Cathy's Art Diary

Lively online lecture from ARTscapades looking at life and art of Leonora Carrington through the places where she lived. I had heard the speaker, Joanna Moorhead, before about her first book, a biography of Carrington, at the Charleston Festival, but it was well worth hearing the story again of how she discovered the artist who was a long lost cousin of Moorhead’s father having been been disowned by the family and how they built a relationship when Carrington was in her 90s. This second book looked at houses which were important to Carrington from her childhood home the Gothic Crooky Hall   but concentrating on the house in Mexico City where Moorhead met and spent time with her and the house at Saint-Martin-d'Ardèche which she lived in and decorated with Max Ernst. I was particularly interested in the latter which reminded me of Charleston as a lot of the original art remains.

Dense exhibition at Cromwell Place of work by Eastern European female surrealists. Organised by European ArtEast Foundation the show looked sparse with little information when you entered, but there was a comprehensive free catalogue with extensive biographies of the artists and commentaries on the pictures, however it was quite cumbersome to use as you went round. It was nice to see the pictures on blank walls but it did make you realise how useful labels are. I’m not a great fan of surrealism but I liked some of these pieces such as Milena Pavlovic-Barili’s fashion drawings for Vogue, Eva Kmentova’s sculpture and Toyen’s more conventionally surrealist work. Closed 30 April 2023  

Interesting online lecture from ARTscapades on the effect of the Surrealists arriving in New York from Paris in the Second World War. Charles Darwent, the author of a book on the subject, focused on the Atelier 17 set up by the English artists S.W. Hayter originally in Paris and later in New York and the artists who gravitated to it. I had never realised before that Abstract Expressionism had its roots in Surrealist ideas of the unconscious in art. I wouldn’t have classed Pollock and co as surrealists but this talk helped me understand those links. I was particularly interested in the idea that when the French first arrived they couldn’t communicate with the American as many didn’t speak English but they congregate at the Jumble Shop restaurant where they started communicate via drawings and sharing works.    

Fantastical exhibition at the Design Museum looking at Surrealism in design. Beautifully designed with velvet covered pillars and deliberately peeling labels, the show struck a good balance between explaining surrealist ideas and showing off wonderful objects. I liked the way it blended paintings, where a lot of the ideas had originated, with furniture and clothes. It also subtly gave a sense of interiors. I began by making notes but then just got blown away by pieces I wanted. Can I have a life-sized horse with a lamp on its head please? Also a handbag glove combo? Oh and a glass table top on bicycle wheels plus a typewriter dress? Closes 19 February 2023 Reviews Guardian Telegraph  

Comprehensive exhibition at Tate Modern looking at Surrealism around the world from the 1920s to the 1970s. The show was themed by subjects which brought together art from many countries such as the uncanny, revolution, dreams and bodies. In addition there were three convergence points including the Bureau of Surrealists Research in Paris, the Caribbean and a period of vocal resistance in Cairo just before the Second World War. I must admit I’m not a great Surrealism fan but there were some striking works my favourite, shown here, being “Armoire Surrealiste” by Marcel Jean from 1941 which was described as a “Portal to freedom on the doors of a wardrobe”. I loved it’s combination of read doors and painting. Picasso’s “Three Dancers” looked striking against a dark blue back ground and I loved a couple of works which works like the child’s game Consequences with different people adding new images to form one long image without seeing the image before theirs except to where it creat...

Fascinating small exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery on the women involved with the surrealist movement. It took as its starting point Sheila Legge show stood in Trafalgar Square on 11 June 1936 with her head covered in red roses to launch the International Surrealism Exhibition and them discussed the other women who were involved with that show and Artists International Association show in 1939. The women of this movement are often overshadowed by the men but this show highlighted the female artists political campaigners, committee secretaries and organisers. Along the way I met some amazing characters such as Grace Pailthorpe who had been an surgeon in the First World War, a criminologist and an artist. I loved the fact the show included the receipt book of the 1936 exhibition as well as committee minutes. The centre piece of the show was a lovely miniature recreation of the 1936 show by Corelia Hughes showing both rooms of the show complete with Legge in her roses and Salv...

Fascinating talk   at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival bringing together Sue Roe with her book on the surrealists in Montparnasse and Anthony Penrose, the son of Roland Penrose and Lee Miller, surrealists who lived in Sussex. I have to admit to a bias here as I know Sue Roe well and love the way she writes group biographies filling in lots of detail about what the world around her subjects and what was happening in Paris that they may have been influenced by. She started the event with a talk on the birth of surrealism and why it evolved in Paris after the First World War. She brought to life an array of characters. Penrose then talked his parent’s early lives and about his childhood in Sussex where many of the people Sue had talked about came to stay. He talked about Manray as an inventor of a fly trap, Paul Elliard smuggling poems out of France in the War which Penrose had translated and published and Picasso coming to stay when the press hounde...

Interesting exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey looking at Surrealist art by women from the 1930s to the present day. I liked the way the show mixed the old and contemporary work. The main large room had 100 works in it from Leonora Carrington and Claude Cahun though to Gillian Wearing and Rachel Kneebone. I mention the room seemed to bring together a number of themes and ideas which I had seen recently. I did find some of the work, particularly the more political work of the 1970s a bit obvious and felt myself shouting “Not another vagina” in my head! Yes I get it a flower looks like one, a tree knot does   etc etc. I felt   a bit bludgeoned by the end. I did like some of the new contemporary work and fell heavily for the string of sculptured hand’s pictured here by Kelly Akashi entitled Well(-)Hung. Closes on 17 September 2017. Reviews Times Guardian Evening Standard