Leonora Carrington: The Lost Surrealist


Leonora Carrington: The Lost Surrealist

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AMBIENT MUSIC PLAYS

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Hidden away in a corner of Mexico City, a reclusive artist lived and

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worked for more than half a century.

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She was revered by the Mexican art world, but never courted publicity,

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and was little-known overseas.

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Surprisingly, she was English, and her name was Leonora Carrington.

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Now, 100 years since her birth, the spotlight is at last upon her...

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..and her work is being celebrated worldwide by museums

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and high-profile admirers.

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Collectors are starting to take note.

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But what story lay behind this forgotten artist

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who is inspiring a new generation?

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Leonora had once been at the epicentre of Surrealism,

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Europe's most revolutionary art scene...

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and had rubbed shoulders with the greats of 20th-century art.

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What led this woman, who conquered Paris in the 1930s,

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to a life in exile so far from home?

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As it turned out,

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hers was a very strange and extraordinary story indeed.

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Well, I think it's never too late to mend...

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to mend the fact that I'm ignored in my own country.

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AMBIENT MUSIC PLAYS

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My mother had imaginary and real worlds,

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sort of juxtaposed.

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She didn't feel that one was as alien to the other.

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And my mother felt that there was always fantastic in the real

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and the other way round...

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..and the mysterious was always around the corner.

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I was never entirely sure which side of the canvas she was on.

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She seemed, in her mind, to inhabit

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the places that she painted and the

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creatures that she drew, they were

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just like extensions of her life.

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Everything came from dreams she had had,

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in some way interpreted into the canvas.

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We can look at those pictures of hers and walk around inside them and

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meet these strange creatures that are there.

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They're usually quite benign, some of them are a bit scary.

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But it's the sort of creatures that I would be very glad to meet in my

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own dreams.

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I always had access to other worlds, like we all do.

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We all sleep, we all dream.

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That kind of feeling that you have in childhood,

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of things being very mysterious.

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PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

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Do you think anybody escapes their childhood?

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I don't think we do.

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Well, what my mother told me about growing up in England was how she

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would create a whole world of her own,

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because she was a pretty solitary

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little girl.

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She grew up as the only girl in a family with three brothers.

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They played together, but they didn't include her much.

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So, she had to build her own universe, let's say.

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CHILD'S VOICE: Now you must know, Moskoski is not on Earth.

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It is on a little planet called Starvinski.

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Dragons Of Moskoski, chapter one.

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CHIRPING AND CHATTERING

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EERIE MINIMAL MUSIC

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Horiptus is found on the north-west coast of Java.

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Feeds on millet oil seed.

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INSECTS BUZZ

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Her father was a very, very wealthy owner of a textile mill,

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called Harold Carrington,

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and her mother was the daughter of an Irish doctor.

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When Leonora was three, they rented this really stupendous house,

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called Crookhey Hall.

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CAWING

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It was a kind of dark, rather exciting place.

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EERIE BIRDCALLS

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There was a lake. We had a myth that it was bottomless,

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and we weren't allowed to go there alone.

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DOG BARKS

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We did think that there was a ghost in the tower.

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EERIE WAILING

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Her brothers went to boarding school when they were quite young.

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Leonora stayed at home until she was about 11 or 12.

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And, of course, she was isolated, as she didn't have any sisters.

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She was all alone in the nursery with the French governess.

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She was called Mademoiselle Coutable.

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She never liked me.

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I had temper tantrums.

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CHILD'S VOICE: Seen standing in space,

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soft blue and green feathers around its neck.

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Peacock.

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Notes: birds, etc.

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Seen while asleep. Seen alive on a plate.

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Like salad. Coloured green and blue.

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Wet like a frog, and wriggly.

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When she got to, I think, 11, she did go away to school.

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She went to two Catholic boarding schools.

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I was expelled from two schools.

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Both convents.

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I think I was mainly expelled for not collaborating.

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I had a kind of allergy to collaboration.

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The Mother Superior wrote a letter saying,

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"This child is neither capable of study or play,

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"and hence we are returning her to you."

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My grandmother got us some watercolours at first,

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and apparently it was a rather complex set of colours.

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It wasn't just a cheap set.

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My grandmother was probably the most

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instrumental person in that stage,

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because my grandfather was not very

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enthusiastic about her activities,

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and her imagery.

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But my grandmother was a Celt,

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so she thought this was perfectly natural.

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In a way, Leonora's whole world

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started to grow when she was very little.

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All this magical Celtic world that her mother told her about.

