Redefining Gender in Surrealism: Feminist and Queer Interventions in Leonora Carrington’s Works

Author: Harper Ladd, McGill University

Editor: Courtney Squires

Surrealism began as an artistic movement preoccupied with male conceptions of the world and women.[1] Its emergence from a Freudian psychological background with attention to subconscious thought often meant that surrealism was a vehicle for male artists to express the thoughts and desires they were most ashamed of.[2] These repressed thoughts and desires manifested themselves in a variety of ways from sexual and bodily violence against women to expressions of repressed queerness, all within a masculine paradigm.[3], [4], [5] Women artists relied on relationships with male artists to gain access to the Surrealist art scene due to the gendered social limitations within the movement and in society at large.[6] Therefore, the female body acted as a currency to be exchanged for desired artistic fulfilment. Leonora Carrington, who entered into the Surrealist movement via Max Ernst, was acutely aware of the misogyny and the homophobia of the world that birthed it.[7] This awareness is demonstrated through her artwork, as well as her later involvement in the feminist movement of the 1970s.[8] In this essay, through using formalist, iconographical, psychoanalytical, queer interventionist, and feminist methodologies, I will argue that, although the Surrealist movement emerged from male artists’ projections onto women, Leonora Carrington employed and appropriated surrealist motifs to engage in a self-idealised exploration of non-masculine queerness. Alchemy was a commonly occurring Surrealist motif that has been interpreted by contemporary scholars as an expression of androgyny.[9] Transforming both body and metal is central to alchemy and intuitively aligns with the idea of androgyny. The alchemist rebels against the biological constraints of the human body in the search for antidotes to the natural process of ageing.[10] The conception of the alchemist as an immortal rebel of sorts comes with connotations of divinity, due to their transcendence over biological constraints of time.[11] Art Historian Arturo Schwarz argues the androgynous connotations of divinity, writing “In all mythologies, gods are immortal and andro-gynous. As a matter of fact, gods are immortal because they are androgynous”.[12] The gender binary has historically been upheld by certain objects or qualities that are opposites and are therefore often coded as male or female.[13] In the case of alchemy, mercury defined the feminine and sulphur, the masculine.[14] The interactions between these two materials then arguably represent a union between the two genders to produce something new and non-binary, in this case, gold. The process of transformation into gold has been understood as a metaphor for the Jungian idea of reconciliation with the contradictions of daily life.[15] One of the main contradictions psychologist Carl Jung described is the contradiction of animus (male in female) and anima (female in male).[16] Jung argued that chymical nuptials, a psychological reconciliation of the masculine and feminine within the psyche , led to the most idealised version of oneself, a process manifested in the conception of alchemy.[17] Carrington, although disinterested in the teachings of Freud, was attracted to Jungian psychology.[18] Her paintings have been described as Jungian even before she started studying the school of thought, demonstrating an intuitive alignment with Jung’s thinking surrounding gender and the self-actualized nature of androgyny.[19] This was made visually evident in her artwork.

Transcendence is based on mastering the universe through mastering the duality intrinsic to life.[20] This idea extends to gender and sexuality, with androgyny and bisexuality being seen as a reconciliation of this duality.[21] Building on his previous discussion, Schwarz argues that “Bisexuality has always been an attribute of divinity”, invoking examination into the particularities of Carrington’s inclusion of transcendence in her work.[22] Like many other Surrealists, Carrington’s work included divine figures. Carrington, however, painted these figures in a pointedly feminine context, evoking feminine, Queer implications. Carrington was specifically interested in the goddess-dense realm of Celtic folklore and witchcraft.[23] The latter, which shares themes of transcendence and the occult, could be interpreted as Carrington’s feminised version of alchemy. Much of her work was a reclamation of the ‘hysteric witch’ trope that painted women as powerful and emotional, and therefore dangerous and unfit to hold said magical powers.[24] Carrington engaged with, and reimagines this sexist trope by depicting utopic matriarchal societies.[25] She imagines a female-dominated society with individuals who are divine, and therefore have mastered their inner duality through bisexuality. These imagined depictions are therefore based around queer ideas, as reflected in her conception of a world where feminine individuals can exist outside of the male gaze and male interjections, in community and communion with one another.

