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AMBIENT MUSIC PLAYS | 0:00:08 | 0:00:11 | |
Hidden away in a corner of Mexico City, a reclusive artist lived and | 0:00:18 | 0:00:23 | |
worked for more than half a century. | 0:00:23 | 0:00:25 | |
She was revered by the Mexican art world, but never courted publicity, | 0:00:31 | 0:00:34 | |
and was little-known overseas. | 0:00:34 | 0:00:37 | |
Surprisingly, she was English, and her name was Leonora Carrington. | 0:00:42 | 0:00:46 | |
Now, 100 years since her birth, the spotlight is at last upon her... | 0:00:50 | 0:00:54 | |
..and her work is being celebrated worldwide by museums | 0:00:56 | 0:01:00 | |
and high-profile admirers. | 0:01:00 | 0:01:02 | |
Collectors are starting to take note. | 0:01:03 | 0:01:05 | |
But what story lay behind this forgotten artist | 0:01:08 | 0:01:11 | |
who is inspiring a new generation? | 0:01:11 | 0:01:13 | |
Leonora had once been at the epicentre of Surrealism, | 0:01:14 | 0:01:18 | |
Europe's most revolutionary art scene... | 0:01:18 | 0:01:20 | |
and had rubbed shoulders with the greats of 20th-century art. | 0:01:23 | 0:01:26 | |
What led this woman, who conquered Paris in the 1930s, | 0:01:34 | 0:01:37 | |
to a life in exile so far from home? | 0:01:37 | 0:01:40 | |
As it turned out, | 0:01:42 | 0:01:44 | |
hers was a very strange and extraordinary story indeed. | 0:01:44 | 0:01:47 | |
Well, I think it's never too late to mend... | 0:01:48 | 0:01:53 | |
to mend the fact that I'm ignored in my own country. | 0:01:53 | 0:01:56 | |
AMBIENT MUSIC PLAYS | 0:02:10 | 0:02:13 | |
My mother had imaginary and real worlds, | 0:02:37 | 0:02:42 | |
sort of juxtaposed. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:44 | |
She didn't feel that one was as alien to the other. | 0:02:47 | 0:02:51 | |
And my mother felt that there was always fantastic in the real | 0:02:53 | 0:02:59 | |
and the other way round... | 0:02:59 | 0:03:02 | |
..and the mysterious was always around the corner. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:07 | |
I was never entirely sure which side of the canvas she was on. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:14 | |
She seemed, in her mind, to inhabit | 0:03:16 | 0:03:19 | |
the places that she painted and the | 0:03:19 | 0:03:22 | |
creatures that she drew, they were | 0:03:22 | 0:03:24 | |
just like extensions of her life. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:26 | |
Everything came from dreams she had had, | 0:03:32 | 0:03:36 | |
in some way interpreted into the canvas. | 0:03:36 | 0:03:40 | |
We can look at those pictures of hers and walk around inside them and | 0:03:42 | 0:03:47 | |
meet these strange creatures that are there. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:49 | |
They're usually quite benign, some of them are a bit scary. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:53 | |
But it's the sort of creatures that I would be very glad to meet in my | 0:03:57 | 0:04:00 | |
own dreams. | 0:04:00 | 0:04:01 | |
I always had access to other worlds, like we all do. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
We all sleep, we all dream. | 0:04:11 | 0:04:13 | |
That kind of feeling that you have in childhood, | 0:04:18 | 0:04:21 | |
of things being very mysterious. | 0:04:21 | 0:04:23 | |
PIANO MUSIC PLAYS | 0:04:23 | 0:04:26 | |
Do you think anybody escapes their childhood? | 0:04:27 | 0:04:29 | |
I don't think we do. | 0:04:30 | 0:04:32 | |
Well, what my mother told me about growing up in England was how she | 0:04:43 | 0:04:49 | |
would create a whole world of her own, | 0:04:49 | 0:04:54 | |
because she was a pretty solitary | 0:04:54 | 0:04:56 | |
little girl. | 0:04:56 | 0:04:58 | |
She grew up as the only girl in a family with three brothers. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:05 | |
They played together, but they didn't include her much. | 0:05:08 | 0:05:12 | |
So, she had to build her own universe, let's say. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:18 | |
CHILD'S VOICE: Now you must know, Moskoski is not on Earth. | 0:05:20 | 0:05:24 | |
It is on a little planet called Starvinski. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:27 | |
Dragons Of Moskoski, chapter one. | 0:05:29 | 0:05:31 | |
CHIRPING AND CHATTERING | 0:05:31 | 0:05:34 | |
EERIE MINIMAL MUSIC | 0:05:34 | 0:05:36 | |
Horiptus is found on the north-west coast of Java. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:40 | |
Feeds on millet oil seed. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:42 | |
INSECTS BUZZ | 0:05:45 | 0:05:47 | |
Her father was a very, very wealthy owner of a textile mill, | 0:05:53 | 0:05:57 | |
called Harold Carrington, | 0:05:57 | 0:05:59 | |
and her mother was the daughter of an Irish doctor. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:02 | |
When Leonora was three, they rented this really stupendous house, | 0:06:04 | 0:06:09 | |
called Crookhey Hall. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:11 | |
CAWING | 0:06:13 | 0:06:15 | |
It was a kind of dark, rather exciting place. | 0:06:18 | 0:06:21 | |
EERIE BIRDCALLS | 0:06:24 | 0:06:27 | |
There was a lake. We had a myth that it was bottomless, | 0:06:27 | 0:06:32 | |
and we weren't allowed to go there alone. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:34 | |
DOG BARKS | 0:06:34 | 0:06:37 | |
We did think that there was a ghost in the tower. | 0:06:37 | 0:06:42 | |
EERIE WAILING | 0:06:42 | 0:06:44 | |
Her brothers went to boarding school when they were quite young. | 0:07:11 | 0:07:14 | |
Leonora stayed at home until she was about 11 or 12. | 0:07:14 | 0:07:18 | |
And, of course, she was isolated, as she didn't have any sisters. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:21 | |
She was all alone in the nursery with the French governess. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:23 | |
She was called Mademoiselle Coutable. | 0:07:30 | 0:07:34 | |
She never liked me. | 0:07:34 | 0:07:35 | |
I had temper tantrums. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:39 | |
CHILD'S VOICE: Seen standing in space, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:50 | |
soft blue and green feathers around its neck. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
Peacock. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:54 | |
Notes: birds, etc. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:02 | |
