00:01:08.920I'm sending you my trembliness as we get started here.0.98
00:01:13.660I'm excited about every interview we get to do.
00:01:16.200every person that I've gotten to meet through this podcast has like exploded my brain and that's why
00:01:22.480we started doing it was to research these people whose ideas we were missing and longing for
00:01:27.360it's a feminist history of ideas project and that's always been the passion and driving force
00:01:33.760but to get to come close to people that feel like our icons and ancestors and hear stories of what
00:01:44.120real life was like for people whose work really moved you is particularly trembly let's say so
00:01:51.280that's where I'm at today as we welcome these members of the Leonora Carrington Foundation
00:01:56.500and family welcome would you take a moment to introduce yourselves and introduce yourselves
00:02:03.320in that let's say the most widest of definitions who are you today and how are you and what brings
00:02:11.080you to this moment with us. Do you want to start, Daniel, since you and I were the ones that first
00:02:15.860found each other? Sure. So my name's Dan or Daniel or Danny. I helped found and also helped run the
00:02:28.160foundation for Leonora Carrington, who is my grandmother and was a surrealist artist, writer,
00:02:36.280and intellectual in many mediums and in many different ways.
00:02:41.700I've been very fortunate to be able to share her story
00:02:45.020and try to continue her legacy, which is very important to us.
00:02:49.800And of course, my father's here with us,
00:02:53.000who's part of the foundation and also represents the estate.
00:02:57.760So a lot of the projects that have been coming out
00:03:01.080and a lot of the resurgence has a little bit to do with,
00:03:05.000unfortunately our marketing skills but obviously mostly I'd like to thank all of Leonora's amazing
00:03:11.680incredible work well you know I was always very upset with books that were written about Leonora
00:03:22.000so when I had a conversation with Dan and and my wife I finally decided that I was going to write
00:03:31.220a book, a memoir, you know, of Leonora. And it was published in England, which was a pleasant
00:03:42.260surprise because bit by bit they're recognizing that she exists at all. It's called The Invisible
00:03:50.120painting, no? So that would be one of the things that we have been organizing either personally
00:04:00.960or collectively. Now there's an exhibition in different places in Europe, no? There's going
00:04:10.300to be one in Denmark, there's going to be one in Spain. Do you know Guardaro? It's a Bienal,
00:04:17.020for example, in Italy, and they took the name of the Milk of Dreams, which was a title that I gave
00:04:26.620to a notebook that was given to me about stories, you know, that Leonora used to
00:04:33.580read to us during our infancy, you know, and they were written by her and they were illustrated by
00:04:42.360So it's also another one of the projects. And then there was another one called the Dark Book. And the Dark Book is full of Leonora's illustrations and my texts.
00:04:56.600But Danny, for example, collaborated with a very important exhibition in Mexico, in Mexico City, in what they call the National Library, La Bibliotheca Nacional.
00:05:12.780And there we did something that I thought was quite interesting because we mixed all sorts of things, you know, like sculptures and, well, posters that had to do with Leonora's work, paintings and so on.
00:05:31.820No, we didn't take the paintings there because it was a bit risky, but that's how we more or less organized things.
00:05:39.760I wondered, you know, I read recently that she really believed in, and you can tell me if this is true, because I know there's a lot of stuff that gets written that's not, but that she really believed in living a surrealist life, not in performing it to try to be popular, but that it was part of life.
00:05:59.160And I wonder if that was true and what that was like to live as part of your family.
00:06:03.700Well, you live as best you can, first of all. But then I don't think that Leonora went for a surrealist life or not. No. You have to understand that her creation had to do, first of all, with a very personal, I don't know, approach to surrealism.
00:06:25.700It was not at all what Breton wanted as a kind of indicator or as a thing to follow. She was not a follower. She was a doer. So she did things. But then her life, for me, her life was as a mother and as a friend.
00:06:47.680And I don't know if she was surrealist in those ways.
00:06:58.620Like Gertrude Stein would say, a rose is a rose is a rose.
00:07:03.760Yeah, I wondered when I read that, because it seemed like I was sort of framing her as somebody who was always painting mustard on her feet her whole life or something.
