Success and increasing stamina–week seven was a bit like a scoot-slide down the stairs on my stomach–a bit choppy and great fun, and only a tiny bit of rug burn (of fear and insecurity about being a researcher and the research process).
Reading away about Lenora Carrington, Remidos Varo and Meret Oppenheim… I am still struggling to piece together this sliver of history. Between partners, lovers, muses and masters its a general mess–individual experiences are so shaped by multiple factors (kinship, economy, politics…) that I am not able to say much about the trends of thought amongst the women of surrealism… maybe I’m too hesitant and delicate with my sweeping statements, but I’m ok with that for now.
That basically doesn’t matter anyhow, I’m still mulling on a primary question–Still next week, I’d like to know more about the works and to read them with the context of their time in mind, and then try to compare them to how I really do see them in today’s context. How do I interpret “The Hearing Trumpet”? What can I say about my initial reading? Specially to Carrington, does her writing clarify her painting or illuminate new elements of the work? How? How not? How does Carrington’s work fit in with surrealist theory? How is her work separated from it?
Week seven was complete with some serendipitous events, increased productivity in my free time, and a good art fair–I am inclined to be out and about with painters, to see what they are doing and how they do it–how they talk about what it is and how they respond to me… I have, unofficially, returned to the field–which seems an important part of this expedition.