Seen while asleep. Seen alive on a plate. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:06 | |
Like salad. Coloured green and blue. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:09 | |
Wet like a frog, and wriggly. | 0:08:09 | 0:08:12 | |
When she got to, I think, 11, she did go away to school. | 0:08:16 | 0:08:20 | |
She went to two Catholic boarding schools. | 0:08:20 | 0:08:22 | |
I was expelled from two schools. | 0:08:35 | 0:08:38 | |
Both convents. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:41 | |
I think I was mainly expelled for not collaborating. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:46 | |
I had a kind of allergy to collaboration. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:52 | |
The Mother Superior wrote a letter saying, | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
"This child is neither capable of study or play, | 0:08:56 | 0:09:03 | |
"and hence we are returning her to you." | 0:09:03 | 0:09:06 | |
My grandmother got us some watercolours at first, | 0:09:09 | 0:09:13 | |
and apparently it was a rather complex set of colours. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:17 | |
It wasn't just a cheap set. | 0:09:17 | 0:09:19 | |
My grandmother was probably the most | 0:09:27 | 0:09:31 | |
instrumental person in that stage, | 0:09:31 | 0:09:34 | |
because my grandfather was not very | 0:09:34 | 0:09:38 | |
enthusiastic about her activities, | 0:09:38 | 0:09:41 | |
and her imagery. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:43 | |
But my grandmother was a Celt, | 0:09:48 | 0:09:50 | |
so she thought this was perfectly natural. | 0:09:50 | 0:09:54 | |
In a way, Leonora's whole world | 0:09:54 | 0:09:57 | |
started to grow when she was very little. | 0:09:57 | 0:10:01 | |
All this magical Celtic world that her mother told her about. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:06 | |
And she had these little paintings of fairy tales in her room, that she | 0:10:06 | 0:10:11 | |
kept all her life. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:12 | |
With my grandfather, the relationship was not as close. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:20 | |
He felt that he had to represent discipline and | 0:10:20 | 0:10:26 | |
all those things. | 0:10:26 | 0:10:28 | |
I felt him to be a very powerful presence. | 0:10:30 | 0:10:33 | |
I remember how frightened I was of him. | 0:10:35 | 0:10:37 | |
My mother, I think, | 0:10:39 | 0:10:41 | |
had a sort of love-hate relationship with my grandfather. | 0:10:41 | 0:10:44 | |
He was strict, but he was fair. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:49 | |
I think he provided a sort of counterbalance to my grandmother, | 0:10:50 | 0:10:55 | |
in terms of Leonora. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:58 | |
But she later came into conflict with him. | 0:10:58 | 0:11:02 | |
FOOTSTEPS | 0:11:04 | 0:11:07 | |
He wanted for her to be a certain way, | 0:11:12 | 0:11:17 | |
a certain upbringing, | 0:11:17 | 0:11:20 | |
a certain social behaviour and so on. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:23 | |
REMOTE LAUGHTER AND VOICES | 0:11:23 | 0:11:25 | |
Certainly, after maybe 16 or 17, | 0:11:27 | 0:11:31 | |
she was reluctant to be a model of what he wanted. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:35 | |
Leonora's father was in the process of becoming very wealthy, very fast. | 0:11:46 | 0:11:50 | |
They were nouveau riche, and they knew it. | 0:11:50 | 0:11:53 | |
They wanted all the trappings of wealth. | 0:11:53 | 0:11:55 | |
In a family like that, | 0:12:02 | 0:12:03 | |
everything rests on who the daughter of the family marries. | 0:12:03 | 0:12:06 | |
In this family, there was only one daughter, | 0:12:08 | 0:12:10 | |
so who she married could have carried that family up into the | 0:12:10 | 0:12:14 | |
higher social echelons, as it were. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:16 | |
Well, they wanted me to conform to the life of horses and hunt balls | 0:12:17 | 0:12:23 | |
and being well considered by the local gentry, I suppose. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:28 | |
That sort of thing. | 0:12:28 | 0:12:29 | |
So, Leonora went to live in London, to be launched into society, | 0:12:31 | 0:12:35 | |
to come out as a debutante. | 0:12:35 | 0:12:38 | |
This was one of my grandfather's plans, to present her to the King. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:41 | |
So they gussied her up and dressed | 0:12:43 | 0:12:46 | |
her in these silk garments and so on. | 0:12:46 | 0:12:49 | |
I wrote. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:55 | |
There are lots of stories there. | 0:12:55 | 0:12:57 | |
The Debutante was a book that I wrote afterwards | 0:12:57 | 0:13:02 | |
about my experiences. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:03 | |
"When I was a debutante, I often went to the zoo. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:11 | |
"The animal I got to know best was a young hyena. | 0:13:11 | 0:13:14 | |
" 'What a bloody nuisance,' I said to her. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:19 | |
" 'I've got to go to my ball tonight.' | 0:13:19 | 0:13:21 | |
" 'You're lucky,' she said, 'I'd love to go.' | 0:13:21 | 0:13:24 | |
" 'Ring for your maid, and when she comes in, | 0:13:27 | 0:13:30 | |
" 'we'll pounce upon her and tear off her face. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:33 | |
" 'I'll wear her face tonight, instead of mine.' | 0:13:33 | 0:13:35 | |
" 'It's not practical,' I said. 'She'll probably die.' | 0:13:35 | 0:13:38 | |
" 'Somebody will certainly find the corpse, and we'll be put in prison.' | 0:13:40 | 0:13:43 | |
" 'I'm hungry enough to eat her,' the hyena replied. | 0:13:44 | 0:13:47 | |
" 'And the bones?' 'As well,' she said. | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
"My mother entered, pale with rage. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:57 | |
" 'We'd just sat down at table,' she said, 'when that thing, | 0:13:57 | 0:14:01 | |
'sitting in your place, got up and shouted, | 0:14:01 | 0:14:04 | |
" 'So, I smell a bit strong, what? Well, I don't eat cakes.' | 0:14:04 | 0:14:08 | |
" 'Whereupon it tore off its face and ate it, | 0:14:08 | 0:14:11 | |
" 'and, with one great bound, disappeared through the window.' " | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
