Tarot of Leonora Carrington

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Of the essays, the first is an illuminating introduction/memoir by her son Gabriel Weisz Carrington which offers direct insight into Carrington’s world as experienced by one who both lived and collaborated with her. On the basis of this, I look forward to a lengthier volume of his recollections due to be published later this year by Manchester University Press. The cover of The Tarot of Leonora Carrington, edited by Susan Aberth and Tere Arcq (Fulgur Press, 2021) (image courtesy the publisher) Now, another stunning -- and hitherto secret -- surprise from this terrific artist reaches the full light day, thanks to Susan Arberth and Tere Arcq : The Major Arcana of the Tarot that Carrington painted in the 1950's. For the former, she took inspiration from Robert Graves’s The White Goddess, the poet’s 1948 study of poetic myth-making and divinity, a subject to which she was drawn throughout her adult life. Criticisms of minor shortcomings of the publication are utterly pointless. The illustrations are excellent, the accompanying text is highly relevant, and those are the things that matter now.

Hers was, as her son Gabriel Weisz Carrington puts it, “a permanent inquiring mind” shaped by a range of influences including Golden Dawn literature, Egyptian mythology, Surrealist rejection of logic, and indigenous witchcraft in Mexico, where she lived for most of her life. And, of course, she was a devout student of tarot. She not only read spreads but also incorporated icons such as The Magician, The Hanged Man, and The Chariot into her paradoxical visuals that refused intellectualization. Once you start reading and finding all about the occult life of Leonora Carrington though you are transported to another time, a brilliant introduction, touching opening essay from her son, then onto the meat of the book, her work.Aberth believes the opportunity to study Carrington’s tarot finally has made sense of elements in her wider art that have long perplexed those who have tended to place her fantastic figures in the context of surrealism alone. Although she grew up in a traditional Catholic household in the north of England, it was the examination of other spiritual traditions including magic and later Buddhism which most informed her art. From the cover to the end this book is so opulent, glistening in gold, shining in silver, and all on excellent quality paper making it an object of desire within itself.

When you’re ready, walk over to the last figure at the table. The most central one in the pink flowing gown. Who is this magical creature? . . . Examine the thin, almost translucent hand extending out from the sleeve. As the figure reaches out their hand to you, picture yourself placing your hand in theirs. How does this feel? How do you communicate with this being, and what would you like to ask? Her account of her escape from this situation is also remarkable. Her parents planned to send her to another institution, this time in South Africa, and she was accompanied to Lisbon so that she might take a ship. She told her chaperone she needed to go to the lavatory, nipped into a cafe, ran out of the other exit and into a cab which she had take her to the Mexican embassy, where she knew a diplomat, Renato Leduc. He did indeed come to her aid – by marrying her and taking her with him to Mexico (via New York, where she once served André Breton a meal of hare stuffed with oysters). She never saw her father again. No wonder, perhaps, that after this life of reversals, flights, expulsions and exiles, she craved routine in Mexico City. Aridjis remembers someone “sane and stable but giving the impression that she lived in a permanent state of anxiety – had no inner peace”. One day, the neighbours sent in workmen to prune the overhanging branches of the tree she had planted in her front yard decades before. She passionately, angrily, pleaded with them to let its wide-spreading boughs alone.

It also talks about her relationship with other artists who used the subconscious and the occult as part of their practice and shows her influence on them, placing her firmly within the canon of surrealism and at the same time making you wonder how she was so firmly hidden for so long. This new edition also reproduces previously unpublished photographs and images, as well as exciting new research into Carrington's influences, emphasizing the authors' claim that her work on the Major Arcana represents an esoteric roadmap to Carrington's feminist vision and wish for a new global gender equality toward a better ecological future for our planet. The Tarot of Leonora Carrington is the first book dedicated to this important aspect of the artist’s work. It includes a full-size facsimile of her newly discovered Major Arcana; an introduction from her son, Gabriel Weisz Carrington; and a richly illustrated essay from Tere Arcq and Susan Aberth that offers new insights—exploring the significance of tarot imagery within Carrington’s wider work, her many inspirations and mysterious occult sources. Fulgur has a reputation for producing nice books and this is certainly the case here. Large format, finely printed, full size, full-colour reproductions of Carrington’s Tarot cards alongside two essays on the artist, each of these accompanied by other Carrington and related images such as images by Remedios Varo. I have a liking for Carrington’s work (one of the few British surrealists I do like) so in this respect I am a happy man. Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) was born in Lancashire, England. In 1936, she saw Max Ernst’s work at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London, and met the artist the following year. They became a couple almost immediately. When the outbreak of World War II separated them, Carrington fled to Spain, then Lisbon, where she married Renato Leduc, a Mexican diplomat, and escaped to Mexico, where she became close with Remedios Varo and other expat Surrealists.