Art & Object Fall Fair 2024

RECORD-BREAKER / BY JOHN DORFMAN

Fantastic Journey A LOVE AFFAIR WITH MAX ERNST OPENED THE ART WORLD TO THIS LONDON DEBUTANTE.

B orn in England, formed as a sur realist in Paris, residing in Mexi co since 1942, Leonora Carrington had her first solo exhibition in New York in 1948. It was held at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, arranged by her patron, Edward James, an eccentric English col lector who also championed the work of Salvador Dalí. The works Carrington created in this show are considered to be among the best of her long career (she died at the age of 94 in 2011). Among them is Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945), an exquisitely detailed, extravagantly imagined com position that seems to chan nel Hieronymus Bosch, fairy tales, occultism, and the per sonal dream world of its cre ator. This magisterial work set the auction record for the art ist at Sotheby’s New York on May 15, 2024, when it sold for $28.3 million against an estimate of $12–18 million. The titular Dagobert, red-robed and white-bearded, rides a chariot with an equine figurehead, pulled on a cord by a small blue-gowned person. Around them, fantastic scenes open out in mul tiple spaces, with creatures half-plant, half-animal cavorting amid glowing fires burning—evidently the distrac tions referred to in the title. The irides cent colors and sharpness of detail are enabled by egg tempera, a challenging medium used in the Renaissance and rediscovered by a number of mid-20th century figurative painters. Of Car rington’s works, Edward James said that they “are not merely painted, they are brewed. They sometimes seem to have materialized in a cauldron at the stroke of midnight.” And yet, while

avidly pursuing the surrealist project of “pure psychic automatism”—as André Breton expressed it—she always did so with a great degree of technical refine ment and precision. Born in 1917 in Lancashire, the daughter of a textile tycoon, Car rington rebelled early and often. Her

“the bride of the wind” and encouraged her study art as well as more arcane subjects like alchemy, astrology, and the Tarot. During the chaos of the Nazi invasion of France they were separated, after which Carrington had a psychot ic break and ended up in a hospital in Spain. A marriage of convenience to a

Spanish diplomat enabled her to escape Europe for Mexico, where she spent the rest of her life. There she fell in with a group of like-minded local and emigré artists includ ing the Hungarian photogra pher Imre “Chiki” Weisz, who became her husband in 1946. In Mexico, Carrington found a congenial cultural atmo sphere which reawakened her desire to plumb the depths of the unconscious and and the realms of the fantastic. Despite the attention she received for the Pierre

COURTESY OF SOTHEBY’S

Leonora Carrington , Les Distractions de Dagobert, 1945.

Matisse show, Carrington remained little known outside Mexico for most of her life. Recently, however, amid surg ing interest in female surrealists, she is being given her proper place in art his tory, and her works are being seen in major museum shows. In 2022, Les Dis tractions de Dagobert was the thematic centerpiece of the exhibition “Surreal ism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity” at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. Now that it has changed hands, the painting has been requested for two upcoming exhibitions, “Leonora Carrington: Dream Weaver,” to be held at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA from Jan uary 22–June 1, 2025 and “Surrealism,” to be held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from November 8, 2025–Febru ary 15, 2026. A

parents pushed her into society. At 18, she was presented as a debutante to King George V and Queen Mary; she remembered the tiara she wore for the occasion as “biting into my skull.” An escape route presented itself in 1937, when she found herself seated next to the artist Max Ernst at a London din ner party. Almost instantly, the two fell in love and set off for the Conti nent, settling in Paris. He called her THIS MAGISTERIAL WORK SET THE AUCTION RECORD FOR THE ARTIST AT SOTHEBY’S WHEN IT SOLD FOR $28.3 MILLION AGAINST AN ESTIMATE OF $12–18 MILLION

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Art&Object | Fall 2024