00:09:23.720And the same thing happened to me. This would happen to him with Leo, and then it would happen to me with him. And the answer would say, well, what did you do to the animal? And that respect and love for nature and every single living staying around us, including plants, that sort of understanding of equality, taking off that sort of ego of humankind and thinking that they're so great, you know, and truly being able to value and understand these things.
00:09:53.720different beings is probably one of the greatest things that i got from her you know that yeah
00:10:02.120yeah i i have an anecdote that we were living in cuernavaca which is a small little town about an
00:10:12.360hour or so from mexico city and we we had a guest there and the guest was horrified because
00:10:23.720they suddenly discover that there's a scorpion running on the floor, no?
00:10:29.500And the guy got up, and he was on the point of trying to kill the scorpion.
00:10:38.360And we both held the guy, and we said,
00:10:42.140in this house, you don't kill scorpions.
00:10:46.420We always put them in the garden where they can do their business.
00:10:55.420oh man I love her so much I love the story so much she reminds me so much of my own grandmother
00:11:08.100I mean you mentioned before we started recording I said you know I swear sometimes and you said0.99
00:11:13.480listen as long as you're not shitty about I'm paraphrasing about women Jews black people like0.95
00:11:20.380as long as you're not being racist or misogynist you're not going to offend me or sexist or sexist0.96
00:11:25.720yeah i mean it that that gives me so much joy to hear and i also wonder what it's like to be
00:11:31.680guardians of a feminist icon's legacy that seems like a role you both take seriously how do you
00:11:38.800how do you think about that and how do you think about trying to do that well well for me it meant1.00
00:11:44.360a re-education okay so the moment my mother was very sort of adamant about feminism
00:11:54.080I wanted to know why no so she told me well look read this book and that book and so on no
00:12:04.560So I did read them. And anyway, in the house, there was no women to serve men. Everybody just, you know, either wash their plates or whatever. And we didn't expect anybody, you know, to be in the role of the mother or in the role of the father.1.00
00:12:31.520everybody was collaborating in the house no cleaning the house and so on and and of course
00:12:39.460respecting women no and in a country where it where women are not respected usually
00:12:47.900they're even murdered so yes we do have to have a stance there and a very precise
00:12:55.860you know, attitude towards those horrible things that are happening in Mexico.0.80
00:13:04.560Yeah, and I mean, it seemed like she came from an experience in Europe and a life that was
00:13:14.340pretty misogynist and sexist as well. I mean, it's not unique to Mexico, of course.
00:13:19.340Yes, but, you know, the Surrealists were very peculiar about that, because Breton had an idea that, you know, women were la femme enfant, for example.0.91
00:13:37.280So this woman child is something that I have been attacking as much as I can, because I think it's the wrong way.0.91
00:13:49.340of symbolizing women. I think it's a very dangerous way of symbolizing women, because1.00
00:13:55.840they've been treated always as underdogs, no? Yeah, or product in a way. Or just objects,0.96
00:14:07.340you know? And this is something that always irritated Leonora very much, no? And of course,
00:14:15.040Danny and I have been always protecting, you know, as much as we can, women, students, and so on and so forth.
00:14:25.840I mean, throughout our lives, you know.
