Tanning's young girls with flying hair, menacing sunflowers, voluptuous female bodies bursting through wallpaper and endless open doors are currently haunting oxblood-darkened walls in Tate Modern, ...where her Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1943) is one of the most popular holdings. If we perceive terror it could be down to conditioning, says Dr Alyce Mahon, reader in modern and contemporary art history at the University of Cambridge and guest curator at the Tate, who originated the show at Madrid's Reina Sofia. 'Because they are little girls they're more inclined to be seen as victims, but I think Dorothea saw them as heading for the golden light, rejecting the rules and showing the reach and sprawl of the sunflower as a metaphor for herself and for females if left alone to take over, liberated from the domestic sphere.' If Tanning has been under-celebrated, it's the fallout from refusing to be defined as a 'woman artist': 'It meant she turned down a lot of opportunities to exhibit,' says Coxon, who concedes that despite dismissing the relevance of gender in making art, Tanning was nevertheless subsumed by the conundrums.
