Leonora Carrington, Grandmother Moorhead's Aromatic Kitchen, 1975

     Leonora Carrington's work teems with references to escape and freedom, alchemy and transformation. These themes are often closely tied with her biography; running away from her restrictive childhood and into the male-dominated Surrealist world, that Carrington sought out a means of escape through painting and her dear friend Remedios Varo is no surprise. Carrington and Varo, both ex-patriot female painters living in Mexico, helped each other escape everyday confinements through the transformative powers of alchemical cooking.

     At its root, Alchemy is the ancient practice of transforming base metals into gold. However, in their sharing of recipes and ideas, alchemy enabled Carrington and Varo to transform a traditional domestic space (the kitchen) into a powerful site of female fortitude. Susan Aberth notes that, “for Carrington, traditional sites of female domestic labor are transformed into arenas of occult drama.” In her painting of 1975, Grandmother Moorhead’s Aromatic Kitchen (above), she transforms the kitchen from a place of female oppression and labor into one of female power. Carrington has represented the kitchen as a place of strange transformations. Women are engaged in mysterious activities in a secret world unbeknownst to men; the women in this kitchen appear not to be cooking dinner for their family, but instead concocting magical spells. The painting also includes women huddled over a Mexican griddle, a place where many Mexican women spend most of their day, cooking. The garlic cloves on the floor also have a history in Mexican healing and magical rituals, of which Carrington was very interested.

References:

Aberth, Susan, “Leonora Carrington,” Women’s Art Journal, 51.3 (1992). 

Chadwick, Whitney, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985.)   

Chadwick, Whitney.  “Leonora Carrington: Evolution of a Feminist Consciousness.”  Women’s Art Journal 7.1 (1986). 

The Mexican Museum, Leonora Carrington: The Mexican Years, 1943-1985 (San Francisco: The Mexican Museum, 1991). 
Art:
Charles B. Goddard Center, Ardmore, Oklahoma

The Limbourg Brothers, Tres Riches Heures du Jean, Duc de Berry, 1410-16

Jean de Berry was the third son of King John the Good (of France).  His position as third son made his asscension to the thrown highly unlikely, and was probably a main cause of his becoming an incredible patron of the arts.  He commissioned architecture, stained glass and books of hours (devotional books, made on commission, for the elite to utilize during their daily prayers).  The Tres Riches Heures, a book of hours created by the Limbourg brothers for Jean was his seventh (and last) commissioned book of hours.  The Limbourg Brothers were considered part of the court and were quite friendly with Jean de Berry.  The Tres Riches Heures was the second book of hours they created for Jean, and it is one of the greatest examples of illuminated manuscripts and Medieval lifestyle.  The impeccable details of the book are teeming with portrayals of the extreme contrasts in the lives of the wealthy and that of the poor in Medieval Europe.  

In the pages for January and February (above), the stark contrast between the lives of the nobility and that of the peasants is apparent.  In January, a host of immaculately dressed figures swarm around a table overflowing with feast - even the pets are feeding well at this banquet.  In February, we see peasants working hard and struggling to keep warm in the snowy scene.  Three scantily dressed figures warm themselves by the fire - one is even lifting up his dress to reveal his genitals (suggesting a lack of decency in the lower class).  This lack of decency is seen again in the brothers' painting for August (below).  The court falconry party is parading across the page while a group of peasants are skinny dipping in the background.  And even further in the distance we see Jean de Berry's Chateau d'Étampes.

Jean and all three of the Limbourg brothers died in 1416, most likely of the Plague, leaving the book unfinished.  Following their deaths, the Tres Riches Heures was worked on by Barthélemy d'Eyck and then completed later by by Jean Colombe.  

References:

Benton, Janetta Rebould. Art of the Middle Ages. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002.

Longnon, Jean. Tres Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry. New York, George Braziller, Inc. 1969.

Pognon, Edmond. Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry: 15th Century Manuscript. New York: Crescent Books, 1979.

Schachrel, Lillian. Tres Riches Heures: Behind the Gothic Masterpiece. Munich: Prestel Books, 1997.

Art:

Musée Condé, Chantilly, France

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading Holofernes, c. 1615

Artemisia Gentileschi is an artist whose biography, namely one specific event in her biography, has cast a long shadow over interpretation of her work.  Artemisia was raped by Agostino Tassi, a fellow painter and friend of her father (Orazio Gentileschi, who taught her daughter to paint).  It is unclear the extent to which this rape (and the trial that followed) impacted Artemisia's work, however the drama of the events has given the artist a lot of attention.

