Bird Bath,

1978

In the foreground of a cloudy and undefined landscape, two figures solemnly dressed in black engage in a baptism-like ritual with a bird in a basin of water. The elderly woman at right (possibly a self-portrait) sprays the shocked-looking bird with white paint, while the figure at left holds up a white cloth. A theatrical facade in the background echoes Carrington’s childhood home, Crookhey Hall, and its ornamental bird motifs. The surreal ritual is reminiscent of some of the artist’s descriptions of her experiences in a Spanish mental asylum in 1940.

<p><em>Student Essay for CWR 209 / ART 223 / COM 240 / GSS 277 Along the Edge: Leonora Carrington</em></p><p> The ritual has begun. Two robbed figures flank a vulnerable bird. Frozen yet fleeting, her fear breaks through the window of her eye and searches for rescue. Hope is futile in this acid world; rescue will not come. A plain of grass presents nowhere to run and a house stripped to its skeleton provides nowhere to hide. A collection of apertures, including a bird shape mirroring the one in the bath, the home’s functional purpose seems to have faded, placing it in the realm of the ornamental. No longer able to sustain life, the house now stands flatly for the destruction of it. A ruin or prop of this ancient practice. Carrington herself was twice a trapped bird. First in the English estate, Crookhey Hall, where she was raised and second, in Santander, the Spanish mental asylum where she was tortured. Her writings of these experiences are visceral, this painting vivid. A short story as much as a visual work, <em>The Bird Bath </em>evokes the plain eerie quality of Carrington’s writing. </p><p> <p>Sparse and intentional, more plot comes to light in the fine details of the work. We can only see one executioner’s face. An elderly woman spraying a mist the same color as her hair onto the bird. Her stale face appears stale, as if she has stripped many vibrant birds of their vitality and sanitized them white. Her features are just as delicate as the mist and the sheet. But her hunched back and her spindly fingers are not frail. She is still potent. If forgotten, she reminds with mist. Her partner needs a mask, she does not. </p></p><p><p>The other executioner lends only their eye to the viewer. Exhausted grey wrinkles replace the alarming red veins the bird’s. He pinches a sheet as if to hang it on a clothing line. Banal it all is to them, the misting. Their next patient or victim–there are always two sides to a story–is already waiting in the queue. Lurking near the horizon, another captive bird awaits its destiny of the bath. Three birds, and three figures in black populate this desolate world. The opposing trinities echo Carrington’s favorite duel of all- that between man and animal. Those with wings are trapped- in the confines of sterile metal, rotten wood, or shadowed hands.</p></p><p><p>Will they escape? Will they revolt? We are given only a snapshot- the moment before mist stains the bird’s face again. The suspended specks of white give the characters a life during the misting, and the possibility of a life after. A stunning visual narrative, <em>The Bird Bath</em> leaves me wanting to flip to the next page. </p></p><p><em>Rachel Kennedy, Princeton Class of 2021</em></p>