Mystic, Not Muse: the Subversive Surrealism of Leonora Carrington

Surrealism and Carrington’s reclamation of the female subject

For centuries, women have been most visible in art not as creators and intellectuals, but as muses. The surrealist movement—despite all its talk of liberation and revolution—was no different, rife with reductive, objectifying depictions of figures like the seductress and the femme-enfant. Take, for example, Hans Bellmer’s photography series ‘The Doll’: often violently disfigured and always grossly fetishized, the young, feminine body of a doll is repeatedly contorted into grotesque arrangements that serve as objects for the exercise of male sexual fantasy. 

And while many of us might first experience surrealism through the lens of male artists like Bellmer, Dali, Ernst, or Margritte, we can’t forget that the women of the surrealist movement were much more than just subjects for male artists to pore over. The work of artists like Leonora Carrington—who famously declared, ‘I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse’—reminds us of the true value of surrealism, and of art more broadly: it frees us from the gazes that seek to dissect and define us. 

Women feature in many of Carrington’s works not as bodies stripped of integrity and identity, but as complex, mystical entities with spiritual power and creative agency. In ‘The Giantess’, for example, a serene female figure towers over an expanse of land, sea, and sky, gazing knowingly out across the humans, animals, and monsters that roam below. The golden wheat in her hair and the speckled egg in her hands evoke a connection to the creative forces of the earth. Although the giantess is ultimately still the painting’s subject, Carrington uses this position to free her from the structures that might otherwise limit her: the sheer size of her body means it literally rises above any attempt to pin it down. 

  This reclamation of the female subject and the female body is echoed in other works that reframe traditionally gendered roles and spaces. Take the vibrant household scene depicted in ‘The House Opposite’: three women stir a glowing cauldron in the corner, several rush towards a table with mysterious ingredients in hand, others tend to animals or disappear into the spectral, forested chamber in the background. The kitchen, and the household more broadly—often experienced as spaces of oppression through patriarchally enforced domestic labour—are transformed into havens of community, creativity, and wisdom. While the painting depicts an interior, there is no sense of restriction or entrapment: figures glide freely through walls and even floors, and the doorway to the next room is always open. 

Works like ‘The Giantess’ and ‘The House Opposite’ demonstrate the link between feminism and mysticism that Carrington clearly understood and appreciated. The mystic and the occult—often centring around female spiritual power—offer ways to redefine gender and the roles associated with it, with femininity taking on a more complex and multiplicitous status. Magic lets us see the world anew, and Carrington augments her paintings with spiritual symbols and narratives to offer visions that do not depend on the typical hierarchies and rigid social structures that govern so much of our lives. 

This ability to envision alternate realities is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the dizzyingly expansive ‘Les Distractions de Dagobert’. Pits of fire and inhospitable caverns sprawl between bright clothing and warm, inviting scenes that look lifted from the pages of a childhood fairytale. Figures straddle or leap between borders, and bodies melt into other bodies or into the world around them, evading categorization. Barely noticeable amidst all the splendour, just off from the painting’s center, sits a tiny open doorway at the end of a long hall. Looking through it, one cannot help but feel they are seeing a cross-section of the world—a glimpse of the movement and mystery always taking place behind the scenes of our day-to-day lives.  

Paintings like ‘Les Distractions de Dagobert’ show Carrington’s understanding of the interconnectedness of all struggles under oppressive social structures. If women are to be understood as more than just muses, then all bodies must be allowed to surpass the reductive definitions that have crippled them. It is only once we move beyond the questions that seek to designate a body’s limits—male or female, subject or creator, human or monster—that all bodies can be recognized as the agents of storytelling and transformation that they are. 

Roaming through the wonderful bizarrity of Carrington’s paintings, one does not feel the chaos or confusion of a world in disarray, but rather the harmony and possibility of a world reimagined. During times wracked with violence, uncertainty, and apathy, it’s easy to feel that humanity can’t possibly move forward. But art like Carrington’s reminds us that more forgiving worlds have always existed—all we have to do is make room for them.

Image Credit: Leonora Carrington, Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945)