- Signed lower right “Dorothea Tanning ‘82”and lower left “Carrying On”
- Dogs (here on the left) Tanning quotation on dogs:
‘A dog (my dog) […] over the years, shows up in many avatars, as constant as a talisman’. Admired their ‘useful truths’ and ‘ancient wisdom’.
- Between 1982-85, Tanning was working on an original film for a documentary 'Unheard-of News: Painter Dorothea Tanning'. The script was set up as an interview between Tanning and a dog, who asked her questions about her work. The film linked her work to natural disasters and environmental apocalypse (awareness of these events were rising in the US).
- The film's storyboards comprised of images of dogs and disasters – DT's interest in dogs, that atmosphere of apocalypse/collapse and the implications of the title can be linked to the subject and rendering of this work. Although we cannot know whether this image would have been included, it was made during this creative period.
- Amy Lyford, 'Exquisite Dreams: The Life and Art of Dorothea Tanning', Reaktion Books, 2023:
'By taking stock of that career and so doing within the context of natural disaster out of which the paintings would float onscreen, through the disaster framework, that her career, like her life, would end – its own small natural disaster.' p.204
- Max Ernst died in 1976, this was made in the period after his death, when Tanning moved back to New York 1980.