Leonora CarringtonLeonora Carrington: The Mexican Years, 1943-1985 by Holly Barnet-Sanchez; LeonoraCarringtonReview by: Susan AberthArt Journal, Vol. 51, No. 3, Recent Native American Art (Autumn, 1992), pp. 83-85Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777352 .

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exhibition reviews

Leonora Carrington SUSAN ABERTH

Leonora Carrington: The Mexican Years, 1943-1985. Organized by Holly Barnet- Sanchez, essay by Whitney Chadwick, inter- view by Paul de Angelis, chronology by Salomon Grimberg. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, with Mexican Museum, San Francisco, 1991.48 pp.; 10 color ills., 10 black-and-white. $20.00 paper

Exhibition schedule: Mexican Museum, San Francisco, December 11, 1991- March 8, 1992

nigmatic, mercurial, and often spiced with a sly wit, the haunt- ing and numinous work of Leonora

Carrington eludes easy classification. Associated with Surrealism through her youthful involvement with Max Ernst and his circle in Paris, Carrington came into full artistic maturity only after moving to Mexico in 1943. This exhibition, the first to address seriously the impact of Mexican art and culture on her work, provides a rich, new means by which to evaluate the contri- butions of this original artist.

Carrington's paintings, often intimate in scale, teem with mysterious creatures who perform obscure ritualistic acts, at times bordering on the humorous. Like the works of Hieronymus Bosch, their fantasti- cal terrains are embedded with arcane sym- bols that leave the viewer intrigued but confounded, frustrated yet enchanted. Throughout her life Carrington has actively studied mythologies and occult traditions, and her work draws from sources as varied as Celtic myths, the Cabala, fairy tales, alchemy, and ancient Egyptian mysticism.

The San Francisco retrospective was modest in scale but with ambitious goals. Comprising about thirty paintings, sculp- tures, drawings, and tapestries, the ex- hibition offered a chronological survey of Carrington's production. Changes in style and iconographic developments can now be reconsidered within the context of the art- ist's Mexican citizenship. As curator Holly Barnet-Sanchez states in the foreword to the catalogue, "This survey encourages the viewer to assess the influence of Mexico's languages, histories, and arts on a woman

of tremendous creative imagination and on the works that have been 'vehicles of transit' throughout her extraordinary life" (p. 7).

When the British-born Leonora Carrington arrived in Mexico in 1943, she associated with recently arrived Surrealist artists, including Luis Bufluel, Benjamin PNret, Kati and Jose Horna, Wolfgang Paalen, Alice Rahon, and, most signifi- cantly, the Spanish-born painter Remedios Varo. Two exquisite examples of Car- rington's early work in Mexico, Palantine Predella and Tuesday, both from 1946, em- ploy the dreamscape idiom of Surrealism.' Hinting at occult journeys and spiritual awakenings, these paintings could be illus- trations for obscure fairy tales. A type of fantastical continuous narrative, struc- turally reminiscent of medieval panel paint- ing, suggests a multiplicity of psychological and psychic realities. Reflecting her inter- est in Bosch and Bruegel, a plethora of details implies a narrative, impenetrable but archetypally familiar. Always resist- ing literal interpretations of her work, Carrington explains, "Images arise, I don't know from where, they just arise, and if they are charged with energy, they have an au- tonomous life."2

But just when and how Mexico as- serted its influence on the creative output of Carrington has been a neglected issue, as it also has been for the other members of the emigre' Surrealist community in Mexico. Were these transplanted European artists creatively untouched by their new home, a country rich in both modern and indigenous artistic traditions? Although Carrington lived and worked for the better part of her life in Mexico, which Andre Breton dubbed the Surrealist country par excellence, the country has appeared significant only as a "colorful" backdrop to her life. In her excel- lent catalogue essay, "El Mundo MAgico: Leonora Carrington's Enchanted Garden," Whitney Chadwick notes:

Art historians often treat Carrington's paint- ing as if it emerged independent of place, as

if it remained frozen in the mold Surrealism had offered in the 1930s. Carrington herself would always resist simply adopting indige-

B4

FIG. 1 Leonora Carrington, El Mundo Migico de los Mayas (detail), 1963, casein on panel, 84 x 180 inches. Museo Regional, Tuxtla Gutidrrez, Mexico.

nous motifs and images. Nevertheless, her work of the next three decades was to be shaped in subtle ways by Mexico's history and by the ever present survivals of beliefs that seemed to closely parallel her own interest in the occult (p. 10).

