Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure). Meret Oppenheim. 1936 C.E. German. Fur-covered cup, saucer, spoon
In doing so, she said she wanted to transform items typically associated with feminine decorum into sensuous tableware. It also provoked the viewer into imagining what it would be like to drink out of a fur-lined cup.
Form
Object takes on an anthropomorphic quality, animated by the quirky combination of fur, exclusive to living organisims, with a stationary manufactured object. Further, the sculptutr captures the surrealist flair for alchemical, seemingly magical or mystical transformation. It incorporates a sensuality and eroticism that are also components of Surrealist art. This gives the work erotic overtones.
Function
Oppenheim’s Object was created at a moment when sculpted objects and assemblages had become prominent features of Surrealist art practice. In 1937, British art critic Herbert Read emphasized that all Surrealist objects were representative of an idea and Salvador Dalí described some of them as “objects with symbolic function.”
Content
A combination of unlike objects: fur covered teacup, saucer, and spoon. It is known as an assemblage. Combines the element of domesticity (tea set) with the primordial element of fur. Similar to a number of other artists at the time, Oppenheim was also exploring gender conventions in her work as well as the limits and possibilities of creating art from found objects.
Context
This fur lined cup was inspired by a conversation with Picasso. After admiring a bracelet that Oppenheim had made from a piece of brass covered with fur, Picasso noted that anything might be covered with fur. André Breton, who curated the collection, changed the title to Le Déjeneur en fourrure (Luncheon in Fur), which was a reference to Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass (which features a naked woman dining in a natural setting with a pair of clothed men) and the erotic novel Venus in Furs. This lent the piece a sexual air that was not necessarily intended by Oppenheim, who had wanted the work to remain more open to interpretation.
Innovation
It was selected by the Surrealist show in New York as the quintessential work of art. Over the years its fame has only increased.
Artist Decision
Oppenheim was wearing a brass bracelet covered in fur when Picasso and Maar, who were admiring it, proclaimed, “Almost anything can be covered in fur!” As Oppenheim’s tea grew cold, she jokingly asked the waiter for “more fur.” Inspiration struck—Oppenheim is said to have gone straight from the café to a store where she purchased the cup, saucer, and spoon used in this piece.
Interpretation
The art historian Whitney Chadwick has described it as linked to the Surrealist’s love of alchemical transformation by turning cool, smooth ceramic and metal into something warm and bristley, while many scholars have noted the fetishistic qualities of the fur-lined set—as the fur imbues these functional, hand-held objects with sexual connotations. With Oppenheim’s elegant creation, how we understand those visceral memories, how we create metaphors and symbols out of this act of tactile extension, is entirely open to inter- pretation by each individual, which is, in many ways, the whole point of Surrealism itself.
