The Tea Party

World War II (1939-45) transformed the lives of Sylvia Fein and her friends. The Tea Party was created during the height of the war and shows the artist in the role of Alice, from Lewis Carroll’s 1865 fantasy novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, at a table set for absent friends. Fein leans against a rock formation that swells and writhes with the suggestion of concealed images—birds, lizards, faces, hands—as though the very earth were unstable and ready to change itself and challenge her understanding of reality. A card on the table is inscribed “WKS/Hawaii, ” revealing the picture’s dedication to her husband, fighting in the Pacific. Fein’s self-portrait as Alice suggests magical thinking and the will to have control over the whims of fate.