One of Carrington’s works, The Garden of Paracelsus (Fig. 1), is exemplary of her feminised rendering of alchemy and androgyny. Whilst alluding to Carrington’s own version of alchemy, the title also references Paracelsus, an alchemist who tried to create an elixir to rejuvenate man.[26] Realized in the subject matter, the work’s androgynous subtext recalls the concept of the alchemist as a transcendent rebel. The Garden of Paracelsus is rich with iconographical references to various elements of alchemy. The small unicorn that sits towards the top is perhaps a reference to the Chymical Wedding, serving as an expression of union or reconciliation between male and female identity.[27] Unicorns have also historically been associated with spiritual enlightenment.[28] Towards the bottom right corner stand two beheaded figures, one black and the other white. They are intertwined and hold their heads against each other's figures in a formation that alludes to the Yin-Yang symbol. The Yin-Yang symbol is discussed by cultural anthropologist Sherry Ortner as a gender symbology that necessitates the existence of female within the male and the male within the female, one that recalls the androgynous Jungian philosophy of animus and anima.[29] The beheading also relates to themes of sacrifice as holy and death as ascension to another plane.[30] Two eggs are seen in the painting, symbolising rebirth, a common motif in both alchemy and fertility that demonstrates Carrington’s purposeful inclusion of femininity in a Surrealist archetype dominated by masculinity.[31] This assertion of femininity is continued throughout the figures in this painting. Despite the figures’ androgyny, I would argue that many, and specifically the figure on the horse, the figure in the centre with the egg, the red figure by the dog, and the white beheaded figure, are imbued with a female sensibility. The lines they are painted with are elongated, graceful, and duller than the other lines in this work. Although the two entwined figures lack defined breasts, they have wide hips—perhaps another allusion to fertility. Schwarz, despite understanding the androgynous connotations of alchemy, defined it as “an all male, misogynous, celibate activity”.[32] This misogynistic attempt to exclude women makes Carrington’s repeated usage of feminine motifs in her work even more meaningful. Through the inclusion of femininity with visual details such as the egg, feminine bodies, and Yin-Yang iconography, Carrington positions this work closer to androgyny than the exclusively masculine content of other Surrealist alchemic artworks. The inclusion of the female body indicates a duality between forces of masculinity and femininity that was central to understandings of androgyny at the time.

Central to the alchemical preoccupation with immortality and transcendence is its queer and androgynous connotations, which therefore indicate divinity by exemplifying these traits. Divinity was a commonly occurring motif in Surrealism, with regular allusions made to Greek, Roman, and Pagan deities.[33] One of Carrington’s books, Down Below, has been cited as her first “explicit appropriation of goddess mythology for her purposes”.[34] In Down Below, she describes a mental breakdown, not in terms of suffering, but in terms of liberation, or ascension from patriarchal ideals of sanity and hysteria.[35]  In this writing, she alludes to the Christian canon and describes herself in terms of the masculine-coded holy trinity rather than the Virgin Mary, consequently criticising Mary’s positioning as powerless and acted-upon in the Bible.[36] This assertion demonstrates how Carrington's self-conception is untethered to the strict gender binary. Male surrealists were only able to conceive women as objects, rather  any art of merit was produced because of specific ‘womanly’ traits, as demonstrated by the concept of the uncorrupted “Woman-Child” as the ideal female artist[37],[38]. In making her figures divine, however, and thus androgynous, Carrington strips them of the female gender that male surrealists have appropriated and restricted. Instead, she crafts new figures with qualities she appreciates about women rather than those that have been projected onto them.