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And she had these little paintings of fairy tales in her room, that she

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kept all her life.

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With my grandfather, the relationship was not as close.

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He felt that he had to represent discipline and

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all those things.

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I felt him to be a very powerful presence.

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I remember how frightened I was of him.

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My mother, I think,

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had a sort of love-hate relationship with my grandfather.

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He was strict, but he was fair.

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I think he provided a sort of counterbalance to my grandmother,

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in terms of Leonora.

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But she later came into conflict with him.

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FOOTSTEPS

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He wanted for her to be a certain way,

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a certain upbringing,

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a certain social behaviour and so on.

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REMOTE LAUGHTER AND VOICES

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Certainly, after maybe 16 or 17,

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she was reluctant to be a model of what he wanted.

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Leonora's father was in the process of becoming very wealthy, very fast.

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They were nouveau riche, and they knew it.

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They wanted all the trappings of wealth.

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In a family like that,

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everything rests on who the daughter of the family marries.

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In this family, there was only one daughter,

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so who she married could have carried that family up into the

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higher social echelons, as it were.

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Well, they wanted me to conform to the life of horses and hunt balls

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and being well considered by the local gentry, I suppose.

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That sort of thing.

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So, Leonora went to live in London, to be launched into society,

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to come out as a debutante.

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This was one of my grandfather's plans, to present her to the King.

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So they gussied her up and dressed

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her in these silk garments and so on.

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I wrote.

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There are lots of stories there.

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The Debutante was a book that I wrote afterwards

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about my experiences.

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"When I was a debutante, I often went to the zoo.

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"The animal I got to know best was a young hyena.

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" 'What a bloody nuisance,' I said to her.

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" 'I've got to go to my ball tonight.'

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" 'You're lucky,' she said, 'I'd love to go.'

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" 'Ring for your maid, and when she comes in,

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" 'we'll pounce upon her and tear off her face.

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" 'I'll wear her face tonight, instead of mine.'

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" 'It's not practical,' I said. 'She'll probably die.'

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" 'Somebody will certainly find the corpse, and we'll be put in prison.'

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" 'I'm hungry enough to eat her,' the hyena replied.

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" 'And the bones?' 'As well,' she said.

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"My mother entered, pale with rage.

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" 'We'd just sat down at table,' she said, 'when that thing,

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'sitting in your place, got up and shouted,

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" 'So, I smell a bit strong, what? Well, I don't eat cakes.'

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" 'Whereupon it tore off its face and ate it,

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" 'and, with one great bound, disappeared through the window.' "

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She said it was torture.

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That was maybe the last time Leonora ever did as she was told.

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CRUNCHING AND CHATTER OF DINERS

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Her family have been seen as this upper-class family,

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but they were not an upper-class family.

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They were a family who didn't fit in.

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I think that's key to understanding Leonora.

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Leonora, from her earliest times, didn't fit in.

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The thing about Harold Carrington was that he came from a family

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where women would have known their place.

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Men were the workers, they went out,

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women stayed at home and did as they were told.

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He wasn't used to anybody answering him back,

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and the one person who did answer him back was the person he least

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would have expected - his only daughter.

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And I think that was a big shock for Harold.

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And I think that led to the very big clash between them.

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She used to say that her father was very stern and very severe,

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but I think she cared very much about her father.

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She said that her father was very narrow-minded and very difficult,

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but she spoke more about her father than about her mother.

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There were no marriage proposals, unsurprisingly.

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And I think her parents were probably at a bit of a loose end as

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to what to do with her next,

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and I think that she came up with this idea of going to art school.

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I was planning of going to London to study painting.

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I already knew that.

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For Leonora, this was the beginning of freedom for her.

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She was at art school,

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and she was mixing with a different sort of person.

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She found that she was an artist.

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She found that she wanted to study art.

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And she found Surrealism,

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and Surrealism was something that surprised her,

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because it was so familiar.

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My mother gave me Herbert Read's book on Surrealism,

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and I had an affinity with it.

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She opened that book,

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and she connected with Surrealism, and in particular

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she connected with the pictures she saw in there

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by an artist called Max Ernst.

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Deux Enfants Sont Menacs Par Un Rossignol.

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Two Children Being Frightened Of...

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Rossignol is for the nightingale, isn't it?

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I felt, "Ah, yes, this is familiar.

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"I know what this is about."

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A kind of world which would move between worlds.

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The world of our dreaming and imagination.

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It was a seismic moment in the art world.

