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拍品專文
Depicting a twilight assembly, Leonora Carrington’s Elohim thrums with an elemental gravitas, as fantastical winged creatures and animals convene amid planes of spectral light. The mystical and magical had always appealed to the artist, intensifying following her move to Mexico in 1942, where the indigenous religions and traditions converged with Catholicism, striking a chord with Carrington’s own childhood experiences. Between convent schools and a traditional upper-class English upbringing, Carrington had been nurtured on Irish folklore by her nanny and maternal grandmother, and the artist recalled having visions and encounters with ghosts as a child. Her interest in the spiritual also drew Carrington to the study of esoteric theosophies and the occult, resulting in the remarkably rich pan-cultural symbolic language that suffused her oeuvre. Painted in 1960, while the artist was living in Mexico City, Elohim exemplifies the confluence of cultures and symbols that epitomises Carrington’s paintings.
Carrington was widely read on a multitude of religions, traditions, and cultures, with a deep interest in ancient and medieval philosophical movements. References to Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and alchemy abound in her visual art, as well as in her novels and short stories. The title of the present work, Elohim, is a Hebrew word for ‘God’ or ‘gods,’ and its usages and meaning have attracted significant scholarly attention, with some translations rendering the word, in plural contexts, ‘angels’ or ‘divine council.’ With their shadowy wings – composed of both long swooping brushstrokes as well as sharp striking angles – the throng of winged creatures in Elohim may be angelic beings, their forms recalling the angels in Hieronymus Bosch’s Ascent of the Blessed. Bosch’s angels, whose long arching wings vary in hue from inky blacks to apricot golds and a soft silver, are seen from a range of perspectives. This approach is echoed in Carrington’s Elohim, enhancing the spellbinding otherworldliness of the realm the artist envisions.
Surrounded by the host of winged creatures, five animals – from land, sea, and sky – orbit an incandescent sphere, gleaming in the radiant waves of light. Animals held a particular power for Carrington, and her paintings often feature a bestiary of both everyday and fantastical creatures. A self-confessed animal lover since her early childhood, Carrington shared the Mayan belief that humans have their own personal animal guide, as well as the Buddhist belief in animal symbology. The procession of creatures forms an ellipse, akin to the oval rings emanating from the central glowing orb. These ovoid ripples of light create an egg-shape, a form that was of incredible alchemical importance for Carrington, symbolising creation and the future. In her 1983 memoir, Down Below, Carrington referred to the egg as ‘the macrocosm and the microcosm, the dividing line between Great and Small, which makes it impossible to see everything at once’ (Down Below, London, 1983, p. 18).
As a female Surrealist, Carrington had fought against the prevailing consensus within the movement that a woman’s role in art was predominantly that of a muse, as opposed to a fully-fledged artist. The scholar Whitney Chadwick asserts that Carrington’s feminist beliefs were, in part, what drew her to myth, the secret sciences, and the arcane, as it was there ‘that women had been believed to exercise the powers later denied them’ (‘Pilgrimage to the Stars: Leonora Carrington and the Occult Tradition,’ in Leonora Carrington, Paintings, drawings and sculptures 1940-1990, exh. cat., The Serpentine Gallery, London, 1991, p. 27).
In Elohim, two winged figures reign over the assembly. On the left stands the taller figure, fiery golden wings outstretched and circular face beaming like the sun, representing the masculine. On the right, there is the smaller figure, symbolising the feminine, with jet back feathers fanning out around a pearly moonlike orb, and a silvery crescent-shaped face. These majestic creatures recall the myriad polytheistic cultures from all over the world that feature a complementary sun god and moon goddess, including the Aztec and Mayan religions, the legacies of which Carrington so regularly engaged with in Mexico. Yet simultaneously, they perhaps also look back to ancient Western philosophies and theosophies, such as alchemy, or Gnosticism, the latter of which had proposed the idea of a dyad Christian God, who possessed both masculine and, controversially, feminine elements.