She said it was torture. | 0:14:17 | 0:14:20 | |
That was maybe the last time Leonora ever did as she was told. | 0:14:22 | 0:14:26 | |
CRUNCHING AND CHATTER OF DINERS | 0:14:29 | 0:14:31 | |
Her family have been seen as this upper-class family, | 0:14:48 | 0:14:51 | |
but they were not an upper-class family. | 0:14:51 | 0:14:54 | |
They were a family who didn't fit in. | 0:14:54 | 0:14:56 | |
I think that's key to understanding Leonora. | 0:15:01 | 0:15:04 | |
Leonora, from her earliest times, didn't fit in. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:10 | |
The thing about Harold Carrington was that he came from a family | 0:15:23 | 0:15:27 | |
where women would have known their place. | 0:15:27 | 0:15:29 | |
Men were the workers, they went out, | 0:15:29 | 0:15:31 | |
women stayed at home and did as they were told. | 0:15:31 | 0:15:33 | |
He wasn't used to anybody answering him back, | 0:15:33 | 0:15:36 | |
and the one person who did answer him back was the person he least | 0:15:36 | 0:15:39 | |
would have expected - his only daughter. | 0:15:39 | 0:15:41 | |
And I think that was a big shock for Harold. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:44 | |
And I think that led to the very big clash between them. | 0:15:44 | 0:15:47 | |
She used to say that her father was very stern and very severe, | 0:15:49 | 0:15:53 | |
but I think she cared very much about her father. | 0:15:53 | 0:15:57 | |
She said that her father was very narrow-minded and very difficult, | 0:15:57 | 0:16:02 | |
but she spoke more about her father than about her mother. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:07 | |
There were no marriage proposals, unsurprisingly. | 0:16:07 | 0:16:09 | |
And I think her parents were probably at a bit of a loose end as | 0:16:09 | 0:16:12 | |
to what to do with her next, | 0:16:12 | 0:16:14 | |
and I think that she came up with this idea of going to art school. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:18 | |
I was planning of going to London to study painting. | 0:16:21 | 0:16:26 | |
I already knew that. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:29 | |
For Leonora, this was the beginning of freedom for her. | 0:16:37 | 0:16:40 | |
She was at art school, | 0:16:42 | 0:16:44 | |
and she was mixing with a different sort of person. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:47 | |
She found that she was an artist. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:55 | |
She found that she wanted to study art. | 0:16:57 | 0:17:00 | |
And she found Surrealism, | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
and Surrealism was something that surprised her, | 0:17:06 | 0:17:12 | |
because it was so familiar. | 0:17:12 | 0:17:15 | |
My mother gave me Herbert Read's book on Surrealism, | 0:17:20 | 0:17:24 | |
and I had an affinity with it. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
She opened that book, | 0:17:30 | 0:17:31 | |
and she connected with Surrealism, and in particular | 0:17:31 | 0:17:34 | |
she connected with the pictures she saw in there | 0:17:34 | 0:17:38 | |
by an artist called Max Ernst. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:40 | |
Deux Enfants Sont Menacs Par Un Rossignol. | 0:17:44 | 0:17:46 | |
Two Children Being Frightened Of... | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
Rossignol is for the nightingale, isn't it? | 0:17:52 | 0:17:55 | |
I felt, "Ah, yes, this is familiar. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:02 | |
"I know what this is about." | 0:18:02 | 0:18:04 | |
A kind of world which would move between worlds. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:09 | |
The world of our dreaming and imagination. | 0:18:09 | 0:18:13 | |
It was a seismic moment in the art world. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:23 | |
The public of Britain was just struggling to | 0:18:29 | 0:18:31 | |
cope with the Post-Impressionists, | 0:18:31 | 0:18:32 | |
and suddenly here were all these people who were regarded as madmen. | 0:18:32 | 0:18:36 | |
Critics recommended they should be locked up, to protect the public. | 0:18:37 | 0:18:41 | |
My mother saw these paintings, and | 0:18:46 | 0:18:48 | |
she was really fascinated with them, | 0:18:48 | 0:18:50 | |
and she confessed to me, "I want to be there... | 0:18:50 | 0:18:54 | |
"I want to be recognised in this group." | 0:18:57 | 0:19:00 | |
One evening, | 0:19:25 | 0:19:27 | |
she's invited for dinner to the home of a friend of hers from art school, | 0:19:27 | 0:19:32 | |
and they had invited an artist who was in London because he had a show | 0:19:32 | 0:19:36 | |
on at the time, and that was Max Ernst. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:38 | |
They both met, and something really must have clicked very significantly | 0:19:40 | 0:19:44 | |
for her. | 0:19:44 | 0:19:46 | |
I knew his work and admired it. | 0:19:49 | 0:19:51 | |
I thought he was a very extraordinary person. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:55 | |
He was very intelligent. | 0:19:57 | 0:19:59 | |
He was also very attractive. | 0:19:59 | 0:20:00 | |
She said it didn't take very long before they were lovers. | 0:20:05 | 0:20:08 | |
Her father, having heard about this relationship, | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
and obviously incandescent at the turn of events, | 0:20:21 | 0:20:24 | |
decided to try and get Max arrested for the content of the show. | 0:20:24 | 0:20:28 | |
So he called someone at the Metropolitan Police and said that he | 0:20:28 | 0:20:31 | |
thought they needed to investigate this man, Max Ernst, | 0:20:31 | 0:20:34 | |
because his images were pornographic. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:36 | |
Max, at that time, was married, and this did not help things. | 0:20:41 | 0:20:46 | |
But Max's friends, I think, | 0:20:48 | 0:20:50 | |
rather liked Leonora, | 0:20:50 | 0:20:53 | |
and were kind of encouraging and supporting of her. | 0:20:53 | 0:20:56 | |
And among those friends, of course, were my parents, | 0:20:59 | 0:21:01 | |
Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, who took to her right from the start. | 0:21:01 | 0:21:04 | |
Fortunately, Max's friend Roland Penrose got to hear of this threat | 0:21:06 | 0:21:12 | |
and warned Max to go to Cornwall, where Roland's brother had a house. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:17 | |
Max and Leonora came down, | 0:21:18 | 0:21:20 | |
