Editors’ Letter
In this issue of Tate Etc., we invite readers to see things differently – starting with our cover, which features Lee Miller’s 1941 photograph Fire masks. Taken at the height of the Blitz, in the back garden of her Hampstead home, the image encapsulates how Miller’s surrealist-trained eye brought a unique perspective to subjects as wide-ranging as war reportage and fashion editorials for Vogue. Turn to page 32, where writer Lucy Scholes traces the remarkable life of one of the 20th century’s most unflinching artists.
New perspectives on one of Pablo Picasso’s most famous paintings in Tate’s collection, The Three Dancers, are also revealed in an article by curator Natalia Sidlina that uncovers its previously unexplored post-war exhibition history (page 84). Meanwhile, Emmanuel Iduma offers a prismatic portrait of the new Tate Modern exhibition, Nigerian Modernism (page 62). Through poetic snapshots, the writer celebrates the revolutionary achievements of artists working in the decades before and after the country’s independence from British rule in 1960.
Elsewhere, the work of two artists informed by Indigenous science and ancestral knowledge – Máret Ánne Sara and Emily Kam Kngwarray – is brought to life in their own words (pages 74, 54). Rooted in a deep connection to nature, their monumental art reminds us of the value and vitality of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. Or, to return to Lucy Scholes on Miller: ’Her work demands that we look harder ... so that we, too, can see things differently.’
We hope you’ll agree.
Tate Etc.