Carrington’s 1969 painting, The Return of Boadicea (Fig. 2) has been interpreted by Art History Professor Janice Helland as depicting “a struggle between male and female- between patriarchy and matriarchy”.[39] While a struggle is certainly seen in the iconography of the mythic Queen Bodicea, who enacts revenge on Roman soldiers for the harm they cause to her and her daughters, I argue that The Return of Boadicea is a divine representation of Carrington’s understanding of and reconciliation with the male-upheld gender binary.[40] Its divinity codes the transcendent figure of Boadicea as androgynous. As the title indicates, Boadicea returns from the dead as an ascended deity, hunched over in an animalistic fashion, with eyes glowing a vengeful red.[41] Boadicea’s ‘hair’ is an intense, dynamic blue form, almost like that of a flame. The delineation of colours between the green, breast-like form which protrudes from the neck, and the body makes it seem as if the breast is merely added onto the body, not a part of it. The figure’s formal composition  creates a figure that seems more androgynous in its divinity than feminine, yet there is still undoubtedly a trace of femininity in Boadicea. However, in Carrington’s understanding of gender, femininity and androgyny are not mutually exclusive—one can be both. In suggesting this possibility, Carrington challenges normative understandings of gender. Her art questions why the presence of breasts codes a figure as female, when a lack of breasts does not always code a figure as male, but androgynous. Helland’s reading of the painting as a depiction of masculine versus feminine forces hints at the reconciliation between genders that connected to ideas of androgyny. In this battle, there is a clear winner. The transcended, and therefore nonbinary, form of Boadicea victoriously rides on a chariot pulled by horses and boars—both animals historically associated with sacrifices to various feminine Goddesses—hunt down the male Roman soldiers.[42] Through the story and iconography of this piece, Carrington once again adapts common motifs of transcendence to configure a genderqueer, feminist imagination of hegemonic male Surrealist themes.  .

The Giantess (the Guardian of the Egg) (Fig. 3) depicts a powerful matriarchal deity, straight out of one of Carrington’s utopic matriarchal societies, standing calmly yet powerfully on a landscape, and holding a small egg to her chest. Carrington centres this intentionally in this work. Graceful birds, perhaps swans, fly out from under her cape around the womb area into the cloudy sky, creating a visual effect, and making the giantess seem as if she is at the centre of a cosmic, swirling force. The egg she holds is an alchemical symbol used repeatedly by Carrington to signify femininity, fertility, and reproductive power.[43]Emerging from a mass of golden wheat, a sustaining and nourishing crop, the giantess’ face remains serene. The symbolism of the egg, the subsequent birds that emanate from the figure, and her wheat-coloured hair, in combination with the visual, spiritual emphasis placed on the deity, suggests that the woman Carrington depicts is a mother-goddess, the creator of the universe. The symbology on the goddess’ dress is glyphic, and depicts animal-headed bodies. One of the depictions includes two androgynous-appearing figures, one bird-headed, that are dancing or kissing one another. The inclusion of these symbols recalls the occult as an antithesis to Christianity, which is often associated with the upholding and perpetration of the hetero-patriarchy.[44]In the background, miniaturized people surround the goddess in the ocean and on the ground near her bare feet that connect her to the earth. Some people hunt animals for life-sustaining food, while others look up in awe at the goddess above. Particularly, three female-presenting figures are standing in a circle directly beneath the goddess’s skirt, perhaps worshipping or appreciating the divine feminine womb from which all life emerges.

As with the motif of divinity previously discussed, body hybridity was also common in the Surrealist movement.[45] The animal-human dichotomy was understood in very metaphorical terms, and these figures were interpreted as representations of other species, including humans: “A picture of a horse may be seen as that of a woman also, or even further as a lion”.[46] These animal-human hybrids were depicted on a sliding scale of sorts, with metamorphosis and collage being at opposite ends.[47] Collage as enacted by male surrealists was often violent and objectifying, with artists literally cutting apart and re-configuring women’s bodies to fit their imaginations. Carrington’s hybrid bodies are not collage-like. Rather, she depicts smooth transitions between human and animal, highlighting her understanding of human/animal and therefore male/female divides as a spectrum rather than a binary. The gender binary was often understood as male versus female, two opposites that were described in terms of contrasting traits which consequently de-valued the female[48] The iconography of body hybridity challenges this, however, by dissolving the boundaries between human and animal. Consequently, Carrington’s art questions the validity of man-made structures, including the strict gender and species binaries. 