and there was also Man Ray and Ady Fidelin | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
and Eileen Agar and Joseph Bard, and Henry Moore showed up. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:28 | |
And it was just this amazing, | 0:21:28 | 0:21:30 | |
wonderful 'Surrealism in Cornwall' moment. | 0:21:30 | 0:21:34 | |
They basically laid low for three or four weeks, | 0:21:38 | 0:21:40 | |
until the danger had passed. | 0:21:40 | 0:21:42 | |
Max went to Paris, | 0:21:43 | 0:21:45 | |
and Leonora went to find her parents, to tell them that she had | 0:21:45 | 0:21:49 | |
made a decision on her future. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:51 | |
I suppose it was the culmination of everything he'd had to put up with | 0:21:55 | 0:21:59 | |
from Leonora. Of all her rebellion over so many years, | 0:21:59 | 0:22:05 | |
and now she was coming to say that she was going off to live in Paris | 0:22:05 | 0:22:09 | |
with a married man, a penniless artist. | 0:22:09 | 0:22:12 | |
He was absolutely furious. | 0:22:12 | 0:22:14 | |
And he said to her, "Never obscure the threshold of my house again!" | 0:22:16 | 0:22:21 | |
And that's the last she saw him. | 0:22:22 | 0:22:25 | |
I just left. | 0:22:30 | 0:22:32 | |
I just left! | 0:22:33 | 0:22:35 | |
Paris was very exciting at that time. | 0:22:37 | 0:22:39 | |
I was in love. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:43 | |
I was with someone who was also an extremely interesting person. | 0:22:43 | 0:22:48 | |
I was working and seeing new places. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:52 | |
I knew it was better than being in a convent. | 0:22:55 | 0:22:57 | |
Paris must have been a wonderful moment for Leonora, | 0:22:59 | 0:23:03 | |
like emerging into the sunlight of really what the rest of her life | 0:23:03 | 0:23:06 | |
would be about. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:08 | |
It was a very, very, very exciting moment in Paris, | 0:23:15 | 0:23:18 | |
because the Surrealist movement was at its height. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:22 | |
When I was with the Surrealists, I didn't have to fit in to anything. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:28 | |
Well, Surrealism was much more than just an art movement. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:34 | |
It was a way of life. | 0:23:34 | 0:23:36 | |
They were trying to live in that world of imagination that Leonora | 0:23:38 | 0:23:42 | |
was living in since she was a little child. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:45 | |
So I think she fit in perfectly. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:47 | |
This was a group of radicals. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:52 | |
They were against every single institution. | 0:23:54 | 0:23:56 | |
Society, the government, the Church. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:01 | |
They wanted to break with every rule. | 0:24:03 | 0:24:06 | |
It was anti-bourgeois. | 0:24:07 | 0:24:09 | |
It was anti the very thing that Leonora had just herself | 0:24:10 | 0:24:13 | |
escaped from. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:15 | |
So she couldn't have been in a more marvellous and exciting setting than | 0:24:15 | 0:24:20 | |
she found herself there in Paris. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:22 | |
Leonora was a now 20-year-old woman, | 0:24:24 | 0:24:26 | |
and because she was the lover of Max Ernst, | 0:24:26 | 0:24:28 | |
she was kind of parachuted into the very centre of that circle. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:32 | |
I saw a lot of the Surrealists, including Breton. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:39 | |
He had a way of talking... SHE SPEAKS FRENCH | 0:24:41 | 0:24:44 | |
He seemed pompous, but he wasn't really pompous. | 0:24:45 | 0:24:49 | |
I'd take the mickey out of him now and again. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:52 | |
I liked Picasso. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:54 | |
I also admired him. | 0:24:54 | 0:24:56 | |
I didn't go overboard, but I thought that he was very talented. | 0:24:56 | 0:25:01 | |
People like Picasso lived down the road, | 0:25:03 | 0:25:06 | |
and she said that finally she'd discovered... | 0:25:06 | 0:25:10 | |
..kin people, kin minds, | 0:25:12 | 0:25:16 | |
people who thought the way she did. | 0:25:16 | 0:25:18 | |
I think being around Max showed Leonora, in a way, | 0:25:20 | 0:25:24 | |
what was possible, | 0:25:24 | 0:25:27 | |
but of course, being a woman, she had a lot to push against. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:31 | |
Because, although the Surrealists were these fantastic avant-garde, | 0:25:36 | 0:25:39 | |
modern, freethinking people, | 0:25:39 | 0:25:41 | |
they still had a long way to go before they reconstructed their | 0:25:41 | 0:25:44 | |
ideas about women. | 0:25:44 | 0:25:46 | |
And for many of them, women were sort of like muses, | 0:25:52 | 0:25:56 | |
beautiful creatures that were there to give inspiration, | 0:25:56 | 0:25:59 | |
sex and a jolly time. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:00 | |
They didn't take them seriously as artists. | 0:26:01 | 0:26:04 | |
Well, the concept of female | 0:26:11 | 0:26:14 | |
in the group was the "femme-enfant", | 0:26:14 | 0:26:19 | |
which is cute, but derogatory. | 0:26:19 | 0:26:22 | |
And women were not really considered to be contributors | 0:26:22 | 0:26:27 | |
in terms of art. | 0:26:27 | 0:26:29 | |
But my mother ignored all that and scoffed, scoffed at it. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:38 | |
It was very clear that she did not share those beliefs, | 0:26:40 | 0:26:44 | |
and she was very much a feminist. | 0:26:44 | 0:26:46 | |
Very much. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:48 | |
She refused to be a muse. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:51 | |
She refused to fit into their idea of what she was. | 0:26:51 | 0:26:55 | |
And of course, she had plenty of experience of refusing to fit in, | 0:26:55 | 0:26:58 | |
it's what she'd done all her life. | 0:26:58 | 0:26:59 | |
She wasn't going to fit into the Surrealists' idea of how she should | 0:26:59 | 0:27:02 | |
behave any more than she had ever fitted into anything else. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:05 | |