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The public of Britain was just struggling to

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cope with the Post-Impressionists,

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and suddenly here were all these people who were regarded as madmen.

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Critics recommended they should be locked up, to protect the public.

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My mother saw these paintings, and

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she was really fascinated with them,

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and she confessed to me, "I want to be there...

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"I want to be recognised in this group."

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One evening,

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she's invited for dinner to the home of a friend of hers from art school,

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and they had invited an artist who was in London because he had a show

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on at the time, and that was Max Ernst.

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They both met, and something really must have clicked very significantly

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for her.

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I knew his work and admired it.

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I thought he was a very extraordinary person.

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He was very intelligent.

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He was also very attractive.

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She said it didn't take very long before they were lovers.

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Her father, having heard about this relationship,

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and obviously incandescent at the turn of events,

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decided to try and get Max arrested for the content of the show.

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So he called someone at the Metropolitan Police and said that he

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thought they needed to investigate this man, Max Ernst,

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because his images were pornographic.

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Max, at that time, was married, and this did not help things.

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But Max's friends, I think,

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rather liked Leonora,

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and were kind of encouraging and supporting of her.

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And among those friends, of course, were my parents,

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Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, who took to her right from the start.

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Fortunately, Max's friend Roland Penrose got to hear of this threat

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and warned Max to go to Cornwall, where Roland's brother had a house.

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Max and Leonora came down,

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and there was also Man Ray and Ady Fidelin

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and Eileen Agar and Joseph Bard, and Henry Moore showed up.

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And it was just this amazing,

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wonderful 'Surrealism in Cornwall' moment.

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They basically laid low for three or four weeks,

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until the danger had passed.

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Max went to Paris,

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and Leonora went to find her parents, to tell them that she had

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made a decision on her future.

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I suppose it was the culmination of everything he'd had to put up with

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from Leonora. Of all her rebellion over so many years,

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and now she was coming to say that she was going off to live in Paris

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with a married man, a penniless artist.

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He was absolutely furious.

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And he said to her, "Never obscure the threshold of my house again!"

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And that's the last she saw him.

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I just left.

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I just left!

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Paris was very exciting at that time.

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I was in love.

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I was with someone who was also an extremely interesting person.

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I was working and seeing new places.

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I knew it was better than being in a convent.

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Paris must have been a wonderful moment for Leonora,

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like emerging into the sunlight of really what the rest of her life

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would be about.

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It was a very, very, very exciting moment in Paris,

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because the Surrealist movement was at its height.

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When I was with the Surrealists, I didn't have to fit in to anything.

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Well, Surrealism was much more than just an art movement.

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It was a way of life.

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They were trying to live in that world of imagination that Leonora

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was living in since she was a little child.

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So I think she fit in perfectly.

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This was a group of radicals.

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They were against every single institution.

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Society, the government, the Church.

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They wanted to break with every rule.

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It was anti-bourgeois.

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It was anti the very thing that Leonora had just herself

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escaped from.

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So she couldn't have been in a more marvellous and exciting setting than

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she found herself there in Paris.

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Leonora was a now 20-year-old woman,

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and because she was the lover of Max Ernst,

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she was kind of parachuted into the very centre of that circle.

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I saw a lot of the Surrealists, including Breton.

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He had a way of talking... SHE SPEAKS FRENCH

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He seemed pompous, but he wasn't really pompous.

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I'd take the mickey out of him now and again.

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I liked Picasso.

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I also admired him.

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I didn't go overboard, but I thought that he was very talented.

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People like Picasso lived down the road,

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and she said that finally she'd discovered...

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..kin people, kin minds,

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people who thought the way she did.

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I think being around Max showed Leonora, in a way,

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what was possible,

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but of course, being a woman, she had a lot to push against.

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Because, although the Surrealists were these fantastic avant-garde,

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modern, freethinking people,

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they still had a long way to go before they reconstructed their

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ideas about women.

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And for many of them, women were sort of like muses,

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beautiful creatures that were there to give inspiration,

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sex and a jolly time.

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They didn't take them seriously as artists.

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Well, the concept of female

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in the group was the "femme-enfant",

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which is cute, but derogatory.

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And women were not really considered to be contributors

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in terms of art.

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But my mother ignored all that and scoffed, scoffed at it.

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It was very clear that she did not share those beliefs,

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and she was very much a feminist.

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Very much.

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She refused to be a muse.

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She refused to fit into their idea of what she was.

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And of course, she had plenty of experience of refusing to fit in,

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it's what she'd done all her life.