00:14:28.980And I think that part of how you get to respect Leonora as well as any other sort of figure that you admire, right,
00:14:40.380is trying not to appropriate them or their voice and that's something that's very difficult
00:14:47.900so you have to try and let them speak for themselves she my grandmother wrote about
00:14:55.280her own life about her own experiences she wrote about her own ideas about certain things in terms0.94
00:15:02.220of politics or the environment feminism and it's important to sort of always be able to trace back
00:15:09.240to that material for me that's the biggest thing is trying to trying to make sure that her voice0.99
00:15:16.260is her voice right and and that happens everywhere with any sort of public figure I've found and
00:15:22.400you know obviously as as the family member you you want to be incredibly protective of that voice
00:15:28.800because it was such a unique and incredible voice it was a funny voice it was the same voice that
00:15:34.960would whisper horrible little nothings into your ear while you were in this sort of like very
00:15:39.940proper dinner with all these business men and and politicians and things like that she0.69
00:15:47.000she just had such an incredible way about her you know her humor her just way of being is something0.85
00:15:55.320that I just want to make sure it doesn't get lost you know I don't I don't want her to become a
00:16:01.780superhero I want her to retain that incredible voice that made her her that made us laugh that
00:16:09.580made us think that made us cry you know that's who I want to to keep alive so you know hopefully
00:16:18.140you know as we continue with her legacy we are able to keep that alive and that isn't sort of
00:16:26.160lost a lot of people that want to make her something that you know she may or may have not
00:16:32.560been she was exploring i don't know an internal female figure that she had to rediscover remember
00:16:42.140that she came from a very conventional background it was a victorian background with my grandfather
00:16:51.520behaving like the like the the alpha male of the household no and so on so forth so but she had
00:17:03.260she had to rediscover this woman that had been silenced not very successfully I must add no
00:17:13.100Fortunately for her, and she was always looking for what is this woman like, no?
00:17:25.120And she would search this woman through her painting, through her novels, through her interest in witches, through her interest in mythology, in Jung, in Carl Jung's ideas on the archetypes and so on.
00:17:50.220So she was open to a lot of things, no?
00:18:39.880What was that sort of creative vein like for her?
00:18:42.240Well, first of all, she was not a witch. Now, this is something that a lot of people want to create. And it was part of what Tanya was saying, a kind of glorifying an image.
00:18:56.760she was interested in witchcraft she was interested in witches but because of this
00:19:05.400interest something opens in one of course now this opening is very mysterious it it has to do
00:19:18.040with understanding the kind of dark side of the psyche, if you want,
00:19:24.540but only as Cixous would have spoken about it.
00:23:30.120After all, they changed the way art was conceived, no?
00:23:35.060but no this was not at all what leonora would do in in mexico no she it was that it was it was
00:23:44.120more playful than serious conceptual you know meditations on this subject or that one
00:23:53.760right which is such a more generative place to be in and so much less self-important i think
00:24:01.300like so much less grandiose did you did you meet katie horna and remedios faro were they
00:24:06.440were they around in your childhood okay yeah well but uh katie i would visit very often and remedios
00:24:14.920as well because they were very near they were living near the house so but also alice raon
00:24:21.660and also i don't know a lot of people leonorfini when we were in france no and a lot of other
00:24:30.320people. But I mean, the thing is that since Remedios was living nearby, and since Cathy
00:24:37.520was living nearby, yes, I had a closer contact with them. No. And especially with Remedios cats,
00:24:46.880they were extremely intelligent and, and very thoughtful. And they had very interesting ideas.
00:24:54.480You talk about cats the way that she does the hearing trumpet.
00:25:00.320Well, cats are always been very important, both for Dani and for me, no?
00:25:05.700I would love to know more about what it's like managing the material.
00:25:11.820You've shared so many images, and I find you such a wonderful job of giving so much context to how much art she created.
00:25:21.960you've really cast a light on how much creative work there was which is so exciting it really
00:25:30.620takes it out of these five paintings that you see in so many like blog posts or whatever but you see
00:25:36.860this huge huge visionary landscape of her work practically what's that like for you are you
00:25:44.680digging through boxes of art or I mean where how how has that work of the foundation happen
00:25:51.200basically we wanted to archive a lot of things so we started with a lot of the sort of books
00:26:01.400and things that weren't as sort of flashy maybe but out of that we started to realize okay we
00:26:07.080actually need a proper digital archive and very slowly with the collaboration of several of the
00:26:13.240institutions that we were working with for exhibitions as well as books and other things
00:26:19.140We were able to sort of slowly start to collect a digital archive that had a high enough resolution where people could actually appreciate the little details of her artwork.
00:26:30.380And once I was able to start collecting that with the arduous help of not just me, but also my father and my mother, it's been a very key sort of small team that keeps working very hard to continue this project and building it and building it.
00:26:47.600Being able to just share it and it sort of evolved from just sharing an image to then
00:26:52.460being like, well, am I really giving it enough credit?
