Women On the Verge: Breaking Surrealism's Glass Ceiling

Summary

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In 1929, American fashion model and photographer Lee Miller created one of the most disturbing images in the history of Surrealism: Still Life -- Amputated Breast on a Plate. Even today, her deadpan diptych displaying a woman's surgically removed breast on a dinner plate has shock value. "I actually can't think of another image which can compete with the graphic and unsettling element of this piece, not even in contemporary art," said Patricia Allmer, research fellow in art history at the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University and curator of the exhibition Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealists -- recently on view at Manchester Art Gallery. Miller's piece was part of the exhibit. "Miller went to a mastectomy and asked the surgeon, after the operation, whether she could have the amputated breast. ... She took it to Vogue's offices in New York, where she put it on a plate and arranged it, together with cutlery, as a place setting. She took two shots before being thrown out, together with the breast," added Allmer.

As horrific as the picture may be, the intent of Miller's visual statement cannot be missed. "It is a very powerful image," said Allmer from England. "It is the ultimate rejection of the male gaze, literally feeding the desired object (breast) back to it as diseased 'meat.' ... It also draws on art historical conventions and images, ranging from the still-life tradition to representations of St. Agatha, whose torture, according to legend, involved the crushing and cutting off of her breasts. St. Agatha is often depicted as carrying her cut-off breasts on a plate."

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Women On the Verge: Breaking Surrealism's Glass Ceiling

So why isn't Miller's photograph better known -- let alone the

photographer herself -- in the literature on Surrealism, one of the most popular and well-documented art movements of the 20th century? Largely because Surrealism was essentially made up of a clique of male artists predisposed to regard women as objects of desire, as lovers and muses, or as people to be feared, rather than as intelligent and creative individuals. And until recently, scholarly examination

of women Surrealists, from their active participation in the movement in Paris in the late 1920s th...

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