She always had to remind people that she was an artist, | 0:27:25 | 0:27:31 | |
and that she was a woman, and she had her own ideas about her art, | 0:27:31 | 0:27:35 | |
and she was not a muse | 0:27:35 | 0:27:39 | |
for either Max Ernst or for Breton or anybody else. | 0:27:39 | 0:27:43 | |
Leonora and Max were stayed in Paris for a few months over, I think, | 0:27:45 | 0:27:48 | |
the winter of 1937-8. | 0:27:48 | 0:27:50 | |
They then went to live in the south of France, | 0:27:50 | 0:27:53 | |
in a town called Saint-Martin-d'Ardeche. | 0:27:53 | 0:27:56 | |
Well, Max, you see, it was almost like a learning process, | 0:28:02 | 0:28:06 | |
because he knew all sorts of things I'd never heard of, | 0:28:06 | 0:28:10 | |
so it was a revelation, no? | 0:28:10 | 0:28:13 | |
And it was a love affair, also. | 0:28:14 | 0:28:16 | |
I felt that we would be all right if it went on forever. | 0:28:21 | 0:28:25 | |
She was extremely happy. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:31 | |
This is, in her own words, her happiest time in her life. | 0:28:31 | 0:28:35 | |
She told me this, | 0:28:38 | 0:28:40 | |
and that Max had been the greatest | 0:28:40 | 0:28:44 | |
love in her life, | 0:28:44 | 0:28:46 | |
at the exclusion of anybody else. | 0:28:46 | 0:28:49 | |
They'd had this idyllic year or so in the south of France, | 0:28:57 | 0:29:01 | |
and then the War crashed into their world and changed everything. | 0:29:01 | 0:29:04 | |
All of a sudden, the French start rounding up people | 0:29:32 | 0:29:37 | |
of German extraction, and putting them in prison. | 0:29:37 | 0:29:40 | |
Max was put by the French in a concentration camp. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:45 | |
I eventually... | 0:29:46 | 0:29:48 | |
I eventually went mad. | 0:29:48 | 0:29:50 | |
My mother was destroyed by this. | 0:29:52 | 0:29:55 | |
It was too much for her. | 0:29:55 | 0:29:57 | |
She had a breakdown, and at that precise moment she was visited by a | 0:29:57 | 0:30:01 | |
friend from England who was obviously very worried by her state, | 0:30:01 | 0:30:07 | |
and persuaded her to leave Saint-Martin with her in her car, | 0:30:07 | 0:30:11 | |
and to go with her to Spain. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:12 | |
She found her in a terrible state. | 0:30:15 | 0:30:18 | |
She hadn't eaten in days, | 0:30:18 | 0:30:20 | |
and she was eating roots or something like that from the garden, | 0:30:20 | 0:30:24 | |
and in a very bad emotional state. | 0:30:24 | 0:30:28 | |
They put her in a car and took her away. | 0:30:28 | 0:30:31 | |
"No, no, no! I have to wait for Max!" | 0:30:32 | 0:30:35 | |
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry but the Germans are coming." | 0:30:35 | 0:30:38 | |
And they were, like, 13 miles away, or something like that, | 0:30:38 | 0:30:41 | |
and they just got in the car and left. | 0:30:41 | 0:30:43 | |
She was completely destroyed. | 0:30:51 | 0:30:54 | |
So, I think it was my grandfather that decided that it would be best | 0:30:54 | 0:31:00 | |
to put her in a mental institution. | 0:31:00 | 0:31:02 | |
Best for whom, I don't know, but that... | 0:31:05 | 0:31:08 | |
that was a "family decision". | 0:31:08 | 0:31:11 | |
The solution that was found was that she should be taken to a sanatorium | 0:31:14 | 0:31:18 | |
for people who had mental illness, in the north of Spain. | 0:31:18 | 0:31:22 | |
She was tricked into going there, basically. | 0:31:23 | 0:31:25 | |
She was told that she was going for a day out to the seaside. | 0:31:25 | 0:31:29 | |
The doctor went with her, she was drugged on the way there, | 0:31:29 | 0:31:31 | |
and she woke up in this place that she, all her life, | 0:31:31 | 0:31:34 | |
called "the asylum". | 0:31:34 | 0:31:36 | |
That was the beginning of the darkest chapter, really, | 0:31:38 | 0:31:41 | |
in her life. | 0:31:41 | 0:31:42 | |
"My first awakening to consciousness was painful. | 0:31:52 | 0:31:55 | |
"I thought myself the victim of an automobile accident. | 0:31:56 | 0:31:59 | |
"The place was suggestive of a hospital, | 0:32:03 | 0:32:06 | |
"and I was being watched by a repulsive-looking nurse | 0:32:06 | 0:32:09 | |
"who looked like an enormous bottle of Lysol. | 0:32:09 | 0:32:11 | |
"I was in pain, and I realised that my hands and feet | 0:32:12 | 0:32:15 | |
"were bound by leather straps. | 0:32:15 | 0:32:17 | |
"I learned later that I had entered the place, fighting like a tigress." | 0:32:19 | 0:32:23 | |
It was the treatment she received there that was so terrible. | 0:32:25 | 0:32:29 | |
She was treated by being given a drug called Cardiosol, | 0:32:29 | 0:32:33 | |
which induced an epileptic fit. | 0:32:33 | 0:32:35 | |
"I don't know how long I remained bound and naked. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:44 | |
"Several days and nights lying in my own excrement, urine and sweat, | 0:32:44 | 0:32:49 | |
"tortured by mosquitoes whose stings made my body hideous. | 0:32:49 | 0:32:52 | |
"A new era began with the most terrible, blackest day of my life. | 0:32:54 | 0:32:58 | |
"How can I write this when I'm afraid to think about it? | 0:32:59 | 0:33:02 | |
"I'm in terrible anguish, | 0:33:02 | 0:33:04 | |
"yet I cannot continue living alone with such a memory. | 0:33:04 | 0:33:07 | |
"I know that once I've written it down, I shall be delivered. | 0:33:08 | 0:33:11 | |
"But shall I be able to express with mere words the horror of that day? | 0:33:11 | 0:33:15 | |
"A stranger entered my room. | 0:33:21 | 0:33:23 | |
"He carried in his hand a physician's bag of black leather. | 0:33:23 | 0:33:26 | |
"Each of them got hold of a portion of my body, | 0:33:29 | 0:33:32 | |
"and I saw the centre of all their eyes were fixed upon me in a ghastly | 0:33:32 | 0:33:35 | |
"stare. Don Luis's eyes were tearing my brain apart, | 0:33:35 | 0:33:40 | |
"and I was sinking down into a well, very far. | 0:33:40 | 0:33:42 | |
"The bottom of that well was the stopping of my mind for all eternity | 0:33:44 | 0:33:47 | |
"in the essence of utter anguish. | 0:33:47 | 0:33:49 | |
"With a convulsion of my vital centre, | 0:33:51 | 0:33:54 | |
"I came up to the surface so quickly, I had vertigo. | 0:33:54 | 0:33:57 | |
"When I came to, I was lying naked on the floor. | 0:33:58 | 0:34:00 | |
"I went back to my bed and tasted despair." | 0:34:02 | 0:34:04 | |
I think that experience sealed her. | 0:34:26 | 0:34:29 | |
