{"product_id":"james-birch-gilbert-george-and-the-communists-copy","title":"Leonora Carrington: Down Below","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNYRB, 2017, softcover, 96 pages, 12.7 x 0.9 x 20.2 cm\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003eA stunning work of memoir and a\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003en unforgettable depiction of the brilliance and madness by\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eone of Surrealism''s most compelling figures\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1937 Leonora Carrington—later to become one of the twentieth century’s great painters of the weird, the alarming, and the wild—was a nineteen-year-old art student in London, beautiful and unapologetically rebellious. At a dinner party, she met the artist Max Ernst. The two fell in love and soon departed to live and paint together in a farmhouse in Provence. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1940, the invading German army arrested Ernst and sent him to a concentration camp. Carrington suffered a psychotic break. She wept for hours. Her stomach became “the \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003emirror\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e of the earth”—of all worlds in a hostile universe—and she tried to purify the evil by compulsively vomiting. As the Germans neared the south of France, a friend persuaded Carrington to flee to Spain. Facing the approach “of robots, of thoughtless, fleshless beings,” she packed a suitcase that bore on a brass plate the word \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eRevelation\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis was only the beginning of a journey into madness that was to end with Carrington confined in a mental institution, overwhelmed not only by her own terrible imaginings but by her doctor’s sadistic course of treatment. In \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eDown Below\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e she describes her ordeal—in which the agonizing and the marvelous were equally combined—with a startling, almost impersonal precision and without a trace of self-pity. Like Daniel Paul Schreber’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eMemoirs of My Nervous Illness\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eDown Below\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e brings the hallucinatory logic of madness home.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ICA Bookstore","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58039212573056,"sku":null,"price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0012\/4390\/6109\/files\/71rtEvqPYcL._SY522.jpg?v=1778060447","url":"https:\/\/shop.ica.art\/products\/james-birch-gilbert-george-and-the-communists-copy","provider":"ICA Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}