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Title details for Surreal Spaces by Joanna Moorhead - Available

Surreal Spaces

The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington

by Joanna Moorhead
ebook
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An illustrated biography of the pioneering British artist and writer, tracing her life and work through the many places around the world where she lived
The British-born artist and writer Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) is one of the vanguards in the history of women artists and the history of Surrealism. The interests of this visionary—feminism, ecology, the arcane and the mystical, the interconnectedness of everything—are now shared by many. Challenging the conventions of her time, Carrington abandoned family, society, and England to embrace new experiences and forge a unique artistic style in Europe and the Americas. In this evocative illustrated biography, writer and journalist Joanna Moorhead traces her cousin's footsteps, exploring the artist's life, loves, friendships, and work.
Leading readers on a personal journey across Britain, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the United States, and Mexico, Surreal Spaces describes the places and experiences that would become etched in Carrington's memory and be echoed, sometimes decades later, in her art and writing—whether her grandmother's kitchen with its giant stove; a remote Cornish hideaway where she holidayed with Max Ernst, Lee Miller, and Man Ray; the Left Bank of Paris; an asylum in Santander, Spain; New York, where she lived among other European exiles; or Mexico City, her final sanctuary. "Houses are really bodies," Carrington wrote in her novella The Hearing Trumpet. "We connect ourselves with walls, roofs and objects just as we hang on to our livers, skeletons, flesh and blood streams."
Featuring photographs, drawings, and paintings of the spaces that so richly influenced Carrington's work, Surreal Spaces is an intimate and vivid portrait of a fascinating artist.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 22, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780691254494

    • PDF ebook

      • ISBN: 9780691254494
      • File size: 19869 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 29, 2023
      Journalist Moorhead (The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington) chronicles in this illuminating biography the personal life and artistic evolution of surrealist painter and sculptor Leonora Carrington (1917­–2011). Raised in an upper-class British family, Carrington resisted her parents’ attempts to marry her off. Instead, she turned to art to explore her “interior reality,” producing work that was symbolic rather than representational and depicted interactions between human and animal figures—particularly horses, which she “had drawn obsessively from a young age and saw as her alter ego.” Among other episodes, Moorhead details Carrington’s extended affair with painter Max Ernst when she was 20 and he was 46; her forced confinement to a sanitarium in early adulthood following a mental breakdown; her flight from Europe to New York City after WWII broke out; and her time, starting in 1942, making art and living on and off in Mexico City. Throughout, Moorhead draws on lucid analyses of Carrington’s artwork, as well as conversations with the artist—a cousin of Moorhead’s father—to illuminate who Carrington was “both as an artist and as a woman.” The result is a revealing and accessible introduction to a noteworthy artist.

    • Library Journal

      August 18, 2023

      Frequent Guardian contributor Moorhead (The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington) narrates her Carrington kinship through the biographical exploration of places where the free-spirited surrealist artist fled: from homeland England, to Spain, to New York, and finally landing contentedly in Mexico. Personal reflection comfortably mixes with life story as a result of Moorhead's connecting with Carrington, her distant cousin turned friend, in this gently flowing narrative that is well-documented. It is easy to digest the sometimes-turbulent circumstances of fate (World War II), lovers' triangles (Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim), personal struggles, and artistic expression as Moorhead reflects on Carrington's long and exciting life, while occasionally interpreting the artist's paintings, or when recounting their Mexican meetings filled with lasting memories. This is a beautifully crafted volume, with well-bound pages filled with nearly 70 photos and over 30 color reproductions of the artist's work. VERDICT Fans of both Carrington and Moorhead, as well as the newly curious, will snap up this nicely paced introduction to a famous surrealist artist/writer, which is also an account of a deepening familial relationship. What makes this unique among the plethora of books about Carrington is Moorhead's personal and reflective perspective of family and shared space, despite some distance and time.--Marianne Laino Sade

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • PDF ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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