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She wasn't going to fit into the Surrealists' idea of how she should

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behave any more than she had ever fitted into anything else.

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She always had to remind people that she was an artist,

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and that she was a woman, and she had her own ideas about her art,

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and she was not a muse

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for either Max Ernst or for Breton or anybody else.

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Leonora and Max were stayed in Paris for a few months over, I think,

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the winter of 1937-8.

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They then went to live in the south of France,

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in a town called Saint-Martin-d'Ardeche.

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Well, Max, you see, it was almost like a learning process,

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because he knew all sorts of things I'd never heard of,

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so it was a revelation, no?

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And it was a love affair, also.

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I felt that we would be all right if it went on forever.

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She was extremely happy.

0:28:280:28:31

This is, in her own words, her happiest time in her life.

0:28:310:28:35

She told me this,

0:28:380:28:40

and that Max had been the greatest

0:28:400:28:44

love in her life,

0:28:440:28:46

at the exclusion of anybody else.

0:28:460:28:49

They'd had this idyllic year or so in the south of France,

0:28:570:29:01

and then the War crashed into their world and changed everything.

0:29:010:29:04

All of a sudden, the French start rounding up people

0:29:320:29:37

of German extraction, and putting them in prison.

0:29:370:29:40

Max was put by the French in a concentration camp.

0:29:420:29:45

I eventually...

0:29:460:29:48

I eventually went mad.

0:29:480:29:50

My mother was destroyed by this.

0:29:520:29:55

It was too much for her.

0:29:550:29:57

She had a breakdown, and at that precise moment she was visited by a

0:29:570:30:01

friend from England who was obviously very worried by her state,

0:30:010:30:07

and persuaded her to leave Saint-Martin with her in her car,

0:30:070:30:11

and to go with her to Spain.

0:30:110:30:12

She found her in a terrible state.

0:30:150:30:18

She hadn't eaten in days,

0:30:180:30:20

and she was eating roots or something like that from the garden,

0:30:200:30:24

and in a very bad emotional state.

0:30:240:30:28

They put her in a car and took her away.

0:30:280:30:31

"No, no, no! I have to wait for Max!"

0:30:320:30:35

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry but the Germans are coming."

0:30:350:30:38

And they were, like, 13 miles away, or something like that,

0:30:380:30:41

and they just got in the car and left.

0:30:410:30:43

She was completely destroyed.

0:30:510:30:54

So, I think it was my grandfather that decided that it would be best

0:30:540:31:00

to put her in a mental institution.

0:31:000:31:02

Best for whom, I don't know, but that...

0:31:050:31:08

that was a "family decision".

0:31:080:31:11

The solution that was found was that she should be taken to a sanatorium

0:31:140:31:18

for people who had mental illness, in the north of Spain.

0:31:180:31:22

She was tricked into going there, basically.

0:31:230:31:25

She was told that she was going for a day out to the seaside.

0:31:250:31:29

The doctor went with her, she was drugged on the way there,

0:31:290:31:31

and she woke up in this place that she, all her life,

0:31:310:31:34

called "the asylum".

0:31:340:31:36

That was the beginning of the darkest chapter, really,

0:31:380:31:41

in her life.

0:31:410:31:42

"My first awakening to consciousness was painful.

0:31:520:31:55

"I thought myself the victim of an automobile accident.

0:31:560:31:59

"The place was suggestive of a hospital,

0:32:030:32:06

"and I was being watched by a repulsive-looking nurse

0:32:060:32:09

"who looked like an enormous bottle of Lysol.

0:32:090:32:11

"I was in pain, and I realised that my hands and feet

0:32:120:32:15

"were bound by leather straps.

0:32:150:32:17

"I learned later that I had entered the place, fighting like a tigress."

0:32:190:32:23

It was the treatment she received there that was so terrible.

0:32:250:32:29

She was treated by being given a drug called Cardiosol,

0:32:290:32:33

which induced an epileptic fit.

0:32:330:32:35

"I don't know how long I remained bound and naked.

0:32:410:32:44

"Several days and nights lying in my own excrement, urine and sweat,

0:32:440:32:49

"tortured by mosquitoes whose stings made my body hideous.

0:32:490:32:52

"A new era began with the most terrible, blackest day of my life.

0:32:540:32:58

"How can I write this when I'm afraid to think about it?

0:32:590:33:02

"I'm in terrible anguish,

0:33:020:33:04

"yet I cannot continue living alone with such a memory.

0:33:040:33:07

"I know that once I've written it down, I shall be delivered.

