SURREALISM & LEONORA CARRINGTON When asked to describe the ✓ Solved

Surrealism & Leonora Carrington When asked to describe the circumstances of her birth, the Surrealist painter and writer Leonora Carrington liked to tell people that she had not been born; she had been made. One melancholy day, her mother, bloated by chocolate truffles, oyster purée, and cold pheasant, feeling fat and listless and undesirable, had lain on top of a machine. The machine was a marvellous contraption, designed to extract hundreds of gallons of semen from animals—pigs, cockerels, stallions, urchins, bats, ducks—and, one can imagine, bring its user to the most spectacular orgasm, turning her whole sad, sick being inside out and upside down. From this communion of human, animal, and machine, Leonora was conceived.

When she emerged, on April 6, 1917, "England shook." The success of a creation story hangs on how richly it seeds the life to come. Carrington’s encompasses all the elements of her life and her art. There is her decadence and indelicate sense of fancy; her fascination with animals and with bodies, both otherworldly and profane. Above all, there is her high-spirited, baroque sense of humor, mating the artificial to the natural, and recalling Henri Bergson’s claim that the essence of comedy is the image of “something mechanical encrusted upon the living.” Her humor and its offspring —two novels, a memoir, a delightfully macabre collection of stories, along with hundreds of paintings, sculptures, and objets—have been unearthed on several occasions since her death, in 2011.

Each time her work is reborn, it seems more prescient, her comedy more finely tuned to our growing consciousness of the nonhuman world and the forces that inhabit it. Though it was a movement dominated by men—and often regarded as outright sexist (it was)—several talented women made inroads, if only briefly, into Breton’s tight-knit circle. Many of the women had close, usually intimate, relationships with the male artists, but they also flourished artistically. The torchbearers of surrealism were not “forward-looking when it came to women and their place in the world.” To understand the macho, egocentric nature of Surrealism and the eliding of women artists of this time, we will look at the fiercely imaginative and belatedly recognized artist Leonora Carrington, an essential member of the Surrealist group.

When it comes to surrealism, women had a much different experience, and she rewrote the surrealist narrative for women. Born in 1917 to an overbearing, well-to-do family in Lancashire, England, Carrington entered Surrealist circles upon falling in love with the revered artist Max Ernst, who was 26 years her senior. While it’s notable that many women participated in Surrealism, albeit on the sidelines, the movement was sexist even as it pretended to exalt women and encourage their liberation. Woman is the key to man’s search, the surrealists cried. The great secret of nature, the incarnation of man’s subconscious destiny.

Women are manipulative muses, sweet and innocent of their mysterious powers. Women are the answer. The Surrealists were fascinated by women: beautiful women, mad women, young women (under the age of about 25), or preferably all three conjoined in the ideal figure,—the femme enfant, or woman-child—whose mystical, erotic, and naïve spirit bewitched and aided men in channeling their irrational side. Breton famously proclaimed in his second Surrealist manifesto in 1929, that, “The problem of woman is the most marvelous and disturbing problem in all the world.” For the femme enfant, “the element of instability, often bordering on madness was as much a part of her image as was her naiveté.” Breton believed that insanity in a woman gave her visionary power, becoming even more transporting and mythical in men’s eyes.

Breton rendered the mad woman “a subject for scientific and poetic inquiry,” where she in turn was “passive, powerless, and at the mercy of the unconscious.” Breton’s commentary sums up much of Surrealism’s chauvinism and pompousness, as it shamelessly regarded women artists as muses. Carrington could’ve been the perfect profile for a femme enfant: in her early twenties, beautiful, eccentric, and subject to a bout of insanity. But Carrington avidly rejected the label of a femme enfant. As she put it in 1983, “I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse… I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.” Many of Carrington’s stories are themselves a subversive retort to the male surrealists’ view of women; they have a “fuck you” quality to them, which sits nicely alongside their sheer dreamlike weirdness.

The majority of women artists associated with Surrealism did not identify with it — they were uninterested in unleashing the subconscious through illogical, uncanny compositions. Rather, they articulated their work in much more personal and purposeful terms, often grounded in autobiography. Even Carrington stated that every piece of writing she ever did was autobiographical. What we see as fantasy, Carrington experienced as real. “Even though you won’t believe me / my story is beautiful,” she writes in a coda to a story.

The images in her stories are striking and visceral, and for Carrington, at the time, they were not metaphors. This was her reality, and there was no immediate way out of it. In her memoir and fiction — and, in her visual art as well — Carrington strives to understand people’s “systems;” to peer into them and visualize all their beautiful or ugly selves, often through animal incarnations (as in fables). She advises, “We have to listen to the soul … and to know when it’s a soul. … Each soul has a daemon.” Both her writing and visual art takes up this very exercise — a kind of study of the human soul. Carrington, like other female surrealist writers, wasn’t interested in simply letting the mind go and seeing where it might wander, but rather wanted to probe and question it more deeply.

She considered this gift specific to the artist, whom she described as a kind of magician — though her magic wasn’t used to bewitch men, but to give her independence. “A soul is very important… You have to own your soul as far as it’s possible… To hand it over to some half-assed male — I wouldn’t recommend it.” Surrealist art, with its convulsive, outlandish juxtapositions, showed Carrington how to discern the folly of the humans she knew. It also invited her to cavort with nonhuman creatures, drawing on their beauty and suffering to make tame ideas about character and plot more porous, elastic, and gloriously unhinged. The distinctions between human and animal, animal and machine, flicker in and out of focus in her early stories, but the fiction she wrote in the nineteen-fifties and sixties dissolves them lavishly.