Down Below (Fig. 4) is laden with Carrington’s commentary on the gender binary. It contains hybrid, monstrous bodies, many of which are painted with soft, sensual lines, taking on a grotesque, almost caricature-like depiction of the female form. A human-bird hybrid poses on the left. She has an unnaturally small waist, wide hips, and a strangely contorted body. The strange attraction elicited by the undeniably sexualized body serves to make the viewer question what makes a ‘woman’ attractive. This painting argues that it is certainly not her humanity, disturbingly enough. Even though the figure has a human body, dim-white feathers cover it, reminding the viewer that this is not a human despite its sexual nature. Another figure sits in the middle, clad in bright red thigh-high boots and a black corset, traditionally sexual/seductive clothing. Her buttocks are unnaturally accentuated and she poses as if she is aware of being watched. Masks were a regularly occurring motif in Carrington’s works, and the face of this hybrid figure is certainly not so much a face, but a mask.[49] Masks and their associations with mimicry have been read as symbols of gender performance, with mimicry acting as a way of survival in the animal kingdom, and consequently gender performance can be understood as a means of social survival[50],[51]. Women mimic an imagined ideal, and as a result, there is no one woman who fully conforms to the contradictory and impossible standards set. Gender mimicry is a mimicry of something that doesn’t exist in reality, a simulacrum. This is made clear in Carrington’s depiction. By looking through the mask’s eye holes to the shadowy-blue background, the viewer can tell there is no face behind the mask. Carrington’s understanding of the artificiality of gender performance is expressed with the empty mask and the fantastical, sexualized, disproportionate body to which it is attached. Once again, Carrington depicts androgyny from a feminist point of view. This critique of gender performance is centred around its specific impacts on those assigned female at birth, offering a new depth to masculine-based Surrealist subversions of gender. 

Feminine individuals were constantly the victims of male surrealists, whether they were being objectified, cut up, or defined by their womanhood before their artistic abilities. Through subversions of common, and often misogynistic, surrealist motifs, Leonora Carrington was able to imagine a world that was separate from the dominating and defining male gaze. In this world, Carrington was able to express understandings of queerness and androgyny from a feminine perspective rather than the hegemonic masculine perspective that controlled the academic and artistic spheres of the time.

Appendix

Figure 1. Leonora Carrington, The Garden of Paracelsus, c. 1957 (oil on canvas. 85.1 x 120 cm). Image retrieved from https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/modern-evening-auction/the-garden-of-paracelsus

Figure 2. Leonora Carrington, The Return of Boadicea, c. 1969 (oil on canvas. 79 x 79 cm). Image retrieved from https://en.artsdot.com/@@/AQRAYP-Leonora-Carrington-The-Return-of-Boadicea

Figure 3. Leonora Carrington, The Giantess (the Guardian of the Egg), c. 1947 (tempera on wood panel. 120 x 69.2 cm). Image retrieved from https://arthive.com/leonoracarrington/works/381359~The_giantess_the_Guardian_of_the_egg

Figure 4. Leonora Carrington, Down Below, c. 1940 (oil on canvas. 40 x 59.7 cm). Image retrieved from https://www.artnet.com/artists/leonora-carrington/down-below-a-3ez0N0GjJIC8mSdYbWjB5Q2

Footnotes

[1] Gloria Feman Orenstein, “Art History and the Case for the Women of Surrealism.” The Journal of General Education 27, no. 1 (1975): 34.

[2] Mary Ann Caws, “Seeing the Surrealist Woman: We are the Problem.” Surrealism and Women. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, (1991): 18.

[3] Tara Plunkett, “Melusina After the Scream’: Surrealism and the Hybrid Bodies of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 95, no. 5 (2018): 494.

[4]David Lomas, “Artist — Sorcerers: Mimicry, Magic and Hysteria.” Oxford Art Journal 35, no. 3 (2012):373.

[5] Georgiana M.M. Colvile, “Beauty and/Is the Beast: Animal Symbology in the Work of Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Leonor Fini.” Surrealism and Women. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, (1991): 167.

[6] Colvile,“Beauty and/Is the Beast,” 160.

[7] Orenstein, “Art History and the Case for Women of Surrealism,” 37.

