Leonora Carrington: Rebel Visionary – an exhibition of 'unearthly delights'
The 'captivating' show features over 70 pieces spanning everything from paintings to tapestries
The surrealist Leonora Carrington led a "fascinating life", said Artlyst magazine. Born to an upper-class family in Lancashire, she escaped a world of debutante balls and conventional expectations to become an artist in Paris. There, Carrington (1917-2011) had a "passionate affair" with the great German surrealist Max Ernst and mixed with the likes of Picasso, Dalí, Miró and Duchamp.
When war came, she made "a dramatic escape" to Mexico, where she spent the rest of her life producing "a diverse body of work" in many mediums, which combined European surrealism with the folkloric traditions of her adopted homeland. Carrington was long "under-appreciated", her art "overshadowed" by her "tumultuous" biography; but in recent years this has begun to change.
This May, her 1945 painting "Les Distractions de Dagobert" fetched £22.5m at Sotheby's, becoming the single most expensive work by a British woman ever sold at auction. Now a new show at Newlands House in Petworth, in West Sussex, "offers a comprehensive look at Carrington's imaginative and diverse career". Showcasing more than 70 pieces, including paintings, sculptures, tapestries and jewellery, it is a "must-see exhibition" that honours Carrington's "extraordinary talent and creativity".
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The exhibition is "an ecstatic reminder of all that is liberating in surrealist art", said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. The movement was considered "old-hat" by the late 1940s, but Carrington, who cared nothing for consensus, continued "making dream art many decades after dreams like hers went out of fashion".
Carrington's imagination "throws out creatures and ghosts and demons". One sculpture, entitled "The Old Magdalena" (1988), sees a woman entirely covered with hair standing as "a sentinel of strangeness". Elsewhere, there are murals created with Mayan textile workers, and masks inspired by Aztec and Mayan culture. "With bad surrealism, you feel it's fake or forced." Carrington's never feels like that; it is authentically weird to its core. For instance, "Daughter of the Minotaur" (2010), a "captivating" bronze, depicts its subject as a "horned beast" with a slender, gender-fluid body. It is "entrancing in its sheer oddity and, above all, conviction. It is real."
I had reservations about this show before visiting, said Laura Freeman in The Times. Surrealism is not really my thing: "I am dead set against other people's dreams", mystical experiences and "associated woo-woo". Yet while there is "imaginative excess" here – "dragons and firebirds, silent sphinxes and taloned beasts, a cow that is half-cactus" – Carrington executes them with impressive "elegance" and "economy of line", convincing with her "sheer force of personality" and "singular, spectral artistic vision".
Her versatility, meanwhile, is extremely impressive: beyond the paintings and sculptures, we see examples of her "painted furniture", "elaborately furred costume designs" and even papier- mâché heads created for a production of "The Tempest". This is an exhibition of "unearthly delights". I left it "captivated".
Newlands House Gallery, Petworth. Until 26 October
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Juror #2: Clint Eastwood's 'cleverly constructed' courtroom drama is 'rock solid'
The Week Recommends Nicholas Hoult stars in 'morally complex' film about a juror on a high-profile murder case
By The Week UK Published
-
Explore a timeless corner of Spain by bike
The Week Recommends Take a 'dawdling route through the back-country' far from the tourism hotspots
By The Week UK Published
-
Saoirse Ronan: how the actress went viral
In the Spotlight The actress dropped a 'chat-icide bomb' on Graham Norton's BBC show
By The Week UK Published
-
Movies to watch in November, including 'Wicked' and 'Gladiator II'
The Week Recommends A major musical adaptation, a Roman Empire sequel and a movie where Santa gets kidnapped
By Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, The Week US Published
-
Edmund de Waal on this year's Booker Prize shortlist
The Week Recommends The chair of judges details works by Rachel Kushner, Percival Everett and others
By The Week UK Published
-
Griddled salmon and vegetables with miso and melted butter recipe
The Week Recommends Hokkaido comfort food classic with a delicious twist
By The Week UK Published
-
Shattered: Hanif Kureishi's 'inspirational' memoir of accident that left him paralysed
The Week Recommends 'Exhilarating' book is composed of diary entries dictated to his son Carlo
By The Week UK Published
-
Dr. Strangelove: is stage adaptation of iconic film a 'foolish' move?
Talking Point Steve Coogan puts on a dazzling performance in show that falls short of 'the real thing'
By The Week UK Published