Leonora Carrington and the International Avant-Garde

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Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was an English surrealist artist and writer who emigrated to Mexico after the Second World War. As the first comprehensive examination of Carrington's writing and art, this volume approaches her as a major international figure in modern and contemporary art, literature and thought. It offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the intellectual, literary and artistic currents that animate her contribution to experimental art movements throughout the Western Hemisphere, including surrealism and magical realism. In addition to a substantive editorial introduction, the book contains nine chapters from scholars of modern literature and art, each focusing on a major feature in Carrington's career. It also features a visual essay drawn from the 2015 Tate Liverpool exhibition Leonora Carrington: Transgressing Discipline, and two experimental essays by the novelist Chloe Aridjis and the scholar Gabriel Weisz, Carrington's son. This collection offers a resource for students, researchers and readers interested in Carrington's works, and contributes to her continued rise in global recognition. -- .

Reviews

Feminist readings duly predominate in Leonora Carrington and the International Avant-Garde, edited by Jonathan P. Eburne and Catriona McAra. In this collection a dozen authors set out to reinsert Carrington against her willed marginality into the intellectual currents of her many epochs, as an active collaborator [] these resourceful studies draw Carrington's co-ordinates in cultural space. Eburne's inspired reading of the wraithy cloud at the centre of Grandmother Moorhead's Aromatic Kitchen (1975) connects it by winding paths to Carrington's lovely phrase in Jezzamathatics: an incalculable gesture of suspended astonishment.
Lorna Scott Fox, TLS, May 2017

This brimming cauldron of essays affirms the continuing value of Carringtons work, with contributions from established and more recent scholars, as well as from contemporary artists including Lucy Skaer, Lynn Lu and Samantha Sweeting. The contents are imaginatively expanded to include a contribution in the form of an affectionate alphabet of memories from the Mexican novelist Chloe Aridjis, and a gallery of images interspersed with quotations from Carrington that reveals something of her range of media, which Aridjis and her fellow curators provided for the Tate Liverpool exhibition Leonora Carrington in 2015.
Robert Radford, The Burlington Magazine, November 2017

The editors of Leonora Carrington and the International Avant-Garde are right to argue that she ought to be seen as a major artist and writer in her own right [] many of the contributions here offer overdue research into her wider work and interests, such as her pieces for the Mexican journal S.NOB, her writing and illustrations for children and her interest in Mexican history and Tibetan Buddhism.
Edmund Gordon, London Review of Books, November 2017

In a series of essays that reframe and problematize readings of the artists paintings, graphic arts, and writings, Leonora Carrington and the international avant-garde offers a welcome take on its subject. A particular strength of the volume is its emphasis on the artists literary works, including novels and short stories [] Leonora Carrington and the international avant-garde provides challenging new readings and fecund analysis of Carringtons little-studied written texts, juxtaposed with consideration of her painting and graphic work.
Caroline I. Harris, Womans Art Journal (Spring/Summer 2019)

Author Bio

Jonathan P. Eburne is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and French and Francophone Studies at the Pennsylvania State University

Catriona McAra is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Aberdeen