One of the most significant contributions of the exhibition was the display of a full-size photographic reproduction of Carrington's impressive and little-known mural El Mundo Mdgico de los Mayas (fig. 1). Com- missioned in 1963 by the Museo de Antro- pologia e Historia in Mexico City, the mural was installed in the museum's Chiapas sec- tion until the late 1980s, when it was moved to Tuxtla Gutidrrez, the capital of Chiapas State. Based on the history, beliefs, and customs of the Chiapas Indians, descen- dants of the ancient Maya, this mural con- tains some of Carrington's most overt bor- rowings from Mexican culture. The artist made extensive visits to the region in order to gain firsthand knowledge for this com- mission, and also studied the Popul Vuh, a document from 1554-58 outlining the pre- Conquest beliefs of the Quiche Maya nation. The result is a panoramic synthesis of past and present, of Catholic faith and shamanis- tic practice. A procession solemnly carry- ing a statue of the Madonna from the Cham- ula cathedral is countered by an Indian curandero (faith healer) in a traditional hut conducting a ritual healing. The landscape of the region is alive with jaguars, owls, a sacred ceiba tree, sprouting corn-the stuff of both Indian and ancient Maya leg- end. Presided over by a mountain trans- formed into the the pre-Columbian rain god Chac, the earth is sandwiched between a

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sky and a subterranean region teeming with mythic creatures, an original invention

suggesting a world transcendent over linear time and united by magical forces.

But overall, as Barnet-Sanchez tells us, Mexico's influence on Carrington's work is subtle and problematic: "Certain ele- ments of Mexico's still visible pre-Hispanic culture repel Carrington, while other as-

pects of the country's early history resonate in her creative explorations" (p. 7). Car- rington eschewed direct quotations in her work of pyramids or pre-Columbian statu-

ary, so important in the work of Diego Rivera and other Mexican artists in their

struggle to forge a modern national identity. Instead, Carrington was inspired by indige- nous shamanistic beliefs and practices- frequently presided over by women-which coincided with her own fascination with the occult.

This interest in Mexican magic, linked with female power, was shared by her close friend and artistic collaborator Re- medios Varo and is, I think, central to an understanding of how both these women veered from canonical Surrealism.3 Car- rington admits that Surrealism was a male- dominated movement and that in Mexico, isolated from the influences of Paris, she was free to "individuate" (p. 42). Like Picasso and Braque, Carrington and Varo embarked upon an intense, mutually sup- portive artistic partnership, "creating a shared visual language whose vocabulary was based on a mutual fascination for the

hermetic, the spiritual and the alchemical possibilities of continuous change and evo- lution."4 In the work of both artists, women are the central protagonists. For Car-

rington, traditional sites of female domestic labor are transformed into arenas of occult drama. In the coloristically stunning Grandmother Moorhead's Aromatic Kitchen (1975),5 Carrington's feminist ideologies and Mexican influences are both in evi- dence. The kitchen is now a place of female power as women both inside and out of a magic circle tend to a magic meal invoking the Mother Goddess, present in the form of a

great white goose.6 Although the iconogra- phy is rife with Celtic imagery (the painting is inspired by Carrington's Irish grand- mother), Chadwick, in her catalogue essay (p. 14), takes a careful inventory of its Mexi- can components: a woman grinds corn on a traditional metate, the griddle in the magic circle is a comal used to roast peppers, and the garlic cloves resting on the magic circle are integral to all magic and healing rituals in Mexico.

Carrington's late works, in particular, show old women engaged in mysterious do-

ings involving seeds or containers of oint- ment, such as in The Magdalens of 1986 (fig. 2). While these crones eschew any overt Mexican identity, they nevertheless are reminiscent of the Mexican brujas (witches) and curanderas (healers) that Car-

rington so respected and with whom she studied while preparing for her Chiapas mural.

Such an ambitious and worthy project, spanning four decades of Carrington's work, demands a larger exhibition. However, the Mexican Museum should not be faulted if space limitations and budgetary constraints made this impossible. In addition, a coin- ciding retrospective of Carrington's work at the Serpentine Gallery in London made un- available many works that might have pro- vided an exploration in greater depth.7 Al- though revealing an artist of undiminished ardor and invention, the San Francisco show was disproportionately heavy in Carring- ton's late work.

