The Look of Amber

1929

Yves Tanguy

Artist, French, 1900 - 1955

A sky streaked with azure blue stretches over a gray landscape in this surreal, vertical painting. The sky and land meet halfway up the canvas at a series of short, sharp, charcoal-gray peaks, like canine teeth. Small, diffuse, butter-yellow ovals waft above the peaks. Nine fluffy, cotton-ball like shapes cast narrow shadows across the gray-streaked plane. Three amorphous shapes float over the land closer to us. A ginger-brown, drippy form is to our left, a teal-green, bean-shaped object surrounded with fuzzy white tentacles is to our right, and a peacock-blue, L-shaped drip floats in the distance near the horizon. Thinly painted white and gray lines squiggle or sweep onto the canvas from the left edge. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right, “Yves Tanguy 29.”
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On View

East Building Upper Level, Gallery 415-B

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Chester Dale Fund

  • Dimensions

    overall: 100 x 81 x 2.3 cm (39 3/8 x 31 7/8 x 7/8 in.)
    framed: 128.9 x 108.3 x 6.3 cm (50 3/4 x 42 5/8 x 2 1/2 in.)

  • Accession

    1984.75.1

  • Copyright

    © 1997 The Estate of Yves Tanguy / Artists Rights Society, NY / ADAGP, Paris

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

André Breton, Paris; Peter Watson, London; (The London Gallery, London); Sybil Mesens [d. 1966], Brussels; her husband E.L.T. Mesens [1903-1971], London. [1] Mr. and Mrs. Ephraim Ilin, Jerusalem; purchased 1984 through (Robert Elkon Gallery, New York) by NGA.
[1] At his death, the artist and gallery director E.L.T. Mesen's collection was inherited by his cousins. A sale of part of the collection, which did not include the Tanguy, was held at Sotheby's London, 26 April 1972. Mesens was for a time the director of The London Gallery. An undated photograph in the E.L.T. Mesens papers at the Getty Research Institute is annotated "collection temporaire E.L.T. Mesens" [emphasis original] (E.L.T. Mesens papers, Getty Research Institute, Series VI:photographs, Box 20; copy NGA curatorial files)

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1932

  • Exposition d'Art Français, Tokyo, 1932, no. 46.

1936

  • The International Surrealist Exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, London, 1936, no. 345, as The Gaze of Amber.

1937

  • Trois Peintres Surrealistes, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1937.

1956

  • De vier boofdpunten van het surrealism, Anvers, The Netherlands, 1956.

1959

  • L'École de Paris dans les collections Belges, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1959, no. 146.

1967

  • Six Peintres Surréalistes, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1967, no. 76.

  • Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark, 1967.

1970

  • L'Art en Europe Autour de 1925, L'Ancienne Douane, Strasbourg, 1970, no. 208.

1982

  • 50th Anniversary, Tel Aviv Museum, 1982.

  • Yves Tanguy: Retrospektive 1925-1955, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris; Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 1982-1983, no. 33, repro.

1983

  • Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1983.

2000

  • Yves Tanguy and Surrealism, Neue Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; The Menil Collection, Houston, 2000-2001, no. 33, repro.

Bibliography

1963

  • Yves Tanguy: A Summary of his Works. New York, 1963: no. 86, repro.

1977

  • Waldberg, Patrick. Yves Tanguy. Brussels, 1977:141, repro. 125.

1979

  • Oesterreicher-Mollwo, Marianne. Surrealism and Dadaism. Oxford, 1979:repro. 31.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 385, repro.

1989

  • Strick, Jeremy. Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture: Selections for the Tenth Anniversary of the East Building. Washington, D.C., 1989: repro. 48, 49.

2001

  • Le Bihan, René, Renée Mabin and Martica Sawin. Yves Tanguy. Quimper, 2001: repro. 30.

Inscriptions

lower right: YVES TANGUY 29

Wikidata ID

Q20192785

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