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Leonora Carrington, Britain's Lost Surrealist, Tate Modem, Liverpool, UK April 2015
As I battled my way up to Liverpool's Victorian-era Albert Dock against gusts blowing in off the river Mersey, I regarded the grand brick building in its modern surroundings. Industrial, square and masculine, it is one of several historic buildings on Liverpool's waterfront that is now intertwined with the profits of twenty-first century regeneration, the concrete and steel of the Museum of Liverpool, the black artifice of the Mann Island office complex, and the Liverpool One shopping district. This setting contrasts significantly to the exhibition I was going to see on Leonora Carrington. The prolific surrealist artist is known for her feminine, colorful and expressive pieces that celebrate female sexuality, mythology, and magical realism. With support from the Government of Mexico-Carrington's home for more than half of her life and a clear inspiration for her work-the exhibition coincides with the 2015 Year of Mexico in the UK, and Leonora Carrington is one of three surrealist artists that make up the "Surreal Landscapes" theme, which also includes Cathy Wilkes and György Kepes.
The Leonora Carrington exhibition itself unfolds in three spacious, interlinking rooms housing the almost one hundred items on display, as well as a dark room playing Juan López Moetezuma's film The Mansion of Madness (1973), which utilized Carrington's talents as set and costume designer. The opening panel overviews Carrington's life "chapters," from her stifled upper-class childhood in Lancaster and escape to the Continent, her tumultuous relationship with Max Ernst and her wartime flight to Mexico, before her final move to New York. This progressive life is reflected in her unconventional artwork which embraced multiple artistic disciplines such as painting, drawing, print, sculpture, tapestry, puppetry, novels, short stories, poems, costume design and theatrical sets, and acting. Working in these multitudinous media allowed the restless and creative Carrington to firmly establish her distinctive take on surrealism-one which is significantly different to that of her male counterparts. Her art is characterized by eccentric beings that shift between plant, animal, human and object, as well as explores women's roles in the creative process, and female sexuality as she experienced itrather than how the male surrealists depicted it.
Throughout the...