Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
Tate Modern
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on display
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/dora-maar-15766" aria-label="More by Dora Maar" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Dora Maar</a>
SphinxHôtel
Presented by Allard Jakobs and Natascha Jakobs-Linssen 2020
<p><span>Untitled (Sphinx-Hôtel) </span>1935 is exemplary of Dora Maar’s surrealist-inflected street photography. The black and white photograph depicts a foreshortened view of the Sphinx-Hôtel in Paris as captured from street-level looking up. Each of the building’s windows is filled with guests looking down in the same direction, though it is not made clear at what. One woman is holding binoculars.</p>
paper print photograph gelatin silver
8 February 2016
8 February 2016
2016-02-08
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2016-02-08
Modern Times
Collection based display
4 October 2021 – 29 August 2022
2022-08-29
24 February 2022 – 29 August 2022
2022-08-29
2022-02-24
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2021-10-04
Surrealism Beyond Borders
Exhibition
1 November 2025 – 30 May 2027
2027-05-30
1 November 2025 – 28 February 2026
2026-02-28
2025-11-01
External
1 April 2026 – 31 July 2026
2026-07-31
2026-04-01
External
1 September 2026 – 31 December 2026
2026-12-31
2026-09-01
External
1 February 2027 – 30 May 2027
2027-05-30
2027-02-01
External
2025-11-01
IP: The Future of Statues: The Surrealist International
Loan-out
Untitled (Sphinx-Hôtel)
image: 258 × 239 mm
Presented by Allard Jakobs and Natascha Jakobs-Linssen 2020
<div class="text">
<p>
<i>Untitled (Sphinx-Hôtel) </i>1935 is exemplary of Dora Maar’s surrealist-inflected street photography. The black and white photograph depicts a foreshortened view of the Sphinx-Hôtel in Paris as captured from street-level looking up. Each of the building’s windows is filled with guests looking down in the same direction, though it is not made clear at what. One woman is holding binoculars.</p>
<p>During the 1930s Dora Maar earned a living through commercial assignments, mostly for fashion and beauty brands. Between 1932 and 1934 she shared a studio in Neuilly-sur-Seine with the filmset designer Pierre Kefer. During this period and, for reasons unknown beyond their professional collaboration, Maar often stamped her prints ‘Kefer-Dora Maar’ on the verso. <i>Untitled (Sphinx-Hôtel)</i> is one such example.</p>
<p>While taking professional assignments, Maar also worked independently. She experimented with photomontage, took portraits of her friends in the surrealist circle and she used her Rolleiflex camera to take documentary photographs in Barcelona, London and on the outskirts of Paris, often focusing on the most disadvantaged groups in society. Her surrealist-inflected street photographs made in Paris and London connect the different aspects of her practice. Focusing on street signage, shop fronts and architectural details shot from unexpected angles, these photographs reveal Maar’s distinct eye, but also the artistic and literary sources in which she found inspiration. Among them are the photographs of historic Paris by Eugène Atget (1857–1927, whose <i>Documents for Artists </i>had recently gained the attention of the surrealists) and the work of her contemporary, Brassaï (1899–1984), with whom she once shared a darkroom and who once stated in his landmark photobook <i>Paris by Night</i> (first published by Flammarion in 1933) that ‘nothing is as surreal as reality itself’.</p>
<p>Studying Maar’s influences, art historian Dawn Ades has noted that<i> Untitled (Sphinx-Hôtel)</i> is:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>a direct reference to one of the most haunting Surrealist books, André Breton’s <i>Nadja </i>(1928), the account of a failed love affair, and to the photographs in it by [Jacques-André] Boiffard. Breton asked Boiffard to photograph the sites in Paris where his encounters with Nadja took place, including the Sphinx Hôtel on the Boulevard Magenta, where, upon arriving alone in the city, his protagonist chooses to live, simply on account of its name. Did Maar photograph the same hotel? It must be, although its sign is different in Boiffard’s photograph, and the sphinx heads are invisible.</blockquote>
<blockquote>(Dawn Ades, ‘Chance Encounters and the Modern Marvellous’, in Centre Pompidou 2019, p.78.)</blockquote>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Victoria Combalía, <i>Dora Maar: fotógrafa</i>, Barcelona 1995, p.91, no.31.<br/>Damarice Amao, Karolina Lewandowska, Amanda Maddox (eds.), <i>Dora Maar</i>,<i> </i>exhibition catalogue, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Tate Modern, London and J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 2019–20, pp.77–9, illustrated p.78.</p>
<p>Emma Lewis<br/>October 2020</p>
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Summary
2023-07-31T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT