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Lot Essay
Rich in symbolic imagery, Sacrament at Minos is an opulent and dramatic painting by Leonora Carrington. A multi-storeyed structure rises up against a dark sky like a stone dollhouse, unveiling numerous rooms to the viewer that testify to Carrington’s engagement with a myriad of cultures and their archaeologies. For example, the columns and lofty pediment recall Greco-Roman temples, while echoes of Gothic church architecture appear in the vaulted arches of the corridor, as well as in the avian gargoyle, which extends into the composition like the prow of a Viking longship.
Carrington read expansively on topics of religion, theosophy, and philosophy, which imbued her art with imagery from a vast range of cultures – even the title of the present work reflects the coalescence of ideas that is so characteristic of the artist’s style. ‘Sacrament’ has a specifically Christian meaning, referring to religious rites of passage or rituals, while ‘Minos’ was a mythological king of Crete, famous for housing the monstrous Minotaur in a labyrinth. Half bull and half man, antiquity’s bestial Minotaur was embraced by the Parisian Surrealists in the publication Minotaure in the 1930s, allowing the mythical creature to become synonymous with the movement. Carrington was likewise inspired by the Greek myth; hybrid creatures and labyrinths suffuse her oeuvre. In And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur (1953; The Museum of Modern Art, New York), an anthropomorphic version of the creature sits in a church-like vaulted chamber. It is a nocturnal scene, yet light streams down the tunnel from a far-off doorway. Similarly, portals and passageways frequently feature in Carrington’s work, filling her otherworldly realms with a further liminality. Such is the case in Sacrament at Minos, where silvery light floods from an archway down the corridor, and an angelic figure soars towards a circular portal.
Painted in 1954, Sacrament at Minos was created at a time when the artist was becoming increasingly involved with the theatre. Although Carrington had written plays in her early twenties, it wasn’t until over a decade after her 1942 relocation to Mexico City that she truly delved into the world of the stage, designing sets, scenery, and costumes for a variety of productions. As a result, her paintings from the 1950s teem with a theatrical ambience, and Susan Aberth has noted that the present work ‘hints at sacerdotal mystery plays from the ancient Near East’ (quoted in Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art, London, 2020, p. 97). A sense of drama pulsates through Sacrament at Minos, where a ceremonial ritual is conducted by two phantasmagorical figures, whose majestic feathers and robes exude gravitas. Emphasising the performativity of the scene is the presence of a host of onlooking angelic heads, who, gathering like High Renaissance cherubim, act as a spectral audience, conjuring the image of a ghostly tragic Greek chorus.
Raised on a harmonious confluence of Irish folklore and Catholicism, Carrington was fascinated by magic and the spiritual throughout her life, and recollected having visions and ghostly encounters as a girl. Aged around ten, she had been expelled from her first convent school, where she had resolved herself to becoming a saint. Upon reflection, Carrington confessed she ‘probably overdid it,’ seeking sainthood because she ‘liked the idea of being able to levitate, mainly’ (quoted in P. De Angelis, ‘Interview with Leonora Carrington,’ Leonora Carrington: The Mexican Years, 1943-1985, exh. cat., The Mexican Museum, San Francisco, 1991, p. 33). This early interest in the mystical never waned, and Sacrament at Minos attests to Carrington’s enthusiasm and understanding of the arcane with the performance of a mystical ritual, where a blue, seven-eyed, bird emerges from a levitating cauldron.
Characteristic of Carrington’s mature artistic style, the thread of a narrative glimmers in Sacrament at Minos, yet remains undefined. Marina Warner has noted the influence of the Renaissance painterly ideal ut pictura poesis – the concept of visual story-telling – in Carrington’s oeuvre, looking to the artist’s teenage exposure to trecento and quattrocento art in Florence as sources of influence. So too do her works hold an affinity with ancient Roman frescoes; Carrington’s close friend Edward James, a renowned Surrealist collector, mused on the similarity of her work to Pompeiian wall paintings. Both theatrical and narrative imagery were of particular popularity in Pompeii, and the backdrop of a Roman theatre, known as the scaenae frons, consisted of a multi-storey columnar façade, akin to the architectural structure in Sacrament at Minos.