As the recent landmark exhibition "Women in Mexico" so conclusively illus- trated, Mexico during the twentieth century has been home and inspiration to a wide range of enormously talented women art- ists.8 These women, both Mexicans and emigres, produced work that is only now

beginning to receive the critical and histor- ical attention it so greatly deserves. Some placement of Carrington within this context would have been enlightening. Given the pivotal role Varo played in Carrington's life and art, the exhibition seemed incomplete without any means by which to gauge their common interests and divergent styles. Likewise, it would have been useful to have placed the artist within the context of Mexi- can modernism, particularly since the ex- hibition highlighted her Chiapas mural, even if in photographic reproduction. That Carrington received this prestigious gov- ernment commission, along with leading Mexican painters such as Rufino Tamayo and Pablo O'Higgins, signals her official recognition as one of Mexico's own.

More extensive use of informative di- dactic materials in the installation would have greatly enhanced this exhibition. Wall labels did provide introductory biographical material on Carrington. However, viewers

might have taken away with them a greater understanding of both Carrington and Mex- ico if, for example, some written interpreta- tions and photographs of her sources had been provided. How can the museum goer be expected to navigate, more or less un-

guided, through Carrington's complex vi- sual world alone, much less to detect in it the influences of Mexican art and culture? Even in the case of the mural El Mundo

Mdgico de los Mayas, in which Carrington's relatively overt visual quotations of Chiapan history and life make interpretation easier, the viewer could have used some help. Al-

though the exhibition catalogue deals exten-

sively with this piece, most visitors pre- sumably would not have read it beforehand.

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F I G. 2 Leonora Carrington, The Magdalens, 1986, egg tempera on panel, 24 x 30 inches. Private collection.

FALL 1992

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With artists whose literary output is integral to their visual work, the successful inclusion in an exhibition of this aspect of their oeuvre is always difficult. Because Carrington's significant literary achieve- ments ran parallel to her artistic production, some integration is vital. Therefore, it was a wise move to place, at the beginning of the exhibition, a case containing beautifully bound first-edition copies of her Surrealist texts, including the legendary Down Be- low.9 Although quotations from her pub- lished texts were used in the installation, a few more would have helped to reinforce the

relationship between the two modes of artis- tic expression.

The inclusion of two textiles, filled with Greek and Egyptian references, ap- peared almost as an afterthought and left one wondering how they were connected to the rest of her work. Similarly, although Carrington has worked in sculpture throughout her career, this provocative and

important area of her output was meagerly presented by four bronzes, twin castings of the same two pieces at that.

Doubly marginalized both as a woman and as a Mexican artist, Carrington has only just begun to receive the critical atten- tion she is due. This exhibition and, even more, its catalogue do much to reorient Car-

rington scholarship and to challenge future

investigators. o

Notes 1. Palantine Predella is courtesy George Nadar Gallery, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Tuesday is in the collection of Isaac Lif, courtesy George Nadar Gallery, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. 2. Quoted in an exhibition wall label. 3. For a thorough discussion of Varo and Carrington's rela-

tionship, and of Carrington's work as well, see Whitney Chadwick, WomenArtists and theSurrealist Movement (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985). 4. Edward J. Sullivan, La Mujer en Mexico/Women in Mex- ico (Mexico City: Centro Cultural, 1990), lxxi. 5. In the collection of the Charles B. Goddard Center for Visual and Performing Arts, Ardmore, Oklahoma. 6. Gloria Orenstein was one of the first to explore Mother Goddess imagery in Ca'rrington's work; see, for example, "Leonora Carrington's Visionary Art for the New Age," Chrysalis 3 (1978): 65-77. 7. A catalogue was published in conjunction with this exhibition but I have not yet seen a copy.

8. Curated by Edward J. Sullivan, this exhibition opened in 1990 at the National Academy of Design in New York and

subsequently traveled to the Centro Cultural/Arte Contem-

poraneo, Mexico City, in the winter of 1991, and to the Museo de Monterrey in the spring of 1991. 9. Leonora Carrington's short novel Down Below, dictated

in French to Jeanne Megnen in 1943, chronicles her descent into madness and subsequent incarceration in and escape from a mental asylum in Santander, Spain.

