Armed With Madness

Another book I’ve had sitting on the shelves for quite a while which just seemed to be the right thing to read.

I got this last year at about the time I also bought The Tarot of Leonora Carrington as there was a huge upsurge in her visibility, especially in the Guardian.

This takes you through her earlier years in quite a vivid and striking visual format, but due to the visual nature is quite a condensed representation of those times and feels slightly rushed.

The representation of Leonora’s mindset and mental health is really well done, weaving in symbology and incidents from her earlier life into her current thoughts and behaviours and also showing how this informed her art practice.

The importance and centrality of her relationship with Max Ernst in her early years to both her personal development and mental health is strongly represented, love and dependence warring with her nature of independence and not wanting to be anyones muse is also clear.

The time Leonora spent in care for mental health issues highlights the adult male dominance that she always warred against and mixes this with fear of the war and losing her

The end did feel a bit abrupt and rushed and just lost it a bit, which was a shame as it had done a great job of narration until then. Overall though a wonderful graphic memoir of a brilliant artist.