Leonora Carrington's work now worth 23 million

Les Distractions de Dagobert, painted in 1945, two years after Leonora Carrington moved to Mexico, is a marvellous and exceptional example of her work, where surrealism and European mythology are mixing with the bright colours of Mexico. 

The painting has just sold at Christies, New York, for £22,500,000. Now there's a sum of money that Leonora Carrington never saw in her lifetime. She died in 2011 at the age of 94.

The painting was sold to the founder of the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires, Eduardo Costantini, who after the sale said of the painting:- 

“An iconic painting, The Distractions of Dagobert is one of the most admired works in the history of surrealism and an unparalleled masterpiece of Latin American art. This masterpiece will be part of a collection where, amongst others, two important works by  Remedios Varo and another record-breaking Frida Kahlo are also found.”

Leonora - a Novel by Elena Poniatowska (review)

This novel, expertly translated by Amanda Hopkinson, seems to me to capture the essence of this fascinating and sometimes troubled artist in a way that no straight biography ever could. Leonora Carrington was a true surrealist, though she rejected their political and sexist ideology; Surrealism was fundamentally about plumbing the depths of the human psyche and her depths were greater than most. So were her heights; she was the anarchic, ambidextrous child, the White Mare, the rebellious hyena and the Giantess.

Leonora’s imagery is extraordinary in its density, its obscurity and Elena Poniatowska, who knew the artist well in the last decades of her life, comes close to explaining Leonora’s meanings by divining the origins of her thinking. The author’s writing is densely descriptive, like the artist’s painting. It takes the reader on a journey beginning just below the surface of family life in Crookhey Hall, Leonora’s childhood home, where the infant Leonora is convinced she is a horse and ends with Leonora communing with dolphins in Mexico. That necessity for a journey is the novelist’s prerogative, there are no pictorial illustrations but why should there be when the writing is so vivid?

I have studied Leonora Carrington over a number of years and seen as many of her paintings as is possible in Europe; my knowledge of the subject has not been challenged by this novelization of her life. I picked up a single minor inaccuracy in the title of a painting, which faced with the sweep of the story is insignificant. I won’t read a straight biography of Leonora Carrington again, the basic facts are already known and for the rest, this remarkable, imaginative account by Elena Poniatowska will do for me.

Leonora Carrington; the Celtic Surrealist



Book cover with cut-out showing detail of "Three Women With Crows."

This mysterious book is a handsome, well illustrated and knowledgeable (if slightly expensive) catalogue for an amazing exhibition which I made a trip from Yorkshire to Dublin in December 2013 especially to see. Leonora Carrington was a British artist who spent almost the whole of her career Mexico. She is one of the 31 Women; I try to catch as many exhibitions as possible containing their work.

The Dublin exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art was probably my only chance to see so much of Carrington's work in one place, most is on the other side of the Atlantic. I couldn't miss this huge retrospective of one of my favourites. It was wonderful to have free access to the three floors in IMMA's garden gallery and enjoy her boundless imagination in over 50 paintings, plus drawings, books, sculpture and tapestries by Leonora Carrington. Most of this work I had never seen before and much I hadn't even seen illustrated. With so much to see, I visited the exhibition on two successive days, would have liked to go back, but we had a flight to catch!

Tapestry "Iguana and Fox" with sculpture "Albino Hogg."

Carrington's extraordinary work is incomprehensibly underrated in the UK, though she is one of only a few British women artists whose work can fetch over one million pounds. She was a magical, mysterious and sometime surrealist painter, illustrator, writer and in her later years a sculptor. Her work is not to be confused with the more conventional and tasteful portrait paintings of another Carrington - no relation - who was a member of the Bloomsbury set.  Leonora could only be described as a conventional artist because she used the more conventional medium of paint, rather than installation or performance art.

Was my trip to Dublin worth it? Definitely! The exhibition was suitably marvellous and even without the exhibition, I hadn't been to Dublin for 25 years. Despite the recent recession, it's still a lively and immensely charming city. We stayed in the George Frederic Handel Hotel, on the site of the Great Music Hall on the wonderfully named Fishamble Street, where Handel's 'Messiah' was first performed in 1742. Hallelujah!