Sealed her life, the rest of her life, no? | 0:34:30 | 0:34:34 | |
And the fact that it was in some way an order of her father, no? | 0:34:34 | 0:34:40 | |
So, you see there, families worked in a very peculiar way, there, and | 0:34:40 | 0:34:48 | |
I don't think Leonora ever really forgave that. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:53 | |
I came out...different. | 0:35:02 | 0:35:05 | |
Much more frightened. | 0:35:05 | 0:35:07 | |
What it mainly did for me, in a conscious way, | 0:35:13 | 0:35:16 | |
was to have suddenly become aware that I was both mortal | 0:35:16 | 0:35:20 | |
and touchable, and I could be destroyed. | 0:35:20 | 0:35:24 | |
I didn't think so before. | 0:35:26 | 0:35:28 | |
She was still only in her early 20s. | 0:35:36 | 0:35:38 | |
She was really completely alone. | 0:35:40 | 0:35:42 | |
I was frightened, so frightened all the time. | 0:35:44 | 0:35:47 | |
My family wanted me to go back to England, | 0:35:50 | 0:35:54 | |
so it was, you know... | 0:35:54 | 0:35:56 | |
I didn't want to go back then. | 0:35:57 | 0:36:00 | |
Leonora ended up meeting Renato Leduc. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:10 | |
Renato must have been a terribly nice man who undoubtedly took a | 0:36:12 | 0:36:16 | |
great deal of interest in trying to save Leonora, | 0:36:16 | 0:36:20 | |
because he realised that she was a very special person. | 0:36:20 | 0:36:23 | |
He married her, to get her a Mexican passport, | 0:36:25 | 0:36:30 | |
just simply to save her life. | 0:36:30 | 0:36:31 | |
He actually got me out of Europe, Renato. | 0:36:34 | 0:36:37 | |
I met him in Madrid. | 0:36:39 | 0:36:41 | |
He worked in the Mexican Embassy, | 0:36:41 | 0:36:44 | |
and the whole Mexican Embassy left to come back to Mexico. | 0:36:44 | 0:36:48 | |
She decided to go to Mexico, and she didn't know a word of Spanish. | 0:36:51 | 0:36:56 | |
She had no idea how she would live, | 0:36:56 | 0:37:00 | |
and she went on this great adventure of going to a country she had | 0:37:00 | 0:37:04 | |
never...she didn't even imagine what it could be like. | 0:37:04 | 0:37:07 | |
Once you cross the border and you arrive in Mexico, | 0:37:18 | 0:37:23 | |
you will feel that you are coming to a place that's haunted. | 0:37:23 | 0:37:26 | |
Spirits, the presence of spirits. | 0:37:27 | 0:37:29 | |
Whatever spirits are. | 0:37:30 | 0:37:32 | |
It was like going to the other end of the earth. | 0:37:34 | 0:37:36 | |
It is very extraordinary, and very...very exotic. | 0:37:38 | 0:37:43 | |
Sometimes I found it marvellous, sometimes I found it horrifying. | 0:37:44 | 0:37:49 | |
There's a lot of similarities between the ancient Mexican | 0:37:51 | 0:37:55 | |
civilisations and the Celtic cultures. | 0:37:55 | 0:37:59 | |
There's this concept of Surrealism we have, of imagination, freedom, | 0:38:05 | 0:38:10 | |
magic as a way of life, | 0:38:10 | 0:38:13 | |
and I think that resonated with her own culture. | 0:38:13 | 0:38:15 | |
Mexico became a refuge. | 0:38:30 | 0:38:33 | |
She found it painful | 0:38:34 | 0:38:38 | |
to leave Europe, and she was always | 0:38:38 | 0:38:40 | |
nostalgic about Europe. | 0:38:40 | 0:38:43 | |
But then she made a life in Mexico. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:47 | |
But Leonora didn't know anybody, clearly, in Mexico City, | 0:38:56 | 0:38:59 | |
and suddenly found herself all alone there. | 0:38:59 | 0:39:02 | |
Renato seems like he was probably quite a man's man, | 0:39:02 | 0:39:05 | |
liked going out to bars, the cantinas, | 0:39:05 | 0:39:07 | |
and understandably, she wasn't very happy. | 0:39:07 | 0:39:10 | |
PIANO MUSIC PLAYS | 0:39:10 | 0:39:12 | |
Renato was a nice man, but he had an attitude | 0:39:14 | 0:39:20 | |
which was that it didn't matter if I was alone, you know, | 0:39:20 | 0:39:25 | |
most days of the week, without speaking Spanish... | 0:39:25 | 0:39:28 | |
..and not knowing anybody. | 0:39:30 | 0:39:31 | |
I think it was more than just a marriage of convenience, | 0:39:34 | 0:39:37 | |
but it didn't have the deep roots that a relationship needs, to go | 0:39:37 | 0:39:41 | |
through many, many years. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:43 | |
I asked Renato, | 0:39:45 | 0:39:47 | |
"Why did you separate such an extraordinary woman?" and he said, | 0:39:47 | 0:39:51 | |
"Because she would talk to the dog more than she did to me." | 0:39:51 | 0:39:54 | |
Leonora settled into Mexico, | 0:39:57 | 0:40:01 | |
into a Mexico where a great number of intellectuals | 0:40:01 | 0:40:04 | |
were coming to Mexico at the time, | 0:40:04 | 0:40:08 | |
of all nationalities and all races, | 0:40:08 | 0:40:11 | |
and Leonora undoubtedly found a very interesting life | 0:40:11 | 0:40:15 | |
in which to live. | 0:40:15 | 0:40:17 | |
Now, did that make her happy? | 0:40:18 | 0:40:21 | |
God only knows. | 0:40:21 | 0:40:23 | |
She made new friends there, and they were, crucially, | 0:40:24 | 0:40:28 | |
other people like her, who had fled from wartime Europe and who had no | 0:40:28 | 0:40:32 | |
family, and most of those people, | 0:40:32 | 0:40:35 | |
who became her closest friends in Mexico City, | 0:40:35 | 0:40:38 | |
would never see their families again, any of them. | 0:40:38 | 0:40:41 | |
At one of the parties, she met my father... | 0:40:45 | 0:40:48 | |
and the way she describes it, she says, | 0:40:50 | 0:40:53 | |
"I decided this man would be a good father for my children." | 0:40:53 | 0:40:58 | |
That's how she described him. | 0:40:58 | 0:41:00 | |
Nothing more, just that. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:04 | |
Chiki was a Hungarian photographer | 0:41:06 | 0:41:10 | |
who had fled Hungary and made | 0:41:10 | 0:41:14 | |
his way to Paris on foot after | 0:41:14 | 0:41:17 | |
witnessing from the window of his apartment, | 0:41:17 | 0:41:20 | |
with his mother, a parade of Nazis going by, saying... | 0:41:20 | 0:41:23 | |
you know, flourishing knives and saying they were after Jewish blood. | 0:41:23 | 0:41:27 | |
Leonora and Chiki were both people who'd ended up in Mexico from | 0:41:33 | 0:41:37 | |
war-torn Europe. They were both people who'd left their families | 0:41:37 | 0:41:40 | |
behind. Chiki's family were mostly dead. | 0:41:40 | 0:41:43 | |
They were at an exciting moment, in a way, in their lives, | 0:41:44 | 0:41:47 | |
because they were there in this new country and they were young people, | 0:41:47 | 0:41:52 | |