0:33:080:33:11

"But shall I be able to express with mere words the horror of that day?

0:33:110:33:15

"A stranger entered my room.

0:33:210:33:23

"He carried in his hand a physician's bag of black leather.

0:33:230:33:26

"Each of them got hold of a portion of my body,

0:33:290:33:32

"and I saw the centre of all their eyes were fixed upon me in a ghastly

0:33:320:33:35

"stare. Don Luis's eyes were tearing my brain apart,

0:33:350:33:40

"and I was sinking down into a well, very far.

0:33:400:33:42

"The bottom of that well was the stopping of my mind for all eternity

0:33:440:33:47

"in the essence of utter anguish.

0:33:470:33:49

"With a convulsion of my vital centre,

0:33:510:33:54

"I came up to the surface so quickly, I had vertigo.

0:33:540:33:57

"When I came to, I was lying naked on the floor.

0:33:580:34:00

"I went back to my bed and tasted despair."

0:34:020:34:04

I think that experience sealed her.

0:34:260:34:29

Sealed her life, the rest of her life, no?

0:34:300:34:34

And the fact that it was in some way an order of her father, no?

0:34:340:34:40

So, you see there, families worked in a very peculiar way, there, and

0:34:400:34:48

I don't think Leonora ever really forgave that.

0:34:480:34:53

I came out...different.

0:35:020:35:05

Much more frightened.

0:35:050:35:07

What it mainly did for me, in a conscious way,

0:35:130:35:16

was to have suddenly become aware that I was both mortal

0:35:160:35:20

and touchable, and I could be destroyed.

0:35:200:35:24

I didn't think so before.

0:35:260:35:28

She was still only in her early 20s.

0:35:360:35:38

She was really completely alone.

0:35:400:35:42

I was frightened, so frightened all the time.

0:35:440:35:47

My family wanted me to go back to England,

0:35:500:35:54

so it was, you know...

0:35:540:35:56

I didn't want to go back then.

0:35:570:36:00

Leonora ended up meeting Renato Leduc.

0:36:060:36:10

Renato must have been a terribly nice man who undoubtedly took a

0:36:120:36:16

great deal of interest in trying to save Leonora,

0:36:160:36:20

because he realised that she was a very special person.

0:36:200:36:23

He married her, to get her a Mexican passport,

0:36:250:36:30

just simply to save her life.

0:36:300:36:31

He actually got me out of Europe, Renato.

0:36:340:36:37

I met him in Madrid.

0:36:390:36:41

He worked in the Mexican Embassy,

0:36:410:36:44

and the whole Mexican Embassy left to come back to Mexico.

0:36:440:36:48

She decided to go to Mexico, and she didn't know a word of Spanish.

0:36:510:36:56

She had no idea how she would live,

0:36:560:37:00

and she went on this great adventure of going to a country she had

0:37:000:37:04

never...she didn't even imagine what it could be like.

0:37:040:37:07

Once you cross the border and you arrive in Mexico,

0:37:180:37:23

you will feel that you are coming to a place that's haunted.

0:37:230:37:26

Spirits, the presence of spirits.

0:37:270:37:29

Whatever spirits are.

0:37:300:37:32

It was like going to the other end of the earth.

0:37:340:37:36

It is very extraordinary, and very...very exotic.

0:37:380:37:43

Sometimes I found it marvellous, sometimes I found it horrifying.

0:37:440:37:49

There's a lot of similarities between the ancient Mexican

0:37:510:37:55

civilisations and the Celtic cultures.

0:37:550:37:59

There's this concept of Surrealism we have, of imagination, freedom,

0:38:050:38:10

magic as a way of life,

0:38:100:38:13

and I think that resonated with her own culture.

0:38:130:38:15

Mexico became a refuge.

0:38:300:38:33

She found it painful

0:38:340:38:38

to leave Europe, and she was always

0:38:380:38:40

nostalgic about Europe.

0:38:400:38:43

But then she made a life in Mexico.

0:38:430:38:47

But Leonora didn't know anybody, clearly, in Mexico City,

0:38:560:38:59

and suddenly found herself all alone there.

0:38:590:39:02

Renato seems like he was probably quite a man's man,

0:39:020:39:05

liked going out to bars, the cantinas,

0:39:050:39:07

and understandably, she wasn't very happy.

0:39:070:39:10

PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

0:39:100:39:12

Renato was a nice man, but he had an attitude

0:39:140:39:20

which was that it didn't matter if I was alone, you know,

0:39:200:39:25

most days of the week, without speaking Spanish...

