You have been friends with so many important cultural figures. May I ask you to play a little pseudo-surrealist free-association game? How about your husband Max Ernst?

His humor. Ironic, amused, bemused. We laughed a lot. Even today, I have to keep from finding things absurd, which mostly they are. At the same time I’m crying my eyes out.

How about André Breton, founder of surrealism and dadaism?

Severely: “Dorothea, do you wear that low neckline just to provoke men?”

René Magritte?

Sweet.

Truman Capote?

A neat little package — of dynamite.

Orson Wells?

Scowler.

Joseph Cornell?

The courtly love of the 13th century troubadours.

Dylan Thomas?

How could anyone resist his bardic exuberance, his dithyrambs?

Duchamp?

Peerless.

Picasso?

One time when I was at his house, Jhuan-les-pins, for an afternoon visit, we stood at the kitchen door yard for farewells and he broke off the last flower from an old rose bush and handed it to me. How would you feel?

― Dorothea Tanning in an interview for Salon, in 2002

Read the whole interview http://www.salon.com/2002/02/11/tanning/

Max in the blue boat by Dorothea Tanning