One day when she was around 15, in 1925 or 26, her dad was talking to an old friend, Carl Sandburg. A famous American poet, 3-time Pulitzer prize winner, you could say he knows a little bit about art. Sandberg was shown Tanning’s drawings, stating that he was going to send her to art school when she was older. Sandberg replied with adamant disagreement, saying that art school would stifle her talent and originality. Originally her father agreed with the poet, but due to class and societal expectations of the family, she did go to college for 2 years. She started college in September of 1928, During her time there she stated she felt “Alone. Self-consciously, uncompromisingly alone…Something would happen, had to happen. It filled me up and down, back to front, and my head said that it would spill out cornucopiately onto paper or canvas.” Art in school did stifle her because at the time it didn’t teach you how to make art. It taught you how to compose, mix paints, and think like everybody else. Yes, the mixing paint part is useful but if a bunch of extremely famous painters in history went to or finished art school we wouldn’t have some of the amazing paintings we do. Take for example Egon Schiele, Vincent Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, and Thornton Dial.

Tanning, Dorothea. Between Lives: An Artist and Her World. Northwestern University Press, 2004.

“‘Women's Fraternities’ (Illustration for Knox College Yearbook) - Dorothea Tanning.” Dorothea Tanning - Painter, Sculptor, Writer, https://www.dorotheatanning.org/life-and-work/view/725/.