and Chiki, unlike Leonora's previous lovers, was a younger man. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:57 | |
I think she liked Chiki, no? At the beginning. | 0:41:59 | 0:42:02 | |
He was good-looking, and Chiki was always a very, | 0:42:02 | 0:42:06 | |
very good man, but he was very shy. | 0:42:06 | 0:42:09 | |
And so they got together and married after a little while, | 0:42:12 | 0:42:17 | |
and then my brother appeared, and I appeared. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:21 | |
I believe motherhood was the most amazing experience she ever had. | 0:42:27 | 0:42:32 | |
She told me once that having children was, for her, so important, | 0:42:32 | 0:42:37 | |
because it's the only unconditional love you can have in your life. | 0:42:37 | 0:42:42 | |
She said, "They are the only ones that will never leave you." | 0:42:42 | 0:42:45 | |
When she was pregnant, she was scared, | 0:42:50 | 0:42:53 | |
but she was painting like crazy. | 0:42:53 | 0:42:55 | |
This creative instinct came to her at the same time of being able to | 0:43:04 | 0:43:08 | |
create life. | 0:43:08 | 0:43:09 | |
And I think that gave her a very powerful sense. | 0:43:21 | 0:43:26 | |
I think her best work did come at the time when she was painting with | 0:43:26 | 0:43:29 | |
the brush in one hand and the baby in the other. | 0:43:29 | 0:43:31 | |
She probably adored her kids. | 0:43:55 | 0:43:57 | |
In fact, I would say, she did love her kids, | 0:43:59 | 0:44:02 | |
but in Leonora's own way. | 0:44:02 | 0:44:04 | |
Certainly not in the traditional way that a normal mother would have | 0:44:05 | 0:44:09 | |
loved her kids. | 0:44:09 | 0:44:11 | |
I think she was terrified that, if | 0:44:12 | 0:44:15 | |
she loved them the way her parents | 0:44:15 | 0:44:17 | |
loved her, they would be as unhappy | 0:44:17 | 0:44:19 | |
as she had become with her parents. | 0:44:19 | 0:44:22 | |
AMBIENT MUSIC PLAYS | 0:44:24 | 0:44:27 | |
She realised, when she had Gaby and Pablo, | 0:44:46 | 0:44:49 | |
how important this new family was | 0:44:49 | 0:44:52 | |
going to be to her, because she was | 0:44:52 | 0:44:54 | |
somebody who'd left her family behind. | 0:44:54 | 0:44:57 | |
She realised that she was going to have a second chance at family, | 0:44:57 | 0:45:00 | |
and she was determined that that second chance was going to go a lot | 0:45:00 | 0:45:03 | |
better than the first chance had gone. | 0:45:03 | 0:45:05 | |
I don't think she could have loved two children more than my brother | 0:45:12 | 0:45:16 | |
and myself. | 0:45:16 | 0:45:18 | |
I don't think that would have been possible. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:20 | |
And my father was the same, in a different way. | 0:45:22 | 0:45:25 | |
He was a little more realistic in | 0:45:26 | 0:45:30 | |
terms of getting us to get through | 0:45:30 | 0:45:33 | |
school without flunking and things. | 0:45:33 | 0:45:36 | |
He instilled a little discipline into this marvellous world | 0:45:36 | 0:45:41 | |
that we were enjoying. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:43 | |
The boys were very near her. | 0:45:47 | 0:45:50 | |
The boys were always walking, one on this side, one on this other side, | 0:45:50 | 0:45:54 | |
and always with her. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:56 | |
She shut herself in her studio, | 0:45:58 | 0:46:00 | |
but we used to open the door and come in. | 0:46:00 | 0:46:02 | |
She would say, "I need to work, so be very quiet. | 0:46:06 | 0:46:10 | |
"Here's a piece of paper. Draw." | 0:46:10 | 0:46:12 | |
And that's how I started drawing. | 0:46:12 | 0:46:14 | |
Sometimes it was dreadfully difficult. | 0:46:19 | 0:46:23 | |
She was paralysed and desperate, | 0:46:23 | 0:46:27 | |
that no images came, | 0:46:27 | 0:46:30 | |
and it was barren, | 0:46:30 | 0:46:32 | |
and she was extremely depressed sometimes. | 0:46:32 | 0:46:35 | |
But sometimes it just flowed, like that, | 0:46:35 | 0:46:38 | |
and she was very excited, and she wouldn't leave the studio, because | 0:46:38 | 0:46:43 | |
there were so many things coming. | 0:46:43 | 0:46:45 | |
Leonora was always very reluctant to | 0:46:57 | 0:47:01 | |
talk about her work, about her art. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:04 | |
She would never explain what anything meant. | 0:47:04 | 0:47:07 | |
She just said, "It just came that way." | 0:47:07 | 0:47:09 | |
She didn't do anything to promote her career. | 0:47:14 | 0:47:17 | |
She was totally foreign to anything | 0:47:17 | 0:47:20 | |
resembling public relations. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:23 | |
She did the work and put it out, you know, in public, and that was it. | 0:47:23 | 0:47:28 | |
It's difficult for me to put, verbally. | 0:47:31 | 0:47:34 | |
I leave that to all the people who do the writing. | 0:47:34 | 0:47:37 | |
It comes with a feeling more than an image. | 0:47:40 | 0:47:43 | |
It's not that you actually see it. | 0:47:43 | 0:47:47 | |
There's a kind of sense that it's quite right. | 0:47:47 | 0:47:51 | |
Let's say, that green was quite right. | 0:47:53 | 0:47:55 | |
Or that green was, oh, no, no, not quite right. | 0:47:55 | 0:47:59 | |
Then you don't stop to wonder where that's coming from. | 0:47:59 | 0:48:01 | |
To be an artist, it was so natural in her, no? | 0:48:11 | 0:48:14 | |
And to be famous, she didn't like at all. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:16 | |
She didn't like journalism, she didn't like... | 0:48:16 | 0:48:20 | |
She hated interviews. She didn't like questions, | 0:48:20 | 0:48:22 | |
she never even answered them. | 0:48:22 | 0:48:25 | |
I don't think she was really that much interested in the art market. | 0:48:25 | 0:48:30 | |
Of course, she wanted to sell the paintings, because she needed money | 0:48:30 | 0:48:34 | |
to eat and to raise the kids and to feed them, | 0:48:34 | 0:48:37 | |
but I don't think she was that interested in the public recognition | 0:48:37 | 0:48:42 | |
of her work. That was part of her life. | 0:48:42 | 0:48:46 | |
I don't think she could have survived without painting. | 0:48:46 | 0:48:49 | |
She would use any kind of little room for her painting. | 0:49:09 | 0:49:13 | |
It was not important to have a studio, like many of the other | 0:49:13 | 0:49:18 | |
quote-unquote "great artists" had. | 0:49:18 | 0:49:21 | |
She had a little studio upstairs, | 0:49:25 | 0:49:28 | |
