THE WIVES AND LOVES OF MAX ERNST

If I were to ask you what Gala Dali, Peggy Guggenheim, Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini and Dorothea Tanning all had in common, I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t know; I wouldn’t be surprised if you admitted that you’d not heard of half of them. Each of these ladies were, at the time, well known in their own right in the world of modern art; and each of these women were intimate with the Surrealist artist, Max Ernst. I found myself struck by how so many talented and artistic women gravitated towards him – and much less surprised at how their own skills and talents were eclipsed by his. Well, he is a man, after all.

Not all of the women were artists; Gala Dali (then married to Paul Eluard) is best known for her long and productive marriage to the Surrealist artist Salvador Dali, who painted and sculpted her many times, acknowledging her as his muse and without whom, some say, he would never have been successful. Peggy Guggenheim was a wealthy American with a canny eye for modern art, and her collection became the basis of one of New York’s finest collections. It was down to her efforts that Ernst escaped Nazi occupied Europe; it came as no little surprise that he married her.

The other three women, however, were all very talented artists in their own right, yet their work has predominantly been forgotten. They may each have declined the label “surrealist” in describing their works, yet its influence is apparent and I find distinct similarities between the three which may (or may not) have been down to Ernst’s influence. I have to concede that I find this fascinating.

Leonora Carrington was a wealthy English debutante when, as a teenager, she eloped with Ernst to Paris, despite him being twice her age and married to someone else. He was later to abandon her (for Peggy Guggenheim and America) which led her to spiral into mental illness and a dreadful period in a Spanish asylum. Carrington’s works often feature human/animal hybrids, occult symbolism and a treatment of landscape and humanity that wouldn’t be out of place in Bosch. Tate Liverpool recently held an exhibition of her work; needless to say, it got very little publicity.

Leonor Fini was an Argentinian artist fond of cats and flamboyant head-dresses. She never completely bought into the Surrealist manifesto to the same extent as Carrington (with whom Fini was great friends) but used her imagination to portray herself as a Sphinx – ever inscrutable and always gorgeous – in a more domestic landscape. Her paintings are harder and more solid than Carrington’s ethereal pictures.

Dorothea Tanning was Ernst’s fourth and last wife, and her paintings show the influence of Dali, Ernst, Cezanne and Magritte. I actually find her pictures the more domestic of the three, and less bound by the numinous; she would be more “magical realism”, where magic and reality intersect yet live harmoniously together. Like Fini, there is a finished edge to her work, and like both Fini and Carrington, she is all but forgotten.

I am struck by how closely this story echoes the stories of so many women artists, but the fact that five such talented and influential women have effectively been overshadowed by one man – who was by no means the best in his field – both fascinates and horrifies me. I have only skimmed the surface here. This has the potential to be a wonderful research project for someone with more time and resources than I have. I firmly believe that these women should not be consigned to being a side note in history, an addendum to a male artist’s life. They deserve to be returned to the limelight.

Christ the Redeemer

One of the things that has come out of reading The Seven Sisters is how much I have enjoyed reading about the construction of Christo Redentor, and I’ve come to the conclusion that (yet again) seeing it on the internet isn’t doing it any justice at all. For example, one of the crucial things about the statue is that the body of the statue is actually a mosaic of tiny triangular soapstone tiles; this was so that the structure is less affected by weather erosion and temperature changes. You can’t actually see this from most of the photos on the web, which is a little disappointing as I’d like to see it. The core of the structure, the head and hands, however, are all reinforced concrete without the mosaic covering, and it does give the impression that the entire statue is the same.

Using reinforced concrete was the revolutionary idea of the architect Heitor da Silva Costa, who realised that it would be an ideal material for such a large monument placed at the top of a mountain itself over 700 metres high (that’s just over 2,300 feet in old money). The statue itself is 30 metres (99 feet) high and 28 metres (92.4 feet) at its widest point – fingertip to fingertip, in other words. The entire structure weighs in at almost 1,150 tons. The original idea of using bronze would have made the entire structure much too heavy for the summit. Reinforced concrete was already being used in the construction of buildings, especially for pillars and ornamental columns, but da Silva Costa was convinced that it was suitable for a public monument. Fortunately for him, the artists and engineers he hired for the construction of the statue agreed with him.

