8 of 100: Wonderland - women surrealists
I wrote these notes yesterday as I walked through the brand-spanking new Wonderland exhibit at LACMA (all of you should go! Go now!!) Then I got home (very, very late at night) to find the Internet was down. It's still down but I'm borrow/stealing the wifi at the theatre during some down time.
Frida Kahlo "Sol y vida" 1947
Sun w/ face & third eye open many flower pistols? corn a foetus(ish)
Remedios Varo "Armonia" 1956
a woman composes on a musical staff on a wall
objects are the notes held up or placed by the goddess in the wall, made of peeling pain. In the back is a bookcase with a bed like lips over
a sink like a barrow at another wall area which another goddess places objects on another music staff floor tiles are uneven as slips and wisps of other slip through
a chair has a nest in the stuffing the nest has eggs and an attending bird. Another bird flies out the door.
Leonora Carrington "Green Tea (la dame ovale)" 1942
...wonderlandy feminine figure wrapped in cloth marked like a Jersey cow, topped w/ hair like a lampshade a plum teapot? behind w deerheads on top pruned, shaped trees. a brown female dog & white dappled horse have tails becoming trees
underworld of bats, long neck bird w/ nest
L. Carrington "Chrysopeia of Mary the Jewess" 1964
delicate detail magic shooting stars alchemy
Suicide of Dorothy Hale 1938 Hampshire House (paint into frame incl "blood")
Remedios Varo "Papilla estelar" 1958
star material rendered in a meat grinder; food to crescent moon in a birdcage
Also "La huida" 1961 & "El flautista" 1955 !! (re: planetarium in DF "built by a Russian mystic's disciple")
"Mimetismo" 1960
a woman becomes like the chair she sits in
face takes on print of cloth arms are chair arms
feet, wooden legs her sewing basket to the side becomes alive; relates to chair, clothe fly up & around
a wardrobe behind is letting the sky literally;
a chair plucks out a cloth. A cat peaks through hole in floor
fumage Julia Thecla
text (from a magazine) "Surrealism" by Julian Levy
"attempts to discover and explore the 'more real than real world behind the real,' meaning which is expansive behind the contractile fact."
Maria Izquierdo greatly impressed Artaud in 1936 enough to write an article on her in Revista de revistas
mirrors - eg Ruth Bernherd "Time Disintegrating, Hollywood, California" 1942
a puppet unmade by mechanics of a clock - only understood by clock face in mirror
Yayoi Kusama "Anatomic Explosion Happening at Statue of Alice in Wonderland, Central Park, New York" 1969
explicit with masks & paint, trans }:>
NTS: Surrealism works like a mote in my eye, a burn mark in my field of vision. It's in the corner of my sight, I can't look at it straight on - I'll just end up chasing it up across my sight. Cannot brutalize understanding with intellect, must bring along feeling, sensibility. Allow oneself to be jolted, fights sense of what should be but with NO sense of what should be surrealism loses it's punch.
Frida Kahlo "Sol y vida" 1947
Sun w/ face & third eye open many flower pistols? corn a foetus(ish)
Remedios Varo "Armonia" 1956
a woman composes on a musical staff on a wall
objects are the notes held up or placed by the goddess in the wall, made of peeling pain. In the back is a bookcase with a bed like lips over
a sink like a barrow at another wall area which another goddess places objects on another music staff floor tiles are uneven as slips and wisps of other slip through
a chair has a nest in the stuffing the nest has eggs and an attending bird. Another bird flies out the door.
Leonora Carrington "Green Tea (la dame ovale)" 1942
...wonderlandy feminine figure wrapped in cloth marked like a Jersey cow, topped w/ hair like a lampshade a plum teapot? behind w deerheads on top pruned, shaped trees. a brown female dog & white dappled horse have tails becoming trees
underworld of bats, long neck bird w/ nest
L. Carrington "Chrysopeia of Mary the Jewess" 1964
delicate detail magic shooting stars alchemy
Suicide of Dorothy Hale 1938 Hampshire House (paint into frame incl "blood")
Remedios Varo "Papilla estelar" 1958
star material rendered in a meat grinder; food to crescent moon in a birdcage
Also "La huida" 1961 & "El flautista" 1955 !! (re: planetarium in DF "built by a Russian mystic's disciple")
"Mimetismo" 1960
a woman becomes like the chair she sits in
face takes on print of cloth arms are chair arms
feet, wooden legs her sewing basket to the side becomes alive; relates to chair, clothe fly up & around
a wardrobe behind is letting the sky literally;
a chair plucks out a cloth. A cat peaks through hole in floor
fumage Julia Thecla
text (from a magazine) "Surrealism" by Julian Levy
"attempts to discover and explore the 'more real than real world behind the real,' meaning which is expansive behind the contractile fact."
Maria Izquierdo greatly impressed Artaud in 1936 enough to write an article on her in Revista de revistas
mirrors - eg Ruth Bernherd "Time Disintegrating, Hollywood, California" 1942
a puppet unmade by mechanics of a clock - only understood by clock face in mirror
Yayoi Kusama "Anatomic Explosion Happening at Statue of Alice in Wonderland, Central Park, New York" 1969
explicit with masks & paint, trans }:>
NTS: Surrealism works like a mote in my eye, a burn mark in my field of vision. It's in the corner of my sight, I can't look at it straight on - I'll just end up chasing it up across my sight. Cannot brutalize understanding with intellect, must bring along feeling, sensibility. Allow oneself to be jolted, fights sense of what should be but with NO sense of what should be surrealism loses it's punch.