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Monday 6 April 2015

Artist: Leonora Carrington


Leonora Carrington is British-born Mexican surrealist painter. Among her works, I really like her

El mundo mágico de los mayas, finished in 1964. 


El mundo mágico de los mayas was a mural for the Museo Nacional de Antropologia in Mexico City, influenced by the local region and culture.  From a review on Studio International about Leonora's exhibition, it said that 

El mundo mágico de los mayas is the netherworld of Mexico.  The review also mentioned about her miserable life during the war affected her later work. 


Without knowing anything about her and her work, I was naturally attracted by the painting. The world has sky red as blood, land and mountains like the desert. There are surreal creatures, something like a green dragon, a unicorn, a phoenix and other flying beasts. There are people on the ground, black crosses behind them. God-like beings are enlightening them or guiding them to somewhere. The painting is not dark to me at all. I can feel a spiritual redemption from the work. I like the softness of edges and colour. The sense of light and hope there is touching me as well. 



When I tried to find some information about the painting, I found this video that is interesting in a way. In the video, someone was asking Leonora about the inheritance of her talent, her understanding of the work. But Leonora told her that she shouldn't try to intellectualise art and she will never understand by that way. You should understand things by your own feeling. Say a painting is a visual world, but you are trying to turn it into an intellectual world, which is not. 

This conversation reminds me how the academic study here requires us to peel off things layer by layer and reach the answer deeply underneath. Sometimes I wonder is the true motivation, the true answer we are after or we are justing telling ourselves so.  David, our English tutor, sent us an article called Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag, which I should read it. 


I am a person more relying on my feeling more than my intellect. If I feel nothing about something, why would I care the story behind it. But I need to think about how my audiences feel and think about my work. I started to think that to what extent, I want my audiences understand my work. How much supporting information should I give to help them understand. With a keyword like Mexico netherworld, I can connect the visual information on the El mundo mágico de los mayas with my experience, trying to understand it. Even without the keyword, I can still figure out something which is making sense to me. Or I can just simply enjoy the painting itself.




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