The story behind the mosaic outer covering of the body is equally fascinating. Da Silva Costa had thousands of tiny triangular tiles fired in a ceramics factory and huge numbers of society ladies – with little better to do than raise money for public works between dinner parties and social gatherings – would gather in churches to stick them onto the mesh that would cover the concrete skeleton. It is said that many women wrote the names of secret lovers on the back of tiles before sticking them down, but unless the tiles are removed and the names found, this can’t be verified. It’s a shame really, because that’s a cracking story and is one of the main clues of the novel.

Christo Redentor is now 85 years old and has had to be restored once following damage from a lightning strike. I hope he looks over Rio de Janiero for many more years to come.

Revisiting Rio

You would think that after two weeks of Olympics and similar of Paralympics, I’d be sick and tired of Rio de Janiero, but I have to warn you that I’m not. In fact, I’m so not sick of it that it features almost as a character in the book I’m reading – specifically, the statue of Christ the Redeemer which, to all intents and purposes, is the symbol of the city itself.

The book is the first volume of the Seven Sisters series by Lucinda Riley, which I borrowed from the library on a bit of a whim and it’s absolutely fantastic reading – very easy and interesting with it. The main character, Maia, was adopted as a baby and, as an adult, she is trying to find out more about her background as a Brazilian (believe me, I am giving nothing away here). In so doing, she discovers her connection to Christ the Redeemer and quite a bit of the story goes back to show how the statue was created, imagined and (finally) built.

It’s fascinating. Never having been there, I’ve found out so much about the city and its people and also some of the famous landmarks – previously only seen during a cycle race or perhaps a bit of sailing. I’ve really enjoyed it and will admit to finding the bits about the statue interesting. I hadn’t realised it was built from steel girders, reinforced concrete and soapstone tiles! No wonder they managed to get it all the way up that mountain – it must have been in bits rather than one solid lump. Of course, interwoven with all this is a story of romance, duty and rebellion, which go a long way to making it a very comforting read on the train home.

I’m not sure how invested I am in the characters to continue reading the series, but now I have found out that the second one is set in Norway – a country I have been to once and saw very little of – I think I might just keep going for a bit longer.

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE AT TATE MODERN

Having recently read a biography of Georgia O’Keeffe, I was keen to see this exhibition, even though it meant spending time at my least favourite gallery. I don’t know what it is about Tate Modern, but I just don’t like it – although it would be disingenuous of me not to admit that it has a fine collection of modern and contemporary art. The collection does suit the building very well.

Georgia O’Keeffe is best known for her flower pictures, large canvases filled to the brim with one or two oversized, highly detailed blooms. However, there is so much more to O’Keeffe’s output that this, that it seems almost unfair to concede that these works are what she is best remembered for. The exhibition shows artworks, including charcoals, drawings and oils, spanning the entirety of her career and some of these lesser known pieces are as breath-taking as her best known work.

One of her most popular flower pictures (and the one advertising the exhibition) is Jimsonweed. Delicately painted in shades of green and white, the sheer size of the canvas – and consequently, the scale of the flower – is overwhelming. The eye is pulled into the centre of the bloom and it is quite hard to resist a forward lurch as you follow suit. It is a gorgeous picture, but no reproduction can ever do justice to the sheer scale of what you see. It is genuinely stunning.

The idea of filling a canvas with a single image was one that O’Keeffe got from her friend Paul Strand, a photographer who experimented with scale and framing. She did not limit the technique to flowers, however, and her well known clamshell paintings (of which only a few are displayed) are delicate symphonies in shades of white, demonstrating her technical skills and eye for subtle colour work. To see an object which, in reality, is only about an inch and a half at its widest magnified for a canvas that is about three feet by four is stunning.