0:39:250:39:28

..and not knowing anybody.

0:39:300:39:31

I think it was more than just a marriage of convenience,

0:39:340:39:37

but it didn't have the deep roots that a relationship needs, to go

0:39:370:39:41

through many, many years.

0:39:410:39:43

I asked Renato,

0:39:450:39:47

"Why did you separate such an extraordinary woman?" and he said,

0:39:470:39:51

"Because she would talk to the dog more than she did to me."

0:39:510:39:54

Leonora settled into Mexico,

0:39:570:40:01

into a Mexico where a great number of intellectuals

0:40:010:40:04

were coming to Mexico at the time,

0:40:040:40:08

of all nationalities and all races,

0:40:080:40:11

and Leonora undoubtedly found a very interesting life

0:40:110:40:15

in which to live.

0:40:150:40:17

Now, did that make her happy?

0:40:180:40:21

God only knows.

0:40:210:40:23

She made new friends there, and they were, crucially,

0:40:240:40:28

other people like her, who had fled from wartime Europe and who had no

0:40:280:40:32

family, and most of those people,

0:40:320:40:35

who became her closest friends in Mexico City,

0:40:350:40:38

would never see their families again, any of them.

0:40:380:40:41

At one of the parties, she met my father...

0:40:450:40:48

and the way she describes it, she says,

0:40:500:40:53

"I decided this man would be a good father for my children."

0:40:530:40:58

That's how she described him.

0:40:580:41:00

Nothing more, just that.

0:41:020:41:04

Chiki was a Hungarian photographer

0:41:060:41:10

who had fled Hungary and made

0:41:100:41:14

his way to Paris on foot after

0:41:140:41:17

witnessing from the window of his apartment,

0:41:170:41:20

with his mother, a parade of Nazis going by, saying...

0:41:200:41:23

you know, flourishing knives and saying they were after Jewish blood.

0:41:230:41:27

Leonora and Chiki were both people who'd ended up in Mexico from

0:41:330:41:37

war-torn Europe. They were both people who'd left their families

0:41:370:41:40

behind. Chiki's family were mostly dead.

0:41:400:41:43

They were at an exciting moment, in a way, in their lives,

0:41:440:41:47

because they were there in this new country and they were young people,

0:41:470:41:52

and Chiki, unlike Leonora's previous lovers, was a younger man.

0:41:520:41:57

I think she liked Chiki, no? At the beginning.

0:41:590:42:02

He was good-looking, and Chiki was always a very,

0:42:020:42:06

very good man, but he was very shy.

0:42:060:42:09

And so they got together and married after a little while,

0:42:120:42:17

and then my brother appeared, and I appeared.

0:42:170:42:21

I believe motherhood was the most amazing experience she ever had.

0:42:270:42:32

She told me once that having children was, for her, so important,

0:42:320:42:37

because it's the only unconditional love you can have in your life.

0:42:370:42:42

She said, "They are the only ones that will never leave you."

0:42:420:42:45

When she was pregnant, she was scared,

0:42:500:42:53

but she was painting like crazy.

0:42:530:42:55

This creative instinct came to her at the same time of being able to

0:43:040:43:08

create life.

0:43:080:43:09

And I think that gave her a very powerful sense.

0:43:210:43:26

I think her best work did come at the time when she was painting with

0:43:260:43:29

the brush in one hand and the baby in the other.

0:43:290:43:31

She probably adored her kids.

0:43:550:43:57

In fact, I would say, she did love her kids,

0:43:590:44:02

but in Leonora's own way.

0:44:020:44:04

Certainly not in the traditional way that a normal mother would have

0:44:050:44:09

loved her kids.

0:44:090:44:11

I think she was terrified that, if

0:44:120:44:15

she loved them the way her parents

0:44:150:44:17

loved her, they would be as unhappy

0:44:170:44:19

as she had become with her parents.

0:44:190:44:22

AMBIENT MUSIC PLAYS

0:44:240:44:27

She realised, when she had Gaby and Pablo,

0:44:460:44:49

how important this new family was

0:44:490:44:52

going to be to her, because she was

0:44:520:44:54

somebody who'd left her family behind.

0:44:540:44:57

She realised that she was going to have a second chance at family,

0:44:570:45:00

and she was determined that that second chance was going to go a lot

0:45:000:45:03

better than the first chance had gone.

0:45:030:45:05

I don't think she could have loved two children more than my brother

0:45:120:45:16

and myself.