Artemisia's work is extremely powerful.  Her use of chiaroscuro, in which the influence of Caravaggio can be seen, and her dramatic choice of subject matter create an indisputable forcefulness to her paintings.  Particularly in Judith Beheading Holofernes (c. 1615), where she chose to paint the most violent moment of the story, there is a violent energy to her work.  This energy is often categorized as sexual energy when paired with the details of Artemisia's rape and trial.  Though it seems clear that Artemisia was a strong and resilient woman, claiming Judith Beheading Holofernes to be a revenge painting is a dangerous game.

References:

Cohen, Elizabeth S. "The Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi: A Rape as History," Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 31, No. 1, Special Edition: Gender in Early Modern Europe (Spring 2000).

Art:

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Umberto Boccioni, The Charge of the Lancers, 1915

Umberto Boccioni was one of the lead artists in the Italian Futurist movement of the early 1900s.  His most famous works are in bronze, where the energy of his forms are represented by a solid trail following a figure.  In The Charge of the Lancers, a collage of 1915, Boccioni depicts a fierce cavalry trampling soldiers with bayonets.  The tragic irony of this picture lies in the fact that just one year later Boccioni died after being thrown from, and trampled by, his horse.  The forceful power of this image is an excellent visual representation of the ideas of the futurists.

Futurism was founded by the writer Filipo Tommaso Marinetti, and was joined by a handful of young artists, including Umberto Boccioni at the forefront.  Based on Marinetti's radical manifesto of 1909, Futurism was an extremely fast paced and modern movement.  The following were the main points outlined by Marinetti:

1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
9. We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

References:

Joll, James. Three Intellectuals in Politics. Haper & Row, 1965.

Art:

Ricardo and Magda Jucker Collection, Milan

Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans, 1849-50

Gustave Courbet was at the forefront of the Realist movement in 19th century France.  Two of his major influences were the Dutch Masters (namely Rembrandt), who painted the world around them with a low degree of editing, as well as the 1830 invention of photography (which pushed painting to address what the camera couldn't).  Courbet was a very original thinker whose paintings scandalized Paris on numerous occasions. 

Courbet's painting A Burial at Ornans (1849-50) was shown in the Paris Salon of 1850-51 to ardent mixed reviews (one claimed him to be deliberately creating ugliness).  The huge (10x22') canvas depicts the rural funeral of Courbet's uncle.  The models for the painting are the actual townspeople, in the raw.  Putting this "insignificant" moment on such a large canvas, and to show it at the Paris Salon, was unheard of.  Paintings of this scale had previously been reserved for royalty or grand history paintings.  Courbet himself was very aware of the groundbreaking nature of the painting; he said, "The Burial at Ornans was in reality the burial of Romanticism."

Art:

Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Joaquín Torres-García, América Invertida, 1943

In 1943, Joaquín Torres-García created the "School of the South," with the ambition of aiding Uruguay's artistic isolation.  His mission was founded on a statement he had made in 1935, "A great School of Art ought to arise here in our country...I have said School of the South; because in reality, our North is the South.  There should be no North for us, except in opposition to our South.  That is why we now turn the map upside down."  Torres-García was interested in pushing Uruguayan artists to negate colonialism; to make art as though they were directly descended from their pre-Hispanic heritage.  His drawing of 1943, América Invertida, is an excellent visual articulation of his desire to put Uruguay in control of its own artistic production.


References:
Barnitz, Jacqueline. Twetieth-Century Art of Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.
Art:
Museo Torres García, Montevideo, Uruguay

Joaquín Torres-García, Composición Universal, 1933

Joaguín Torres-García was a key player in Uruguayan art in the early 1900s.  After spending much of his youth in Europe, he returned to his home of Montevideo in 1932 where, because of his European experience, he was held in high regard.  Torres-García founded the Uruguay Society of Arts, was responsible for bringing constructivism to Uruguay and was overall a huge influence on younger artists throughout Latin America.

As seen in his Composición Universal of 1933, Torres-García created a distinct geometric style.  His 1929 meeting with Piet Mondrian in Paris inspired him to push the limits of his geometric forms into the grid, allowing him to evolve his art without any hindrance of three dimensional illusion.  Torres-García filled his grids with an extensive lexicon of symbols that gained momentum throughout his career.  His symbols varied greatly, drawing from pre-Hispanic cultures (the sun), Masonic symbols (the knife) as well as modern objects (the clock).  By drawing from a variety of sources, Torres-García visualized his belief in a universal art that did not tie him to specific nationalistic ideals or local tradition.  Though his ideas are akin to those of the Neoplasticists, he drew from multitudes of sources (including his past) rather than severing his ties with a concrete past (like Mondrian and others).  Later in his career, using his depth of iconography and earthy pallet, Torres-García became more interested in laying a foundation for Uruguayan arts.