[8]Whitney Chadwick, “Leonora Carrington: Evolution of a Feminist Consciousness.” Woman’s Art Journal 7, no. 1 (1986): 37.

[9] Arturo Schwarz, “Alchemy, Androgyny and Visual Artists.” Leonardo, vol. 13, no. 1, (1980): 57.

[10] Schwarz, “Alchemy, Androgyny, and Visual Arts,” 57.

[11] Schwarz, “Alchemy, Androgyny, and Visual Arts,” 57.

[12] Schwarz,” Alchemy, Androgyny, and Visual Arts,” 57.

[13] Sherry B. Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” Feminist Studies 1, no. 2 (1972): 6.

[14]Schwarz, “Alchemy, Androgyny, and Visual Arts,” 58.

[15] Schwarz, “Alchemy, Androgyny, and Visual Arts,” 58.

[16] Schwarz, “Alchemy, Androgyny, and Visual Arts,” 58.

[17] Schwarz, “Alchemy, Androgyny, and Visual Arts,” 58.

[18] Janice Helland, “Surrealism and Esoteric Feminism in the Paintings of Leonora Carrington.” RACAR: Revue d’art Canadienne / Canadian Art Review 16, no. 1 (1989): 56.

[19]  Helland, “Surrealism and Esoteric Feminism in the Paintings of Leonora Carrington,” 56.

[20] Schwarz, “Alchemy, Androgyny, and Visual Arts,” 58.

[21] Schwarz,” Alchemy, Androgyny, and Visual Arts,” 59.

[22] Schwarz,” Alchemy, Androgyny, and Visual Arts,” 59.

[23] Ferentinou, “The Quest for the Goddess,” 175.

[24] Ferentinou, “The Quest for the Goddess,” 179.

[25] Ferentinou, “The Quest for the Goddess,” 187.

[26] Orenstein, “Art History and the Case for Women of Surrealism,” 39.

[27] Orenstein, “Art History and the Case for Women of Surrealism,” 39..

[28] Orenstein, “Art History and the Case for Women of Surrealism,” 39.

[29] Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?,” 6.

[30] Orenstein, “Art History and the Case for Women of Surrealism,” 40.

[31] Orenstein, “Art History and the Case for Women of Surrealism,” 40.

[32]  Colvile,“Beauty and/Is the Beast,” 167.

[33] Schwarz,” Alchemy, Androgyny, and Visual Arts,” 57.

[34] Ferentinou, “The Quest for the Goddess,” 183.

[35] Ferentinou, “The Quest for the Goddess,” 183.

[36] Ferentinou, “The Quest for the Goddess,” 183.

[37] Orenstein, “Art History and the Case for Women of Surrealism,” 34.

[38] Orenstein, “Art History and the Case for Women of Surrealism,” 32.

[39] Helland, “Surrealism and Esoteric Feminism in the Paintings of Leonora Carrington,” 59.

[40] Helland, “Surrealism and Esoteric Feminism in the Paintings of Leonora Carrington,” 59.

[41] Helland, “Surrealism and Esoteric Feminism in the Paintings of Leonora Carrington,” 59.

[42] Helland, “Surrealism and Esoteric Feminism in the Paintings of Leonora Carrington,” 59.

[43] Orenstein, “Art History and the Case for Women of Surrealism,” 40.

[44] Ferentinou, “The Quest for the Goddess,” 183.

[45]  Plunkett, “‘Melusina after the scream’: Surrealism and the Hybrid Bodies of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo,” 496.

[46]Charles E. Gauss, “The Theoretical Backgrounds of Surrealism.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 2, no. 8 (1943): 41.

[47]  Plunkett,” ‘Melusina after the scream’: Surrealism and the Hybrid Bodies of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo,” 494.

[48]  Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?,” 7.

[49]  Plunkett, “‘Melusina after the scream’: Surrealism and the Hybrid Bodies of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo,” 504.

[50]  Lomas, “Artist — Sorcerers: Mimicry, Magic and Hysteria,” 372.

[51]  Lomas, “Artist — Sorcerers: Mimicry, Magic and Hysteria,”378.