Surrealism in Sunderland
Jul. 19th, 2023 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe went to Sunderland on Saturday, to hear Bryan and Mary Talbot speaking to the Society of Authors - and anyone else who turned up - about their new book, Armed with Madness about the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington. It took place at the museum, and durham_rambler kindly dropped me at the entrance to Mowbray Park, so I could walk through the gardens while he parked the car. Which is how I came to be right under the flight path of this tumult of pigeons:
I just happened to be photographing the walrus as a father and daughter behind me did something - I don't know what: rustled a paper bag, maybe? - and I think they were pretty overwhelmed by the pegeons' reation, too. (The walrus is an Alice in Wonderland reference, but that's another story).
The talk was maybe a little more 'story so far' and a little less about the new book than I had expected, but always entertaining. Here's the trailer, which is a good introduction:
I knew very little about Leonora Carrington: no, less than that, since what little I did know was inextricably entangled with Dora Carrington, an entirely different woman artist (I think it's inconsiderate of them to have so very nearly the same name... )
I know a bit more, now, because I've read the book. I wasn't drawn to Leomora Carrington as I was to Louise Michel in the Talbots' previous The Red Virgin, but that's just a matter of our respective personalities: no surprise that I prefer the firebrand heroine of the Commune to the poor little rich girl, the missing Mitford sister, the one who entered the world of the visual arts.
What makes Leomora Carrington such an interesting subject for a graphic biography is not just that she was herself a visual artist, but that she found in the Surrealist movement a language in which to express the chaotic nature of her life and her times. Because I am so extremely ignorant about her work, it took me a while - and some internet image searches - to realise this. At first I thought, because I recognised Picasso's Guernica, and Max Ernst's Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, that it was these alpha males who dominated the book. Gradually I realised thaat they may dominate the gallery walls, but that the tarot figures and ghostly presences which are everywhere in these pages are the stuff of Leonora's paintings.
There is a moment of crisis when the surrealist aesthetic, the chaos of the world at war, and Leonora's unstable mental state all collide: a nightmare journey through the Pyrenees, escaping from occupied France, through a blood red landscape of nightmare fragments from Hieronymus Bosch and Goya's Disasters of War. Looking back, Leonora remarks "The Surrealists! They can idolise insanity all they want, but I was the one who saw the inside of a Spanidh madhouse, What can I say? It happened." That sums it up pretty well.
One last thing: Leonora lived until 2011, dying at the age of 94 in Mexico, where she had lived for some time and become, apparently, something of a national treasure. In 2008 there was an exhibition of her sculptures in Mexico City's Avenida de la Reforma: life-aize (that is, human-sizr or maybe a little larger) dream creatures stationed at intervals along the city street. Even on the strength of a single panel depiction, I wish I could have seen that. (Some figures are now on show in the Leonora Carrington museum in Mexoco; more pictures in the estimable Atlas Obscura).
Thr plan was that after the talk, people would afjourn to the museum café; we were all for this until we realised that the only way to accommodate all those present was to sit outside. The sun was bright, butdurham_rambler and I looked at the black clouds, heard the thunder rimbling and decided on discretion. We reached the car before the rain began, but by the time we were out of Sunderland, the barrage of hailstines was loud on the windscreen. So we lunched at Homer Hill Farm shop (I recommend the cauliflower fritters).
durham_rambler kindly dropped me at the entrance to Mowbray Park, so I could walk through the gardens while he parked the car. Which is how I came to be right under the flight path of this tumult of pigeons:I just happened to be photographing the walrus as a father and daughter behind me did something - I don't know what: rustled a paper bag, maybe? - and I think they were pretty overwhelmed by the pegeons' reation, too. (The walrus is an Alice in Wonderland reference, but that's another story).
The talk was maybe a little more 'story so far' and a little less about the new book than I had expected, but always entertaining. Here's the trailer, which is a good introduction:
I knew very little about Leonora Carrington: no, less than that, since what little I did know was inextricably entangled with Dora Carrington, an entirely different woman artist (I think it's inconsiderate of them to have so very nearly the same name... )
I know a bit more, now, because I've read the book. I wasn't drawn to Leomora Carrington as I was to Louise Michel in the Talbots' previous The Red Virgin, but that's just a matter of our respective personalities: no surprise that I prefer the firebrand heroine of the Commune to the poor little rich girl, the missing Mitford sister, the one who entered the world of the visual arts.
What makes Leomora Carrington such an interesting subject for a graphic biography is not just that she was herself a visual artist, but that she found in the Surrealist movement a language in which to express the chaotic nature of her life and her times. Because I am so extremely ignorant about her work, it took me a while - and some internet image searches - to realise this. At first I thought, because I recognised Picasso's Guernica, and Max Ernst's Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, that it was these alpha males who dominated the book. Gradually I realised thaat they may dominate the gallery walls, but that the tarot figures and ghostly presences which are everywhere in these pages are the stuff of Leonora's paintings.
There is a moment of crisis when the surrealist aesthetic, the chaos of the world at war, and Leonora's unstable mental state all collide: a nightmare journey through the Pyrenees, escaping from occupied France, through a blood red landscape of nightmare fragments from Hieronymus Bosch and Goya's Disasters of War. Looking back, Leonora remarks "The Surrealists! They can idolise insanity all they want, but I was the one who saw the inside of a Spanidh madhouse, What can I say? It happened." That sums it up pretty well.
One last thing: Leonora lived until 2011, dying at the age of 94 in Mexico, where she had lived for some time and become, apparently, something of a national treasure. In 2008 there was an exhibition of her sculptures in Mexico City's Avenida de la Reforma: life-aize (that is, human-sizr or maybe a little larger) dream creatures stationed at intervals along the city street. Even on the strength of a single panel depiction, I wish I could have seen that. (Some figures are now on show in the Leonora Carrington museum in Mexoco; more pictures in the estimable Atlas Obscura).
Thr plan was that after the talk, people would afjourn to the museum café; we were all for this until we realised that the only way to accommodate all those present was to sit outside. The sun was bright, but
durham_rambler and I looked at the black clouds, heard the thunder rimbling and decided on discretion. We reached the car before the rain began, but by the time we were out of Sunderland, the barrage of hailstines was loud on the windscreen. So we lunched at Homer Hill Farm shop (I recommend the cauliflower fritters).