In Carrington’s writing, the critic Janet Lyon has observed, the appearance of an ordinary human always feels like an aberration, a harbinger of death. Ordinary humans, when confronted with Carrington’s creatures, brandish their superior rationality and industry. For Carrington, humanity was a seductive costume donned by dummies. To step out of the costume risked deranging the self that one unthinkingly inhabited, courting madness, the dissolution of the belief in the human world as the arbiter of reality. But it was also to draw closer to Great Nature, in the quest for a new, liberating art. The woman artist of “Pigeon, Fly!” has been partially erased, but she isn’t dead yet. And the narrator of “The Oval Lady” is not Lucretia but her playmate, who sticks her fingers in her ears in order to block out the “frightful neighing” of Tartar’s incineration. In their art, the Surrealists used women as symbols of volatility, but the minority of women Surrealists suggested that changeableness itself could be a source of power. These women tapped into a long line of mythic female figures—the nymph, the witch, the fairy, the crone—who have used metamorphosis in order to outwit and outpace their more solid, and literal, male kin. Maybe this is why Carrington identified so closely with horses: because she could imagine herself, like them, being used as a vehicle.

Paper For Above Instructions

Leonora Carrington's life and work represent a fascinating intersection between surrealism and feminist discourse, moving beyond the constraints of traditional gender roles in art and society. Born into a well-off family, Carrington's upbringing starkly contrasts her eventual rebellious spirit against the expectations of a woman of her time. Her connections to male surrealists, particularly her romance with Max Ernst, serve as a critical inquiry into the dynamics of gender and art in the early 20th century.

Surrealism, as an art movement, often idealized women, portraying them as passive muses or enigmas to be solved. However, Carrington actively contested these notions, asserting her identity as an artist rather than a mere muse. Through her distinct narratives and whimsical visual art, she reinvented the surrealist narrative, steering it towards a more personal and introspective exploration of autonomy and creativity.

Carrington’s birth story encapsulates her artistic spirit; the myth of her creation juxtaposes the mechanical and the organic, emphasizing the artist's role as a creator. Her work is saturated with anecdotal humor and darker fables, often incorporating animals that reflect her fascination with nonhuman entities. This theme of metamorphosis—reflecting both human and nonhuman experiences—illustrates her belief in the magical potential of transformation.

Moreover, Carrington’s rejection of the femme enfant archetype illustrates her refusal to accept the limited roles prescribed to women in surrealism. Many female surrealists aligned themselves with this image, yet Carrington’s works transcend this stereotypical notion, highlighting instead a narrative steeped in autobiographical themes. The authenticity in her stories captures not just fantasy, but the lived experience of a woman navigating her artistic path amidst external pressures and expectations.

The power dynamics within surrealism are further exemplified through the lens of Carrington’s creative processes. Unlike her male counterparts who often exploited female imagery for personal gratification, Carrington utilized her narratives to explore deeper psychological truths. She challenged the notion of insanity as a source of artistic prowess, instead positing that a woman's autonomy and insight can forge a more profound understanding of reality. This perspective reorients the conversation around madness in art, transforming it from a tragic flaw into a conduit for authentic expression.

In her fiction, the portrayal of animals serves as an allegorical device that blurs the lines between humanity and animality. This interplay can be interpreted as a critique of anthropocentrism—the belief of human superiority over other beings. Carrington's art encourages viewers to question their preconceived notions of identity and reality, suggesting that liberation lies in acknowledging our interconnectedness with all forms of life. Her insistence on listening to the soul reveals a critique of rationality and industry as valid metrics of existence.

Furthermore, Carrington's depiction of metamorphosis and magical realism fosters a transformative approach to understanding gender constructs. She often employed mythical figures, intertwining themes of femininity and power in a way that celebrates women's complexity. By identifying with mythical creatures and fluid identities, Carrington opens up a dialogue about agency and self-determination within the arts.

The critique of the surrealist movement’s treatment of women is essential to understanding Carrington’s legacy. Through her work, she challenges the traditional narratives that have often relegated women's contributions to the background. Her creations defy categorization, encouraging a new appreciation for the intricacies of female creativity. By aligning herself with figures such as witches and fairies—symbols of rebellion and metamorphosis—Carrington asserts the notion that femininity can exist beyond the constraints of traditional patriarchy.

Ultimately, Leonora Carrington's immense influence continues to resonate, as her narratives and visuals profoundly challenge the archetypal roles assigned to women in art. Her legacy embodies a call for recognition of female agency and creativity, reflecting an evolving understanding of gender within surrealism. By immortalizing her experiences through innovative stories, Carrington not only redefined the female experience in surrealism but also paved the way for future generations of artists seeking to explore the complexities of identity and existence.

References

• Braun, E. (2013). Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy, and the Female Artist.
• Essinger, J. (2021). Women in Surrealism: Their Visibility and Voice.
• Hewitt, J. (2016). The Decolonization of Surrealism: An Analysis of Gender Roles.
• Jones, A. (2014). The Surrealist Imagination and the Female Body.
• Kristeva, J. (1980). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection.
• Miller, D. (2017). The Myth of the Femme Enfant: Leonora Carrington’s Rebellion.
• Simpson, R. (2015). Art and Politics in Surrealism: The Case for Feminism.
• Stevens, K. (2019). Activating the Feminine: Reimagining Surrealism.
• Thompson, M. (2020). Radical Female Visionaries in Surrealism.
• Yau, J. (2018). Embodied Visions: Gender in Surrealist Discourse.