00:26:55.600Like the might be a weird thing to do when I see one of Leo's paintings when I'm back
00:26:59.980home is to just get lost in the details.
00:27:02.500It's such a genius, those little details.
00:27:05.640There's so many Easter eggs thrown inside of a painting.
00:27:09.260There's, you know, even humor inside of many of them.
00:27:12.600and being able to find those little details and rediscover them i think has been incredible for
00:27:18.500me because it really makes me feel like she's still alive you know and that is one of the most
00:27:24.260beautiful things i can get and i feel like my father went through the same thing when and that
00:27:29.680was why i was egging came on to write that memoir it wasn't so much because we were thinking about
00:27:34.520selling it i was like you do that for you that has to be a personal project and i think that so many
00:27:41.720incredible memories and things came out of that experience for him as well as me reading it that
00:27:50.100you know I was it's a valuable thing that I think everybody should do you know if you have somebody
00:27:55.780in your life that really impacted you like that and they passed away or they're still here it
00:28:02.860doesn't matter I think it's important to do that kind of a project because then they will be here
00:28:08.160forever you will have them there for generations and you will continue to remember new things and
00:28:15.980that's a beautiful thing were there things you learned about her or that like struck you in a
00:28:24.240new way from the process of writing that memoir oh incidentally it's this one was the invisible
00:28:33.000painting it's a beautiful cover thank you again please I got sort of sidetracked that's all right
00:28:40.140I was thinking like were there things that you learned about her or that made you think about
00:28:46.660her in a new way in the process of writing that memoir yes well you see the thing is that that
00:28:53.000mostly people would speak about anecdotes no and how funny she was or how strange he was
00:29:02.580or how surrealist she was and so on and so forth and they didn't speak about her art right I was
00:29:10.740so puzzled about I said well how can you write about an artist without mentioning her art
00:29:20.860how did she do things how did she make sculptures how did she paint how did she etc
00:29:29.740no she she she was a medieval woman in that sense no that she would touch upon so many things no
00:29:41.240she would go into writing she'd go into painting she'd go into puppet making she would do so she
00:29:53.020would experiment with so many materials no yeah and that's what is so interesting about her that
00:30:04.340she had this capacity of imagining with her fingers or imagining with the paintbrush
00:30:13.740or imagining in the knitting because she always she liked sewing things no
00:30:22.820and that's how she made her her puppets no and her dolls
00:30:29.060oh yeah so this is something that I wonder about how does a person
00:30:34.220give themselves the confidence and permission to create in that way like where do you think
00:30:42.460that came from from her to just continuously play and make art and like you say think through her
00:30:49.360fingers well breaking rules I think rules are there to be disobeyed no and if you obey rules
00:31:00.920then you become sort of maimed, no?0.96
00:33:45.000cats come when they want not when you call them and and you say well come here no it's not not a
00:33:53.100dog at all no and art is not like a dog that you call it but then it comes no no you know
00:34:02.740did she work differently when she was painting than if she was making dolls or sculpting
00:34:10.660or was the house different was she affected by that practice differently
00:34:15.340well yes for example if she was going to you know make a sculpture if she was going to create
00:34:27.440a sculpture they had to be in a place where where she was able to do that no for example0.98
00:34:34.480where she could play with plasticine and create that object in plasticine.
00:34:42.480Then it went through the whole process now of, you know, the pouring of the iron and so on into a special kind of mould and so on and so forth.
00:35:00.160No, but that that was not what that there she did not participate in that.
00:35:05.680She would only participate in the model in the plasticine model, for example.
00:35:11.520No, now she was making a dollar with something else.
00:35:14.760That was far more a kind of knitting process, if you see my part.
00:35:20.160And it was far more intimate as painting was also intimate.
00:35:25.160But that she had a little studio for that.
00:41:05.840The thing is this, that there are no symbols unless you want to find symbols in the painting.
00:41:16.040The painting is already telling you something, but you won't find those symbols outside.
