Well I had always heard, as a child, of the existence of this mysterious cousin who had disappeared
Interestingly she was never sort of spoken of as somebody who was of any merit in her own right
She was never portrayed to me as an artist
but as someone who had, run away to be an artist’s model
I remember my grandmother used to say
and then I was at a dinner party in the summer of 2006
and I was sitting next to a Mexican woman and I knew nothing about Mexico
but I did remember somewhere in my mind that this cousin
who, in our family by the way is known as Prim
so I had to remember, what’s her name, what’s Prim’s real name?
Oh, yes, Leonora
So I said to this woman, have you ever heard, I wonder
and you probably won’t have done but have you ever heard of my cousin by any chance
she went to Mexico many years ago – Leonora Carrington?
and this woman was astonished and she kind of held onto the edge of the table and said, are you kidding me?
Leonora Carrington is the most famous living artist probably in Mexico
If she’s your cousin go and find her because she’s a fascinating woman
and something about the way she said it just ignited this spark in me and I thought...
do you know, I will
I’ll go and find her
Well I think she was a changeling child in a way, she just never fitted in
She went from being a debutant in London to falling in love with Max Ernst, eloping with him to Paris
found herself at the centre of the surrealists in Paris, knew all the surrealists there
She had grown up in this stifled environment in Lancashire
in a family she felt she just did not fit into
She yearned for art
she had a real longing to be an artist
and she wanted to get away from this environment that she felt just closed her in
and art represented an escape and Max Ernst represented a way of learning about art
because she felt she had had a very paltry education, particularly from an artistic point of view
He taught her a great deal, not everything but he taught her a great deal at an important moment in her career
She was only 20 and Max was 46 when they met
But then of course the war came
The Nazis invaded and Max Ernst of course imprisoned as an enemy national
Leonora was devastated
and a friend who came to stay with her said, you can’t stay here in this farmhouse alone
and took her off to Spain
but then she unfortunately had a breakdown
she had another really major breakdown
and she ended up in an asylum in Santander...
for some months
that was a terrible time in her life
She was giving fit inducing drugs that she remembers
to this day were the most awful thing I think that has ever happened to her
She got out of that asylum and went back to Madrid
and she was all alone in Madrid by that stage
and it must have been a pretty terrifying time for her as well
She was 20 years old, she had cut herself off from her family
she had left her lover or been forced to leave her lover in France
and she was all alone in Madrid
She was in a restaurant and across the restaurant she spotted this guy she had met through Picasso in Paris
He was a Mexican diplomat and she told him her story, his name was Renato Leduc
She told him her story and he said that he could take her away, get her away from Europe if she married him
so they travelled separately to Lisbon
met up in Lisbon and got married at the British Embassy in Lisbon
and then sailed for first New York
and then onward from there to Mexico City
These days obviously Mexico is quite close, I fly there in nine or ten hours
but in nineteen-thirty…well she moved to Mexico in the early forties, so 1942
in the forties and fifties Mexico was an awfully long way away
I think it’s an extraordinarily brilliant coincidence that Leonora happened to end up in Mexico
She went to Mexico by chance because she happened to meet this diplomat
but there could not have been a better place on earth for her to end up
André Breton, when he went to Mexico earlier on in the nineteen-thirties
the first thing he said was this is the most surreal place in the world
I always think it was an environment that was completely alien to her
obviously nothing like grey, rainy Lancashire
and yet because she was inherently a surrealist it was a landscape she knew
LC: The only claim I have to artistic relations was my mother used to paint biscuit boxes for jumble sales
Did she?
LC: That’s the only art that went on in my household
Yes. You used to draw yourself though when you were young
You used to paint and draw when you were very, very young, didn’t you?
LC: Oh, I used to, I used to do it but I was the only one
Funny that isn’t it, I wonder where it came from
LC: I have no idea
No other artists in our family?
LC: No
None at all other?
LC: Why, are you affixed on the idea of hereditary? It’s not hereditary
You don’t think so?
LC: It comes from somewhere else
Yes, does it?
LC: Not from genes
No
Your nanny was obviously, I imagine, quite an influence wasn’t she?
LC: What?
Your nanny and all her stories of Ireland
were quite an influence?
LC: Oh, yes
Yes
LC: You’re trying to intellectualise something…
I know, yes
LC: …desperately, and you’re wasting your time
Okay. I should know by now shouldn’t I?
LC: That’s not a way of understanding
No
LC: To make kind of into a little sort of mini-logic
LC: you’ll never understand by that road
What do you think you do understand by them?
What can we understand by…?
LC: By your own feelings about things
Yes
LC: By your feeling about, if you see a painting for instance, that you like
LC: Canvas is an empty space
If I got one of your pictures down now from upstairs
and said to you, what were you thinking when you painted this, you wouldn’t tell me?
LC: No, it’s a visual world. You want to turn things into a kind of intellectual game, it’s not
So do you think in other words…
LC: A visual world; it’s totally different
So should I, if I go…
LC: Well remember what I just said now
Yes, I am remembering
LC: Don’t try and turn it into a game, into a kind of intellectual game, it’s not
LC: It’s a visual world, which is different
But everybody who looks at art says…
LC: The visual world is to do with what we see as space, which changes all the time
LC: How do I know to walk - that’s one concept – to this bed and around it without running into it
LC: I’m moving in space
Yes
LC: Or I can have a concept of it and then I can see it also as an object in space
People do want to intellectualise art all the time, don’t they?
LC: I know they do
All the time
LC: But it’s not like that
Well I got very excited when a painting by Leonora was sold at auction last year for 1.5 million US Dollars
and I phoned her up and said, this is amazing, this painting has gone, you know, it’s brilliant
that your paintings are worth so much money
that puts you into a tiny handful of women artists whose works can sell at that price
and she said, tell me that again, because she can’t hear always very well
and then when I said it again she said, oh, women artists
so she was immediately disappointed at being bracketed like that