LONDON – A new exhibition at London’s LAMB Gallery explores the psychological and symbolic power of the witch through the work of 11 women Surrealists. The show, “Surrealism and Witchcraft,” features works from canonical Surrealist artists like Leonora Carrington alongside paintings from contemporary artists like Georg Wilson and Nooka Shepherd.
LAMB’s introduction to the exhibition situates “Surrealism and Witchcraft” against the standard understandings of the Surrealist movement. Surrealism, it notes, was grounded in new understandings of dreams and psychology that came out of the turmoil of the first half of the 20th century, based on work by André Breton and Sigmund Freud that would transform dreams and reality “into a kind of new absolute truth.” The popular understanding of Surrealism has tended to focus on these male theorists and on male artists like Salvador Dáli and René Magritte, but there have always been female artists in the movement as well.
“Although the movement has since been largely male-dominated, women have long employed its practices to liberate the creative potential of their subconscious minds,” says LAMB’s introduction. “Often drawing on the figure of the witch, the magical entity gradually became a vehicle for women artists to release the depth of their dreams and explore ideas of gender and sexuality.”
“Now that discussions around feminism, gender, and power dynamics are increasingly vital, it’s the perfect moment to celebrate female artists who draw inspiration from surrealism,” said Lucinda Bellm, LAMB’s founder and director, to The Guardian. “The witch offers a means to delve into complex themes of dreams, gender and sexuality.”
The focal point of the exhibition is a collection of paintings by Leonora Carrington that depict witches’ hats in surprising ways. Painted in 1955, these five gouache paintings were created for a planned collaboration with Leonor Fini that never came to be; they were found in Fini’s portfolio after her death.
Leonara Carrington, “Chapeau mystère,” gouache on paper, c. 1955 [LAMB Gallery]
One of the Carrington paintings, “Chapeau mystère,” depicts a relatively traditional witches’ hat, a tall black conical hat on a black background. But even here, where her work hews close to a child’s imaginary witch costume, there are disquieting, dream-like elements: patterns of stars that could be flowers and flowers that could be stars, crimson fox-like animals with an inconsistent number of legs, and a haunting pair of eyes peeking out from under the brim, faint enough to catch the viewer by surprise.
The other Carrington paintings go further afield: “Chapeau casque antique” depicts a hat in creamy white with two peaks like horns or crescent moons and a set of blue figures around the base that resemble petroglyphs, while “Chapeau á la feuille at rose” presents a blue hat whose form seems to resemble more of a corset or blouse, decorated with budding pink flowers and a leaf with three staring uncanny eyes.
The work of contemporary artists is just as provocative. Sophie van Hellerman’s “Kali” depicts the goddess as the curve of blue darkness against a riotous pastel background, her hair coiled as if made of gorgon snakes. At the same time, Ariane Hughes conjures imagery monstrous, bawdy, and erotic in her portrait of a webbed foot with clawed toes, “Foot phobic (but suck my toes tho).”
The painting that strikes me the most, however, is Nooka Shepherd’s “Wyrd Night,” an interpretation of the Norns that brims with dreamlike details. The three fateweaver figures stare into a pool, perhaps the Well of Wyrd, and observe a figure emerging from the water; in the background, a mysterious tableau of volcanoes, rabbits, and doorways to nowhere carries on regardless of destiny.
Nooka Shepherd, “Wyrd Night,” oil on panel, 2023 [LAMB Gallery]
Shepherd’s artist statement situates her art in terms familiar to many Pagans. “Weaving humanity, so long divorced from the eco-system of which we are a part, back into the great web of life that makes this planet,” she writes, “I draw on symbols and imagery from the folklore of these islands to create my own images and objects that become votive, animistic items, encouraging connection to and conversation with place and its more-than-human inhabitants.” I am looking forward to where her work takes her going forward.
One of the joys of Surrealism is the unexpected places its symbols can lead us; so too does this exhibition lead to unexpected connections between artists of past and present, between the folkloric witch and the animistic spirit of contemporary Paganism. For art-loving Witches, it seems irresistible.
“Surrealism and Witchcraft” is on display at LAMB Gallery until December 20.
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