0:45:160:45:18

I don't think that would have been possible.

0:45:180:45:20

And my father was the same, in a different way.

0:45:220:45:25

He was a little more realistic in

0:45:260:45:30

terms of getting us to get through

0:45:300:45:33

school without flunking and things.

0:45:330:45:36

He instilled a little discipline into this marvellous world

0:45:360:45:41

that we were enjoying.

0:45:410:45:43

The boys were very near her.

0:45:470:45:50

The boys were always walking, one on this side, one on this other side,

0:45:500:45:54

and always with her.

0:45:540:45:56

She shut herself in her studio,

0:45:580:46:00

but we used to open the door and come in.

0:46:000:46:02

She would say, "I need to work, so be very quiet.

0:46:060:46:10

"Here's a piece of paper. Draw."

0:46:100:46:12

And that's how I started drawing.

0:46:120:46:14

Sometimes it was dreadfully difficult.

0:46:190:46:23

She was paralysed and desperate,

0:46:230:46:27

that no images came,

0:46:270:46:30

and it was barren,

0:46:300:46:32

and she was extremely depressed sometimes.

0:46:320:46:35

But sometimes it just flowed, like that,

0:46:350:46:38

and she was very excited, and she wouldn't leave the studio, because

0:46:380:46:43

there were so many things coming.

0:46:430:46:45

Leonora was always very reluctant to

0:46:570:47:01

talk about her work, about her art.

0:47:010:47:04

She would never explain what anything meant.

0:47:040:47:07

She just said, "It just came that way."

0:47:070:47:09

She didn't do anything to promote her career.

0:47:140:47:17

She was totally foreign to anything

0:47:170:47:20

resembling public relations.

0:47:200:47:23

She did the work and put it out, you know, in public, and that was it.

0:47:230:47:28

It's difficult for me to put, verbally.

0:47:310:47:34

I leave that to all the people who do the writing.

0:47:340:47:37

It comes with a feeling more than an image.

0:47:400:47:43

It's not that you actually see it.

0:47:430:47:47

There's a kind of sense that it's quite right.

0:47:470:47:51

Let's say, that green was quite right.

0:47:530:47:55

Or that green was, oh, no, no, not quite right.

0:47:550:47:59

Then you don't stop to wonder where that's coming from.

0:47:590:48:01

To be an artist, it was so natural in her, no?

0:48:110:48:14

And to be famous, she didn't like at all.

0:48:140:48:16

She didn't like journalism, she didn't like...

0:48:160:48:20

She hated interviews. She didn't like questions,

0:48:200:48:22

she never even answered them.

0:48:220:48:25

I don't think she was really that much interested in the art market.

0:48:250:48:30

Of course, she wanted to sell the paintings, because she needed money

0:48:300:48:34

to eat and to raise the kids and to feed them,

0:48:340:48:37

but I don't think she was that interested in the public recognition

0:48:370:48:42

of her work. That was part of her life.

0:48:420:48:46

I don't think she could have survived without painting.

0:48:460:48:49

She would use any kind of little room for her painting.

0:49:090:49:13

It was not important to have a studio, like many of the other

0:49:130:49:18

quote-unquote "great artists" had.

0:49:180:49:21

She had a little studio upstairs,

0:49:250:49:28

a very poor little studio with electricity and things that were all

0:49:280:49:33

like this, you know? Cords all the...

0:49:330:49:36

Very... Things... You said, "My goodness!"

0:49:360:49:38

And the rain, it got in.

0:49:380:49:41

And she had a very uncomfortable chair.

0:49:410:49:44

Everything was, sort of, very difficult and uncomfortable,

0:49:440:49:48

and that's where she painted.

0:49:480:49:50

But it was very funny,

0:49:520:49:54

because you saw all these Mexican painters, that weren't 10% as good

0:49:540:49:58

as she could be, that had all these enormous studios,

0:49:580:50:02

horrible white studios full of horrible paintings,

0:50:020:50:05

and she had this, and she was doing all this marvellous painting, no?

0:50:050:50:10

In this little room.

0:50:100:50:12

I think it's in Mexico that she found her real way, artistically

0:50:140:50:19

speaking, because that's where she had, I think,

0:50:190:50:22

enough time to dedicate herself fully to what she was.

0:50:220:50:28

An artist.

0:50:280:50:29

She'd kind of run and run and run and run and run,

0:50:310:50:33

and she got to the end of the line, really.

0:50:330:50:35

There was nowhere else to run to.

0:50:350:50:36

She could have gone back, but she was never going to do that.