Yet it is her landscapes that I found I preferred. Her early cityscapes of the New York skyline, painted before her marriage to gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, show stylized skies alongside relatively featureless buildings. The viewer gets a sense of the facelessness of the city that someone from a rural background – as O’Keeffe was – would have felt very keenly. The colours are dark and cool, emphasising a sense of coolness and lack of feeling.

Her Santa Fe pictures, in contrast, are wide in scope and brighter in colour; hot reds and oranges and a sense of a never ending space marked only by geology. It is clear that O’Keeffe loved Santa Fe – even her early works featuring the Penitente crosses hint at her changing palette as Georgia’s horizons gradually expanded to take into account her new landscape.

I would have seen this exhibition even without having read her biography but I cannot deny that I got so much more out of the exhibition knowing the background to some of the works. I will admit, however, that nothing prepared me for the scale of the works, and I did feel quite shocked at first. I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to have seen so many of her works together and would thoroughly recommend this exhibition to anyone who loves modern art.

LEONORA CARRINGTON – THE HEARING TRUMPET

During my twenties and thirties, I read an awful lot of Latin American “magical realism” novels – huge great volumes by the likes of Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Borges and Roberto Bolano. They had a knack of mixing the real world with magical elements, creating a world which was both real and – not. In its way, it had a lot in common with surrealism, but without the psychoanalysis.

As someone well acquainted with the Surrealists, it would come as no surprise that Leonora Carrington’s best known novel has distinctly other-worldly elements, yet it is set firmly in a reality that is very believable. It also illustrates an instinctive belief in female spirituality and the role of religion in the oppression of women. It’s surprisingly feminist, if I’m honest. On top of which there’s also plenty of politics – not bad for barely 150 pages!

Marian Leatherby is an ugly elderly woman who is sent by her son and his family to live in a residential home for senile old women. Whilst there, she encounters a secret Goddess cult and accidentally brings around the end of the world. Believe me when I tell you this does not do the book any kind of justice. It is so very much more, but it would be impossible to explain. You’d just have to read it.

I’m at an age now where I can’t be considered young – my childbearing years are certainly over – and I find myself starting to approach “old lady” status. This book has left me looking forward to it. Being old shouldn’t mean that I should stop thinking I can change the world – age has nothing to do with it. This is a delicious, bonkers, life-affirming book that was written by a woman of a certain age for women of a certain age. It’s a remarkable find and (typically) nowhere near as well known as it ought to be. It should be a feminist classic and I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure it becomes one.

What If… Superheroes Appeared Throughout History?

Many moons ago (and one of my favourite imprints) Marvel Comics introduced a series of specials entitled “What If…” and which posed a particular question, usually turning the existing canon on its head in some way. They were quite fun and involved all the major Marvel characters, from the Fantastic Four to the X-Men via lesser known characters, such as Punisher and Ghost Rider. Examples include – What if Spiderman’s Uncle Ben had lived? or What if Loki had found Thor’s Hammer (and presumably was able to lift it)? Admittedly some of them are a little bit – well, NICHE… if you hadn’t read the comics, you wouldn’t have understood at all.

Now I’m not suggesting that Neil Gaiman enjoyed What If… but being a writer, I don’t doubt for a second it’s a question he’s asked himself once or twice. But to come up with the idea of Elizabethan era superheroes in Marvel: 1602 was, frankly, a stroke of genius. Dr Strange is an equivalent to Dr Dee at the Elizabethan Court, Sir Nicholas Fury is the Queen’s Chief of Security, and while Grand Inquisitor Enrique continues his rivalry with Carlos Javier (if you say it, you’ll get that joke quick enough) we find Captain America is a Native American called Rohjaz – now why didn’t I think of that? It’s epic stuff, and very well done indeed. In fact, every time I read it, I find something I hadn’t seen before that just makes me chuckle.

Gaiman was careful, however, when populating his new universe to only use characters that existed during the early years of Marvel, so many well-loved characters like Black Widow and Wolverine don’t appear. I can just imagine Jim Logan the immortal pirate and the mysterious Bohemian assassin…

If you get a chance to pick this up, do. As a history lesson as a hoot, but as a graphic novel, it’s a masterclass in clever storytelling.