a very poor little studio with electricity and things that were all | 0:49:28 | 0:49:33 | |
like this, you know? Cords all the... | 0:49:33 | 0:49:36 | |
Very... Things... You said, "My goodness!" | 0:49:36 | 0:49:38 | |
And the rain, it got in. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:41 | |
And she had a very uncomfortable chair. | 0:49:41 | 0:49:44 | |
Everything was, sort of, very difficult and uncomfortable, | 0:49:44 | 0:49:48 | |
and that's where she painted. | 0:49:48 | 0:49:50 | |
But it was very funny, | 0:49:52 | 0:49:54 | |
because you saw all these Mexican painters, that weren't 10% as good | 0:49:54 | 0:49:58 | |
as she could be, that had all these enormous studios, | 0:49:58 | 0:50:02 | |
horrible white studios full of horrible paintings, | 0:50:02 | 0:50:05 | |
and she had this, and she was doing all this marvellous painting, no? | 0:50:05 | 0:50:10 | |
In this little room. | 0:50:10 | 0:50:12 | |
I think it's in Mexico that she found her real way, artistically | 0:50:14 | 0:50:19 | |
speaking, because that's where she had, I think, | 0:50:19 | 0:50:22 | |
enough time to dedicate herself fully to what she was. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:28 | |
An artist. | 0:50:28 | 0:50:29 | |
She'd kind of run and run and run and run and run, | 0:50:31 | 0:50:33 | |
and she got to the end of the line, really. | 0:50:33 | 0:50:35 | |
There was nowhere else to run to. | 0:50:35 | 0:50:36 | |
She could have gone back, but she was never going to do that. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:43 | |
And there was nowhere else to go. | 0:50:43 | 0:50:45 | |
Did she want to go back to England? | 0:50:59 | 0:51:02 | |
Well, she was terribly homesick and nostalgic, | 0:51:02 | 0:51:08 | |
so her relationship to England was always sort of a | 0:51:08 | 0:51:12 | |
lost home. | 0:51:12 | 0:51:14 | |
Well, a home is a kind of illusion a lot of us have. | 0:51:33 | 0:51:36 | |
Being settled doesn't exist, really. | 0:51:41 | 0:51:44 | |
I need change. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:48 | |
Because I get sort of suffocated by my own atmosphere... | 0:51:51 | 0:51:56 | |
or things that become too familiar. | 0:51:57 | 0:51:59 | |
She never quite | 0:52:04 | 0:52:07 | |
fitted anywhere. | 0:52:07 | 0:52:10 | |
Not England, not Mexico. | 0:52:10 | 0:52:13 | |
I don't think she was comfortable anywhere, that's the truth, | 0:52:13 | 0:52:18 | |
and if there was one country where my mother was very comfortable, | 0:52:18 | 0:52:22 | |
was art. Hmm? | 0:52:22 | 0:52:25 | |
That was her country. | 0:52:25 | 0:52:27 | |
Even though she may have never accepted this, I told her myself - | 0:52:56 | 0:53:02 | |
"Mexico has received you with open arms, | 0:53:02 | 0:53:08 | |
which would never have happened in Europe. | 0:53:08 | 0:53:11 | |
Never. | 0:53:11 | 0:53:13 | |
Well, Leonora is considered one of the greatest Mexican painters. | 0:53:15 | 0:53:20 | |
She's always been considered a Mexican artist. | 0:53:20 | 0:53:23 | |
Even though she was born in England, for us, she is our artist. | 0:53:26 | 0:53:31 | |
She belongs to Mexico, and she has always been recognised here. | 0:53:31 | 0:53:36 | |
She's always had a very good name. | 0:53:36 | 0:53:38 | |
Leonora's work is so unique, and I think that's a legacy that, | 0:53:42 | 0:53:47 | |
even though she was surrounded by all these big shots of Surrealism, | 0:53:47 | 0:53:51 | |
she was able to look inside of her and create something that was really | 0:53:51 | 0:53:57 | |
unique and visionary. | 0:53:57 | 0:53:59 | |
Being tucked away in Mexico City certainly did not help her achieve | 0:54:04 | 0:54:09 | |
recognition in the way that she could have done, should have done, | 0:54:09 | 0:54:13 | |
but Leonora certainly did not achieve the recognition in this | 0:54:13 | 0:54:16 | |
country that she so richly deserved. | 0:54:16 | 0:54:19 | |
Leonora, as an artist, may still be in her infancy in terms of how | 0:54:21 | 0:54:25 | |
well-known she will one day be, | 0:54:25 | 0:54:28 | |
and I do think that Leonora's moment is still ahead, | 0:54:28 | 0:54:31 | |
in terms of her being really well-known and acknowledged as an | 0:54:31 | 0:54:34 | |
artist, because so many of her themes were ahead of their time, | 0:54:34 | 0:54:37 | |
and are probably still ahead. | 0:54:37 | 0:54:39 | |
I think she was ahead of all of us. | 0:54:39 | 0:54:42 | |
She was so extraordinary, so... | 0:54:42 | 0:54:46 | |
so, anyone who's ahead of you, you always... | 0:54:46 | 0:54:49 | |
they are always there. | 0:54:49 | 0:54:52 | |
The idea of saying that, as you can't explain or you can't | 0:54:52 | 0:54:55 | |
understand, you say things that are | 0:54:55 | 0:54:58 | |
under...under the personality of that person, no? | 0:54:58 | 0:55:03 | |
And Leonora was like that. | 0:55:03 | 0:55:05 | |
She walked in another world, she lived in another world, no? | 0:55:05 | 0:55:09 | |
She was a little bit like... | 0:55:10 | 0:55:12 | |
..like a genius, but also like a monk of the Middle Ages, | 0:55:14 | 0:55:19 | |
or like someone that doesn't exist any more. | 0:55:19 | 0:55:23 | |
Lots of things died when she died. | 0:55:24 | 0:55:27 | |
A lot of my journeys were running away. | 0:55:41 | 0:55:44 | |
But in old age, I feel that I'm beginning a journey in a way. | 0:55:45 | 0:55:50 | |
Death is of course inevitable. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:54 | |
Somehow I have to go with it a bit, | 0:55:55 | 0:55:58 | |
as a way of discovering or uncovering, | 0:55:58 | 0:56:02 | |
because, really, we know nothing about death. | 0:56:02 | 0:56:05 | |
Nothing. | 0:56:06 | 0:56:08 | |
Yes, well, her son Gaby has said | 0:56:10 | 0:56:13 | |
that almost her final words before she died was, she looked at the | 0:56:13 | 0:56:18 | |
wall, and he said, "What are you looking at?" | 0:56:18 | 0:56:21 | |
And she said, "At the blackbirds. | 0:56:21 | 0:56:23 | |
"The wall is filled with wonderful blackbirds." | 0:56:23 | 0:56:27 | |
You know, which seemed... | 0:56:28 | 0:56:30 | |
a marvellous thing to see at the very end for her. | 0:56:30 | 0:56:34 | |
Yes, we were impressed, because it's | 0:56:34 | 0:56:36 | |
like the blackbirds coming for her. | 0:56:36 | 0:56:39 | |
To take her to the fantastic world she was living in already. | 0:56:41 | 0:56:45 | |
BIRDSONG | 0:56:46 | 0:56:49 | |
GENTLE MUSIC PLAYS | 0:56:52 | 0:56:55 | |
PIANO PLAYS GENTLY | 0:57:17 | 0:57:20 |