0:50:400:50:43

And there was nowhere else to go.

0:50:430:50:45

Did she want to go back to England?

0:50:590:51:02

Well, she was terribly homesick and nostalgic,

0:51:020:51:08

so her relationship to England was always sort of a

0:51:080:51:12

lost home.

0:51:120:51:14

Well, a home is a kind of illusion a lot of us have.

0:51:330:51:36

Being settled doesn't exist, really.

0:51:410:51:44

I need change.

0:51:470:51:48

Because I get sort of suffocated by my own atmosphere...

0:51:510:51:56

or things that become too familiar.

0:51:570:51:59

She never quite

0:52:040:52:07

fitted anywhere.

0:52:070:52:10

Not England, not Mexico.

0:52:100:52:13

I don't think she was comfortable anywhere, that's the truth,

0:52:130:52:18

and if there was one country where my mother was very comfortable,

0:52:180:52:22

was art. Hmm?

0:52:220:52:25

That was her country.

0:52:250:52:27

Even though she may have never accepted this, I told her myself -

0:52:560:53:02

"Mexico has received you with open arms,

0:53:020:53:08

which would never have happened in Europe.

0:53:080:53:11

Never.

0:53:110:53:13

Well, Leonora is considered one of the greatest Mexican painters.

0:53:150:53:20

She's always been considered a Mexican artist.

0:53:200:53:23

Even though she was born in England, for us, she is our artist.

0:53:260:53:31

She belongs to Mexico, and she has always been recognised here.

0:53:310:53:36

She's always had a very good name.

0:53:360:53:38

Leonora's work is so unique, and I think that's a legacy that,

0:53:420:53:47

even though she was surrounded by all these big shots of Surrealism,

0:53:470:53:51

she was able to look inside of her and create something that was really

0:53:510:53:57

unique and visionary.

0:53:570:53:59

Being tucked away in Mexico City certainly did not help her achieve

0:54:040:54:09

recognition in the way that she could have done, should have done,

0:54:090:54:13

but Leonora certainly did not achieve the recognition in this

0:54:130:54:16

country that she so richly deserved.

0:54:160:54:19

Leonora, as an artist, may still be in her infancy in terms of how

0:54:210:54:25

well-known she will one day be,

0:54:250:54:28

and I do think that Leonora's moment is still ahead,

0:54:280:54:31

in terms of her being really well-known and acknowledged as an

0:54:310:54:34

artist, because so many of her themes were ahead of their time,

0:54:340:54:37

and are probably still ahead.

0:54:370:54:39

I think she was ahead of all of us.

0:54:390:54:42

She was so extraordinary, so...

0:54:420:54:46

so, anyone who's ahead of you, you always...

0:54:460:54:49

they are always there.

0:54:490:54:52

The idea of saying that, as you can't explain or you can't

0:54:520:54:55

understand, you say things that are

0:54:550:54:58

under...under the personality of that person, no?

0:54:580:55:03

And Leonora was like that.

0:55:030:55:05

She walked in another world, she lived in another world, no?

0:55:050:55:09

She was a little bit like...

0:55:100:55:12

..like a genius, but also like a monk of the Middle Ages,

0:55:140:55:19

or like someone that doesn't exist any more.

0:55:190:55:23

Lots of things died when she died.

0:55:240:55:27

A lot of my journeys were running away.

0:55:410:55:44

But in old age, I feel that I'm beginning a journey in a way.

0:55:450:55:50

Death is of course inevitable.

0:55:520:55:54

Somehow I have to go with it a bit,

0:55:550:55:58

as a way of discovering or uncovering,

0:55:580:56:02

because, really, we know nothing about death.

0:56:020:56:05

Nothing.

0:56:060:56:08

Yes, well, her son Gaby has said

0:56:100:56:13

that almost her final words before she died was, she looked at the

0:56:130:56:18

wall, and he said, "What are you looking at?"

0:56:180:56:21

And she said, "At the blackbirds.

0:56:210:56:23

"The wall is filled with wonderful blackbirds."

0:56:230:56:27

You know, which seemed...

0:56:280:56:30

a marvellous thing to see at the very end for her.

0:56:300:56:34

Yes, we were impressed, because it's

0:56:340:56:36

like the blackbirds coming for her.

0:56:360:56:39

To take her to the fantastic world she was living in already.

0:56:410:56:45

BIRDSONG

0:56:460:56:49

GENTLE MUSIC PLAYS

0:56:520:56:55

PIANO PLAYS GENTLY

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