00:41:23.780You won't, ah, she was influenced by the Celts, or she was influenced by pre-Hispanic imagery,
00:41:33.000and so on and so forth. So that's false. I mean, the thing is, naturally, all these things come
00:41:39.860together in the person, no? But the painting itself is creating its own symbolic self,
00:41:49.520if you get my point, no? So that's why it's so difficult to interpret Leonora, no? Because
00:42:01.140Because the idea behind the painting is that it can speak to you, as Dani was saying. It will tell you something if you're open to hear it. It will make you feel something if you're open to feeling.
00:42:22.440huh but if you have a preconceived idea on what leonora was no then it's impossible to to you
00:42:34.740know to go through the threshold okay impossible to go through that kind of threshold unless
00:42:43.160you're willing to risk something and risking is coming in naked okay and being able to be affected
00:42:55.140by what you see and what you hear and what you smell as well as the kind of animal you're going
00:43:04.600to find. If you're not in contact with your own inner animal, Leonora's animals have no meaning.
00:43:15.820And in terms of how she was afraid of death, yes, I think that that's something that will
00:43:24.440essentially, you know, as you get closer to that age, it becomes something that's more present.
00:43:31.720it's not something that stopped her from living in any way or manner but it was something she was
00:43:39.240honest about and I think that a lot of the time not all of the a lot of the time all of the time
00:43:46.780death in our lives is not unless it's immediately present it's something we're ignoring so being
00:43:54.420honest about that fear I think is incredibly powerful not only throughout her I mean and
00:44:00.900you can see it through that writing but then when when it did when it was her time I mean
00:44:06.140you know unfortunately we all get the same things right we all start hallucinating we
00:44:12.200there's this process that we go through when one's dying and I think that did she prepare herself
00:44:20.360like through her life to get to that stage and be able to
00:44:24.640to appreciate it and and not fear it yes i think that she was even at that stage where your body
00:44:34.640is doing the things that it's going to do when it's giving up i i could still see an inner peace
00:44:40.800and even you know you when you're not afraid of those hallucinations and you can even like
00:44:47.680enjoy them i mean that in and of itself tells you so much about the knowledge of the person and
00:44:53.360And it made me admire her even more, seeing how she handled her own death.
00:45:01.500I hope I get to not only live my death as well as her, but also my old age, because that was something that was very important to her.
00:45:10.680Being able to also live in your own skin and live all these different moments of life.
00:45:17.440And I hope that I also get to be as gracious of a whole person as she was.
00:45:24.780You know, there's a lot of lessons spread around, for one.
00:45:30.260And then there's another thing that what was extremely interesting about this idea about death and so on is that she explored death in her novels.
00:45:47.440mainly not not in her paintings curiously enough it was her novels and then it was in the hearing
00:45:55.920trump and then it was it if she wanted to explore something in her deep self then she would go into
00:46:06.520writing and it was writing the media that would take her through that i don't know then
00:46:14.620and that probably goes back to being able to deal with all the trauma that she experienced
00:46:23.680through writing down below you know i think yes yeah yeah i mean what an an early super brave
00:46:31.300act to like to to tell it all to live it all again in the telling of it and to sort of
00:46:38.820i don't know if she had faith that that would lead her through but it seemed like she knew
00:46:43.860that that would be therapeutic seems like a kind of a lame word for it but
00:46:51.700that she knew that it would help her transmute it or something well it was a kind of exorcism
00:47:00.140in a way because those are devils no those states of mind are devils and they have to be exercised
00:47:10.580That part of the, you know, of the dark, dangerous side of oneself can be exercised through paintings, through writings, through all sorts of other, you know, ways of dealing with this.
00:47:31.140And she dealt with all this very traumatic past by doing things to herself and her art, no?
00:47:49.020How do you think she thought about madness?
00:47:52.080Well, she was not as enthusiastic as Breton was, because she had to endure, you know, other people calling her mad. And she had to suffer, you know, from, she had, she was inflicted upon.
00:48:12.160They gave her a drug called Cardiasol that was extremely dangerous and electroshocks and so on and so forth.
00:48:55.680Because, yes, of course, art was much more than, quote unquote, a creative activity.