While James reflected on the semblance of Carrington’s artistry to historical art movements, he felt that her spell-binding, lyrical style would always have manifested as it did, even if some of her artistic predecessors had never existed, for she simply had ‘always had her own world which needed to be expressed’ (E. James, ‘Leonora Carrington,’ 1975, in Leonora Carrington: Paintings, drawings and sculptures 1940-1990, exh. cat., The Serpentine Gallery, London, 1991, p. 36).
Carrington read expansively on topics of religion, theosophy, and philosophy, which imbued her art with imagery from a vast range of cultures – even the title of the present work reflects the coalescence of ideas that is so characteristic of the artist’s style. ‘Sacrament’ has a specifically Christian meaning, referring to religious rites of passage or rituals, while ‘Minos’ was a mythological king of Crete, famous for housing the monstrous Minotaur in a labyrinth. Half bull and half man, antiquity’s bestial Minotaur was embraced by the Parisian Surrealists in the publication Minotaure in the 1930s, allowing the mythical creature to become synonymous with the movement. Carrington was likewise inspired by the Greek myth; hybrid creatures and labyrinths suffuse her oeuvre. In And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur (1953; The Museum of Modern Art, New York), an anthropomorphic version of the creature sits in a church-like vaulted chamber. It is a nocturnal scene, yet light streams down the tunnel from a far-off doorway. Similarly, portals and passageways frequently feature in Carrington’s work, filling her otherworldly realms with a further liminality. Such is the case in Sacrament at Minos, where silvery light floods from an archway down the corridor, and an angelic figure soars towards a circular portal.
Painted in 1954, Sacrament at Minos was created at a time when the artist was becoming increasingly involved with the theatre. Although Carrington had written plays in her early twenties, it wasn’t until over a decade after her 1942 relocation to Mexico City that she truly delved into the world of the stage, designing sets, scenery, and costumes for a variety of productions. As a result, her paintings from the 1950s teem with a theatrical ambience, and Susan Aberth has noted that the present work ‘hints at sacerdotal mystery plays from the ancient Near East’ (quoted in Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art, London, 2020, p. 97). A sense of drama pulsates through Sacrament at Minos, where a ceremonial ritual is conducted by two phantasmagorical figures, whose majestic feathers and robes exude gravitas. Emphasising the performativity of the scene is the presence of a host of onlooking angelic heads, who, gathering like High Renaissance cherubim, act as a spectral audience, conjuring the image of a ghostly tragic Greek chorus.
Raised on a harmonious confluence of Irish folklore and Catholicism, Carrington was fascinated by magic and the spiritual throughout her life, and recollected having visions and ghostly encounters as a girl. Aged around ten, she had been expelled from her first convent school, where she had resolved herself to becoming a saint. Upon reflection, Carrington confessed she ‘probably overdid it,’ seeking sainthood because she ‘liked the idea of being able to levitate, mainly’ (quoted in P. De Angelis, ‘Interview with Leonora Carrington,’ Leonora Carrington: The Mexican Years, 1943-1985, exh. cat., The Mexican Museum, San Francisco, 1991, p. 33). This early interest in the mystical never waned, and Sacrament at Minos attests to Carrington’s enthusiasm and understanding of the arcane with the performance of a mystical ritual, where a blue, seven-eyed, bird emerges from a levitating cauldron.
Characteristic of Carrington’s mature artistic style, the thread of a narrative glimmers in Sacrament at Minos, yet remains undefined. Marina Warner has noted the influence of the Renaissance painterly ideal ut pictura poesis – the concept of visual story-telling – in Carrington’s oeuvre, looking to the artist’s teenage exposure to trecento and quattrocento art in Florence as sources of influence. So too do her works hold an affinity with ancient Roman frescoes; Carrington’s close friend Edward James, a renowned Surrealist collector, mused on the similarity of her work to Pompeiian wall paintings. Both theatrical and narrative imagery were of particular popularity in Pompeii, and the backdrop of a Roman theatre, known as the scaenae frons, consisted of a multi-storey columnar façade, akin to the architectural structure in Sacrament at Minos.
While James reflected on the semblance of Carrington’s artistry to historical art movements, he felt that her spell-binding, lyrical style would always have manifested as it did, even if some of her artistic predecessors had never existed, for she simply had ‘always had her own world which needed to be expressed’ (E. James, ‘Leonora Carrington,’ 1975, in Leonora Carrington: Paintings, drawings and sculptures 1940-1990, exh. cat., The Serpentine Gallery, London, 1991, p. 36).