References:
Barnitz, Jacqueline. Twetieth-Century Art of Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.
Art:
Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, Indiana

Tarsila do Amaral, Abaporú, 1928

Tarsila do Amaral painted Abaporú (1928) for her then husband (and longtime friend and collaborator) Oswalde de Andrade.  Though Tarsila began working in a more cubist style, by the late 1920's she was interested in Surrealism - a movement which she was exposed to while traveling in Europe. Her works such as Abaporú, with its strong distortions of the body, show parallels to the work of Spanish Surrealist Joan Miró.  

The dramatic foreshortening of the figure, with a tiny head and enormous feet, are interpreted as representing a particularly Brazilian (or South American) perspective.  The large feet are anchored to the ground, the Brazilian soil, while the tiny head represents less interest or importance in the intellectual world of the mind. These were articulating ideas that were already popular in Brazil at the time, particularly surrounding Oswalde's "Pau Brasil" manifesto of 1924.  In this he warned against academic influence and described Brazil as "wild, näive, picturesque and tender."

Tarsila did not title the painting before giving it to Oswalde; he named it Abaporú, which translates as "man eats." Soon after, Oswalde wrote his "Manifesto Antopófagia" (Anthropophagy Manifesto) and utilized the now aptly named Abaporú as one of the movement's central images.  The manifesto discussed a sort of cultural cannibalism, in which artists of the Americas would devour the art of Europe, internalize it, and then create their own distinct (and arguably superior) art.  This was an important crux of thought as it aggressively did away with any previous notions that South American art was good when it was replicating European art, namely that imposed through colonization.  In taking her interest in Surrealism (as she had seen it in Europe), and utilizing it to create this distinctly South American image, Tarsila was painting quite on par with the words of Oswalde's manifesto. 

References:

Barnitz, Jacqueline. Twetieth-Century Art of Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.

Bary, Leslie. Oswald de Andrade's "Cannibalist Manifesto." Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 19, No. 38 (Jul. - Dec., 1991), pp. 35-37.

Art:

Collection of Eduardo Costantini (often shown at the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires)

Karl Friedrich Lessing, The Robber and his Child, 1832

Karl Friedrich Lessing mostly painted in and around Düsseldorf, where he attended academy between 1833-1843 and later influenced younger students.  Lessing began as a traditional landscape painter, sketching in the country and painting canvas in the studio.  After learning to create history paintings from Von Schadow-Godenhaus, he began to combine the genres.  Lessing is credited as the inventor of this style of historical landscape painting, where figures referencing history or literature are are added to the landscapes.

The Robber and his Child is taken from a theme popular in German literature (and art) during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  The robber is a noble thief, forced to steal because of social injustice or the need to feed a family.  The most notable of these heroic robbers came from Friedrich Schiller's Die Räuber of 1781.  The depiction of man in isolation was also very popular within the Düsseldorf School around this time, so the theme of the noble robber enjoyed great success.

Lessing painted this picture for his friend, Carl Ferdinand Sohn, and it was reported that he also painted a later version for a collector in Berlin.

References:

Sutton, Peter C. Northern European Paintings in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1990.

Art:

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia

Caravaggio, Head of Medusa, 1597

In Caravaggio’s Head of Medusa (1597), he has included several different moments of the story all wrapped up in one. We see the bodiless head of Medusa, who is convincingly viewing her own reflection in Perseus’ shield.  This is the moment before Medusa’s decapitation and the moment after her decapitation combined. As one direct image, a horrific creature is in the moment of realizing both her hideousness as well her own mortality. By overlapping two different moments of the story, Caravaggio has created action that pushes the limits of representation.

Further, having painted the Head of Medusa on an actual 3-dimensional shield, Caravaggio has formed a direct relationship with the story.  As the shield acts much more like a theatrical prop than as a painting, Caravaggio has created part of the story rather than representing it. This use of an object in his work only adds to the direct emotional response evoked from the painting, as it brings to life the story in a way that the Medusa story painted on a flat canvas could not. This shield bridges the gap between representation and reality.

References:

Marin, Louis (trans. Mette Hjort). To Destroy Painting.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Art:

Uffizi, Florence