00:49:04.180no it was a restorative activity and a renewal so she she also felt that when she was painting
00:49:17.120no when there's also a historical component behind this word madness right and even how it sort of
00:49:26.140was used to criminalize those that lived differently than us those that had different
00:49:34.180sexual orientations I mean this was weaponized and to a certain degree still is unfortunately
00:49:40.920in many places right so I think one also needs to understand the structures of power behind these
00:49:47.240categorizations. Yeah, and there's always the kind of idea that, that artists have to be mad,
00:49:58.180you know, in order to be creative, or in order to be creative, you have to have something wrong0.95
00:50:05.920in you no and there's an anomaly in one and and this is bullshit0.95
00:50:14.880this is real bullshit why because it's something that that happened to her as far as the war0.98
00:50:23.800you know the war has an impact oh yes great discovery you know it might even0.99
00:50:33.080you know i don't know create a mental imbalance god how intelligent that is right of course
00:50:42.720of course of course she suffered the war she suffered the war internally as well as externally
00:50:50.420that's what wars are like no yeah it's interesting to see people reclaiming the word
00:50:58.940madness now. I do think like in the same way that we've interviewed a lot of people about
00:51:04.160neurodivergence or neurodiversity, like who gets categorized as divergent, who gets categorized
00:51:10.340as anomalous. And you also remind me of Sula, that novel by Toni Morrison. There's a piece at
00:51:18.260the end where she talks about how Sula was like an artist who didn't get to make art. And so
00:51:23.980she kind of didn't get to be a complete person because she never got to have an art practice.
00:51:28.280I'm glad that Leonora got to my guard and is such a light for all of us in holding on to our creativity, especially in these times.
00:51:37.580What do you think she thought happened after we die?
00:51:41.400Well, you know, what's interesting about your question is that when Leonora was dying, I was reading to her the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
00:51:50.860remember how she would go on and on about string theory and I mean it's it was so interesting
00:51:56.300because somebody that you know it technically didn't pass middle school yet could manage and
00:52:05.460handle the most complicated scientific thoughts you know or ideas we had at the time and she
00:52:14.580could explain it perfectly to you she was just so curious and that I but I think that that never
00:52:20.660hopefully we you know one has that forever right that curiosity to keep searching and learning and
00:52:27.320discovering that's part of the play right yeah and she was interested for example the in the
00:52:34.280gurdjieff yeah and she was interested in buddhism and she was interested in in the bible as well
00:52:45.300There were many, many, many things, and the white goddess and many other entities that would somehow open doors.
00:52:56.960So if they opened a door for her, she would go through it.0.72
00:53:03.540She would try and see what was behind it, no?
00:53:06.320Even one of our novels, which is called The Stone Door, is in many ways that, the way that she entered different dimensions that I hope that we're going to be able to publish it soon,
00:53:26.360so that people can see what she did with this kind of inner world
00:53:31.420or how she crossed this very daunting territories of mind.
00:53:40.000What do you think we should carry from Leonora today, 2022?
00:54:15.300I think that's a very useful thing to do
00:54:18.100I think for me it's always been two things
00:54:23.400The respect for nature, so from every plant, insect, and animal that you cross, making sure that you treat them as equals, and the importance of creativity for resistance.
00:54:40.020And nowadays, I think that in a world that seems to try to spiral back into fascism and militarism, I think it's very important to fight back with creativity.
00:54:49.720for the sake of every plant and animal and insect as an equal i agree with you wholeheartedly
00:54:59.940so do i thank you so much is there anything else you wanted to make sure that we heard
00:55:07.940or that we shared read her books go and watch her paintings and you can also follow us on
00:55:14.840Instagram so you don't have to break into people's private collections because some of those are
00:55:19.920unfortunately not in public viewing but we're trying to make sure that her art is still viewable
00:55:25.480for free so you can follow us at Leonora Carrington Esty and I would also highly recommend
00:55:31.800My Father's Memoir it's a very beautifully written book very personal a ton of incredible
00:55:38.060memoirs as well as things that have never been seen or published so it's it's it's a work of
00:55:45.260love and that is a beautiful thing to be able to share thank you then thank you for bringing it
00:55:52.780into the world i think there are women you know so many women alive today who can feel so empowered