 Was the catalogue worth the money (45 Euro)? Yes, it gives fascinating insights into the work of this fascinating artist, including an interview by Hans Ulrich-Obrist and comment by her son, Gabriel Weisz-Carrington. I will look at this book again and again.                                                                                                                                                                 *

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17991730-leonora-carrington
https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389575610m/17991730.jpg
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17991730-leonora-carrington">Leonora
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/26359.Leonora_Carrington">Leonora

Leonora Carrington. The 31 Women Project, Number Seven - 6 April is her Birthday

Leonora Carrington was a rebel of the most superior and committed type. Born in England in 1917, into a wealthy family, she would not submit to the restrictive propriety that was expected of upper-middle class girls in those days. She needed to be creative and was totally out of place in a conventional family, the one thing she could share with them was a love of horse riding. The horse became symbolic of her freedom in many of her paintings.  As a child, only her Irish grandmother’s fables allowed her imagination free reign. She drew on the walls until her mother, an amateur painter, gave her paper and paints. She wrote in mirror writing and with either hand, which freaked the nuns out at her convent school. She started smoking aged nine and later, when sent to a posh finishing school, she ran away.

She eventually persuaded her reluctant father to let her study art in London, his price was to force her to ‘come out’ as a debutante in 1935. Leonora was unimpressed at meeting the king and hated the frock she had to wear for her coming out ball. The occasion prompted her to write a story in which her place was taken by a smelly hyena, who had just eaten Leonora’s maid and wore the maid’s face to attend the ball. Everybody was too ‘polite’ to comment, until the hyena ate the face and escaped through an open window.

Leonora studied at Chlesea Art School and then under painter Amedee Ozenfant, who had set up a small school. She said that Ozenfant was the first person to not denigrate her need to be an artist and he taught her rigour in her work. Eventually she ran away to be an artist in Paris and lived with surrealist painter Max Ernst. Beginning her artistic life as a surrealist, she was able to release her prolific imagination and with it she ran much further than most of her fellow surrealists, whose work is often mundane by comparison. Some of her early paintings and stories were full of her anger towards her father and the English establishment.

During this period, Leonora formed strong friendships with the other surrealist women including Eileen Agar, Nush Eulard, Leonor Fini, Jacqueline Lamba, Lee Miller, Meret Oppenheim and Dora Maar. These women are now considered a surrealist group in their own right, apart from the men, though in her rebellious fashion Carrington declared, “I was never a Surrealist, I was just with Max”.

Leonora Carrington's not Forgotten!

It's very interesting that my (fictional) Monologue for Leonora Carrington has more pageviews than anything else I've posted here and it's only been up for six days!

Great to see that Leonora definitely isn't a forgotten artist. She was successful and admired in Mexico and even in the US for many years until she died in 2011. She's one of too few women artists whose work can sell for over $1 million. Sadly, most people in England, where she was born, grew up, came out as a debutante, attended art school and ran away with surrealist genius Max Ernst, have never heard of her; this is their loss.

If you are one of those who have never heard of Leonora Carrington, you may be in for a treat -though there's no accounting for taste! Google her paintings - she seldom explained her art so don't expect an explanation of her extraordinary imagery and don't believe any that you find, it probably wasn't written by her or even with her approval.

I've written about Leonora before, she was a feminist and a review of a programme about her was published at:-  http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2010/09/new_review_look

I won't post any pictures of Leonora's here. They're copyright and I respect this, unlike some. A website by her son gives a decent biography, links and some other details, although not so many pictures as you might like:-

http://www.carringtonleo.5u.com/leoweb/index2.htm

After her death in 2011, a good obituary appeared at:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/art-obituaries/8539650/Leonora-Carrington.html

Monolgue for Leonora Carrington, 1917-2011

Leonora Carrington, artist and writer who died in 2011

Monologue/ Interview
(following a comment, I must point out that this is a fictional interview, based on some known facts and my huge admiration for Leonora Carrington's rebellious spirit and her remarkable art)
 

 Leonora

I do vaguely remember her, that journalist.  What was her name..?  Joyce… something. Whatever it was, she would insist on asking me the silliest of questions:

“Leonora, how does it feel, to be your age?” 

I mean really!  What does she expect me to say to that?  ‘I’m eighty-nine, you know.’

Of course I didn’t say that.  In any case I may not have been eighty nine, I can’t remember exactly.  If anyone asked me now, I’d have to adapt the stupid cliché.

“I’m actually dead, you know!”

She said my life, in those days, would make a great a movie script.  Absolute tosh of course! Mind you, I haven’t been to the cinema for years.  That Hollywood stuff was so unreal and I don’t suppose it’s changed.  All those unconvincingly goodly heroes and unfeasibly villainous villains and the women relegated to be either grieving mothers or simply useless and fainting in coils all over the shop.

I was always determined to be much more useful than that.