SUSAN A BERTH received her MA.from the Institute

of Fine Arts, New York University, and is a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Andrea Mantegna WENDY STEDMAN SHEARD

Jane Martineau, ed.; Suzanne Boorsch, Keith Christiansen, David Ekserdjian, Charles Hope, David Landau, and others. Andrea Mantegna. London and New York: Royal Academy of Arts and the Metropolitan Mu- seum ofArt, 1992. Distributed by Harry N. Abrams, New York. 510 pp.; 100 color ills., 231 black-and-white. $65.00; $39.50 paper

Exhibition schedule: Royal Academy of Arts, London, January 17-April 5, 1992; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 5-July 12, 1992

lthough Andrea Mantegna (Italian, ca. 1430-1506) is celebrated in art history for astonishing feats of illu-

sionism that anticipated such future devel- opments as Correggio's dramatic domes or the fictive architectural framework of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, this artist's life and art merit close attention for their own sake. Mantegna's career illus- trates important facets of both art and artis- tic biography of the early Renaissance in Italy. This exhibition and its richly de- tailed, informative catalogue offer a golden opportunity to engage his work.1

Mantegna, the son of a carpenter, re- ceived his artistic education in the early 1440s in Padua. At that time Alberti's new art theories, as well as revolutionary art- works by such Florentine artists as Paolo Uccello, Andrea del Castagno, and Do- natello were being produced there and in nearby Venice. The earliest collections of antiques, including pieces that were mere fragments-stimulating the imaginative reconstruction of the whole that Mantegna later carried to undreamed of lengths- were beginning to be used by artists as visual sources. In 1448 Mantegna broke off relations with his first teacher, Francesco Squarcione, whose influence on the art scene in Padua stemmed, to some extent, from his collection of ancient stone frag- ments and casts of classical sculptures. Mantegna then gravitated to the Venetian workshop of Jacopo Bellini, whose daughter Niccolosia he married in 1452. His early exposure to fervent investigations into the literary and political culture of ancient Rome, which humanists and teachers in Padua were undertaking, no doubt stimu- lated his lifelong passionate involvement with this field of inquiry. Mantegna's friend- ships with men who pursued literature and rhetoric marked him at an early date as an artist whose intellectual and social ambi-

tions drove him to reject the traditional artist-as-artisan concept. His artistic gifts led him to create a unique visualization of ancient Rome that fired the imaginations of contemporaries and prompted their praise of his ingegno (innate inventive talent, akin to the modemrn conception of genius), of his ability to reconstruct a scene from Roman life al naturale (as if from life), and of the depth of his archaeological knowledge, from which lifelike reconstructions could be built without constraining him to obey a canon of archaeological "correctness."

All but one of Mantegna's nine canvas panels that depict the Triumph of Caesar (cats. 108-15), a series that contemporaries considered his highest achievement in the area of antique revival, were on view in London. Regrettably, these fragile paint- ings, which date from the 1490s through the early years of the sixteenth century, did not travel to New York. How sensational they must have seemed when new can scarcely be credited when they are encountered in the Orangery at Hampton Court Palace, their permanent location. In this exhibition, however, the Triumphs, displayed in a hand- some, blue-gray architectural framework built especially for the occasion, were thrillingly brought back to life. Large (ap- proximately nine feet square), the canvases were aligned in a closely spaced row, sepa- rated by pilasterlike elements, resembling the installation in the Gonzaga Palace of San Sebastiano, Mantua, in 1506, the year of Mantegna's death. With a shrewd deploy- ment of theatrics, dramatic spot lighting in the current exhibition transformed these battered canvases into the sole sources of light and color in the exhibition's final room, providing a climactic focus for the dark, cavernous hall. Bleacher-style seats placed opposite the row of canvases held enthralled spectators who, though they spoke in hushed tones, otherwise evoked the audi- ences at Renaissance tableaux vivants or pageants watching fancifully adorned wagons. Along with the monumental classi- cal reliefs, triumphal arches, and other relics of antiquity that Mantegna had seen during his stay in Rome between 1488 and 1490, theatrical performances at the Gonzaga court also must have inspired these works with their vivid, colorful, and animated reincarnation of Roman trium- phal spectacle. Mantegna's last patron, Francesco Gonzaga, grandson of Ludovico Gonzaga, the ruler who had persuaded him to come to Mantua in 1460 as court artist, echoed the contemporary consensus on the excellence of the Triumphs when he called

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