Carrington has been termed an ‘ecofeminist’ for her stance on the societal roles of women and on the state of the natural world around her, and it was here that her beliefs aligned with the highly respected British diplomat, Sir Crispin Tickell, to whom she gifted Elohim in 1961. Stationed in Mexico City from 1958–1961, and later returning to the country as British ambassador in the 1980s, Tickell was a keen environmentalist, who played an integral role in shaping British environmental policy. In his role as British Ambassador to the United Nations from 1987 until 1990, Tickell addressed global environmental concerns, as well as promoting women’s education. Elohim has remained in the Tickell family collection for the past sixty years, and was included in The Serpentine Gallery’s Carrington retrospective in 1991, before being exhibited on long term loan at The Tate Modern for fifteen years.
Carrington was widely read on a multitude of religions, traditions, and cultures, with a deep interest in ancient and medieval philosophical movements. References to Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and alchemy abound in her visual art, as well as in her novels and short stories. The title of the present work, Elohim, is a Hebrew word for ‘God’ or ‘gods,’ and its usages and meaning have attracted significant scholarly attention, with some translations rendering the word, in plural contexts, ‘angels’ or ‘divine council.’ With their shadowy wings – composed of both long swooping brushstrokes as well as sharp striking angles – the throng of winged creatures in Elohim may be angelic beings, their forms recalling the angels in Hieronymus Bosch’s Ascent of the Blessed. Bosch’s angels, whose long arching wings vary in hue from inky blacks to apricot golds and a soft silver, are seen from a range of perspectives. This approach is echoed in Carrington’s Elohim, enhancing the spellbinding otherworldliness of the realm the artist envisions.
Surrounded by the host of winged creatures, five animals – from land, sea, and sky – orbit an incandescent sphere, gleaming in the radiant waves of light. Animals held a particular power for Carrington, and her paintings often feature a bestiary of both everyday and fantastical creatures. A self-confessed animal lover since her early childhood, Carrington shared the Mayan belief that humans have their own personal animal guide, as well as the Buddhist belief in animal symbology. The procession of creatures forms an ellipse, akin to the oval rings emanating from the central glowing orb. These ovoid ripples of light create an egg-shape, a form that was of incredible alchemical importance for Carrington, symbolising creation and the future. In her 1983 memoir, Down Below, Carrington referred to the egg as ‘the macrocosm and the microcosm, the dividing line between Great and Small, which makes it impossible to see everything at once’ (Down Below, London, 1983, p. 18).
As a female Surrealist, Carrington had fought against the prevailing consensus within the movement that a woman’s role in art was predominantly that of a muse, as opposed to a fully-fledged artist. The scholar Whitney Chadwick asserts that Carrington’s feminist beliefs were, in part, what drew her to myth, the secret sciences, and the arcane, as it was there ‘that women had been believed to exercise the powers later denied them’ (‘Pilgrimage to the Stars: Leonora Carrington and the Occult Tradition,’ in Leonora Carrington, Paintings, drawings and sculptures 1940-1990, exh. cat., The Serpentine Gallery, London, 1991, p. 27).
In Elohim, two winged figures reign over the assembly. On the left stands the taller figure, fiery golden wings outstretched and circular face beaming like the sun, representing the masculine. On the right, there is the smaller figure, symbolising the feminine, with jet back feathers fanning out around a pearly moonlike orb, and a silvery crescent-shaped face. These majestic creatures recall the myriad polytheistic cultures from all over the world that feature a complementary sun god and moon goddess, including the Aztec and Mayan religions, the legacies of which Carrington so regularly engaged with in Mexico. Yet simultaneously, they perhaps also look back to ancient Western philosophies and theosophies, such as alchemy, or Gnosticism, the latter of which had proposed the idea of a dyad Christian God, who possessed both masculine and, controversially, feminine elements.
Carrington has been termed an ‘ecofeminist’ for her stance on the societal roles of women and on the state of the natural world around her, and it was here that her beliefs aligned with the highly respected British diplomat, Sir Crispin Tickell, to whom she gifted Elohim in 1961. Stationed in Mexico City from 1958–1961, and later returning to the country as British ambassador in the 1980s, Tickell was a keen environmentalist, who played an integral role in shaping British environmental policy. In his role as British Ambassador to the United Nations from 1987 until 1990, Tickell addressed global environmental concerns, as well as promoting women’s education. Elohim has remained in the Tickell family collection for the past sixty years, and was included in The Serpentine Gallery’s Carrington retrospective in 1991, before being exhibited on long term loan at The Tate Modern for fifteen years.