Not that father saw it.  I was destined to be beautiful, rich, make a good marriage; that was all I was expected to achieve.  A girl, you see, was not expected to do anything for herself.  Daddy was rich, a clever, self-made man and so desperate to become acceptable in ‘proper English society’.  He wanted to be a Toff and decided that he could buy his way in.

What Daddy decided, was so.

So. I was expected to stop being a little heathen and become a lady. I went to Saint Bride’s, an exclusive convent school.  The nuns failed to comprehend my difficulties; they were quite incapable of recognising any process which was not theirs.  I made up nonsense rhymes.  I painted a picture of Jesus carrying the ass, which apparently was blasphemous. I was expelled.  And another convent, expelled again, for smoking cigarettes.  Also, I wrote with either hand and composed mirror writing, which was obviously the Devil’s work.  I could draw with both hands too, and paint… but that came later.

I told her, that Joyce… what’s her name.  Told her that I was born into a one-hundred-per-cent Philistine family!  My brothers were hunting and shooting types, Father believed a female couldn’t be an artist, it was improper.  Although mother painted quaint little scenes which she would donate to her latest cause, but even she wasn’t so certain it was proper to be an actual artist.  Girls were supposed to be quiet and do what they were told, but of course I was a rebel of the most committed and superior variety.  

Eventually I was sent Florence for the summer to study classical painting.  This was in 1923 you realise, I mean who studied classical painting?  On the streets of Europe were Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Max Ernst.  Classical painting my eye!  And even this was dependant on my compliance.  I was to wear a silken gown, bow to the King and attend a coming out ball.  What a ludicrous malarkey! 

Well I’m a writer, you know, so I had to write a nasty story about that!  I called it The Debutante.  I made friends with a beautiful hyena at London Zoo, and I took her home with me.  She agreed to take my place at that ludicrous ball, and I dressed her in my gown, but her face was a slight problem.  She took matters into her own hands, or rather her own teeth and she ate the poor maid who had come in to help do my hair.  Ate the maid all up except for the face which she wore to the ball!  And of course everybody was far too ‘polite’ to comment, until the hyena grew hungry again and ate the face too, before leaping through an open window and escaping.

I even had to attend ladies day at Royal Ascot, wearing the most ghastly hat.  I managed to lose that to a convenient gust of wind, so I was hidden in a corner, which suited me.  I sat and read Evelyn Waugh.  That wasn’t the thing at all, there was so much whispering and tutting! Quite hilarious!

When I was nineteen I fell for Max, almost before I met him.  It was mother’s fault, she gave me a book with a marvellous painting of his on the cover; “Two Children, frightened by a nightingale.”  Of course I was at Chelsea Art School at the time, mother probably thought I’d find the book useful.  It was certainly that!

The book pointed me straight towards the exhibition and there was Max, blond and graceful and intense with that marvellous beaklike nose.  Max, the bird superior and I became his bride of the wind, it was almost immediate.  We escaped to Cornwall for the summer.  Eileen was there, and Lee and Roland.  Lee photographed us all, I think Paul and Nush came over from Paris.

Was Breton there? I don’t believe so. And Dali?  Of course not!  Why on earth would you ask about that little pervert?  In any case Dali and Breton were seldom on the same continent if they could avoid it!  Thus a surreal meltdown was usually avoided.

Father interfered of course, once he tracked us down.  Max went back to Paris rather rapidly before father could have him arrested for abduction of a minor or some such rubbish, as if I was one of his horses!  I borrowed ten guineas and went to Paris and that’s where I began painting seriously.

I never saw father again.  He actually made that “Never darken my door again” speech!  Can you believe that?  I hardly ever saw mother again either, which was the worst of all that.  But I did write to her sometimes and I spoke to her on the telephone years later, when I was in Mexico.

Why did I never return to England?  What would I want to return for?  What had England, ever done for me, with all its petty class lunacy and snobbery?  In any case I was born Irish, hence those wretched convents, all those nuns, vapid and fluttering nuns or vicious and screeching nuns.  My childhood was miserable.  The smallness of all that wretched nonsense!  That’s all I could write about for years, you know.

My painting was freer.  I owe that to Max, I suppose and to Mexico.  I had two husbands in Mexico, neither of them were Max.  I’m glad I lived and died the best part of my life in Mexico.

I beg your pardon? Was that the exciting, film script part of my life?  The Mexican part?  Of course it was not! I’m an artist not a film star.  The so called ‘movie script’ part, that’s the story that people always ask about.  My love affair with Max Ernst.  You think that’s the only excitement I ever had?  Certain forms of excitement are over-rated, I can assure  you of that.  I’m too old to care for it.

 I’m not talking about any of that, not to you.  Why should I?

I need a cigarette, do you have one?