return in full force. She worked in painting, objects, jewellery, design and poetry. She also made a fountain in Bern, where she lived, which was inaugurated in 1983 and has gradually become covered in vegetation.
In the mid-1970s, on receiving the Basel art prize, she gave a celebrated speech in which she said that freedom is not given; one has to take it. She died in 1985 in Basel. For a long time she was seen as the artist behind a single work, but today the full range of her versatile output is receiving attention.