Catriona McAra – författare

In A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning’s Chasm, Catriona McAra offers the first critical study of the literary work of the celebrated American painter and sculptor Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012). McAra fills a major gap in the scholarship, repositioning Tanning’s writing at the centre of her entire creative oeuvre and focusing on a little-known short story "Abyss," a gothic-flavoured, desert adventure which Tanning worked on intermittently throughout her creative life, finally publishing it in 2004 as Chasm: A Weekend.McAra performs a major reassessment of the visual and literary principles upon which the surrealist movement was initially founded. Combining a groundbreaking methodological approach with reference to cultural theory and feminist aesthetics as well as Tanning’s unpublished journals and notes, McAra reveals Tanning as a key player in contemporary art practice as well as in the historical surrealist milieu.

In A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning’s Chasm, Catriona McAra offers the first critical study of the literary work of the celebrated American painter and sculptor Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012). McAra fills a major gap in the scholarship, repositioning Tanning’s writing at the centre of her entire creative oeuvre and focusing on a little-known short story "Abyss," a gothic-flavoured, desert adventure which Tanning worked on intermittently throughout her creative life, finally publishing it in 2004 as Chasm: A Weekend.McAra performs a major reassessment of the visual and literary principles upon which the surrealist movement was initially founded. Combining a groundbreaking methodological approach with reference to cultural theory and feminist aesthetics as well as Tanning’s unpublished journals and notes, McAra reveals Tanning as a key player in contemporary art practice as well as in the historical surrealist milieu.

Before her death, the artist and writer Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) had already garnered a cult following, with numerous creative people making the pilgrimage to meet her at her home in Mexico City. Since then, her fame has only increased.Thinking across contemporary art media, this book demonstrates how Carrington has posthumously become a medium in her own right, critically haunting the creative intellectuals who met or knew her. It explores the work of a remarkable variety of individuals and organisations, including the artists Lucy Skaer, Samantha Sweeting and Lynn Lu, the actress Tilda Swinton, the novelists Chloe Aridjis and Heidi Sopinka and the ensemble Double Edge Theatre.This long-awaited study provides essential reading for both new and established members of the burgeoning Carrington fan club.

Before her death, the artist and writer Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) had already garnered a cult following, with numerous creative people making the pilgrimage to meet her at her home in Mexico City. Since then, her fame has only increased.Thinking across contemporary art media, this book demonstrates how Carrington has posthumously become a medium in her own right, critically haunting the creative intellectuals who met or knew her. It explores the work of a remarkable variety of individuals and organisations, including the artists Lucy Skaer, Samantha Sweeting and Lynn Lu, the actress Tilda Swinton, the novelists Chloe Aridjis and Heidi Sopinka and the ensemble Double Edge Theatre.This long-awaited study provides essential reading for both new and established members of the burgeoning Carrington fan club.

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was an English surrealist artist and writer who emigrated to Mexico after the Second World War. As the first comprehensive examination of Carrington's writing and art, this volume approaches her as a major international figure in modern and contemporary art, literature and thought. It offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the intellectual, literary and artistic currents that animate her contribution to experimental art movements throughout the Western Hemisphere, including surrealism and magical realism. In addition to a substantive editorial introduction, the book contains nine chapters from scholars of modern literature and art, each focusing on a major feature in Carrington's career. It also features a visual essay drawn from the 2015 Tate Liverpool exhibition Leonora Carrington: Transgressing Discipline, and two experimental essays by the novelist Chloe Aridjis and the scholar Gabriel Weisz, Carrington's son. This collection offers a resource for students, researchers and readers interested in Carrington's works, and contributes to her continued rise in global recognition.

The anti-(fairy) tale has long existed in the shadow of the traditional fairy tale as its flipside or evil twin. According to André Jolles in Einfache Formen (1930), such Antimärchen are contemporaneous with some of the earliest known oral variants of familiar tales. While fairy tales are generally characterised by a "spirit of optimism" (Tolkien) the anti-tale offers us no such assurances; for every "happily ever after," there is a dissenting "they all died horribly." The anti-tale is, however, rarely an outright opposition to the traditional form itself. Inasmuch as the anti-hero is not a villain, but may possess attributes of the hero, the anti-tale appropriates aspects of the fairy tale form, (and its equivalent genres) and re-imagines, subverts, inverts, deconstructs or satirises elements of these to present an alternate narrative interpretation, outcome or morality. In this collection, Little Red Riding Hood retaliates against the wolf, Cinderella's stepmother provides her own account of events, and "Snow White" evolves into a postmodern vampire tale. The familiar becomes unfamiliar, revealing the underlying structures, dynamics, fractures and contradictions within the borrowed tales.Over the last half century, this dissident tradition has become increasingly popular, inspiring numerous writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers. Although anti-tales abound in contemporary art and popular culture, the term has been used sporadically in scholarship without being developed or defined. While it is clear that the aesthetics of postmodernism have provided fertile creative grounds for this tradition, the anti-tale is not just a postmodern phenomenon; rather, the "postmodern fairy tale" is only part of the picture. Broadly interdisciplinary in scope, this collection of twenty-two essays and artwork explores various manifestations of the anti-tale, from the ancient to the modern including romanticism, realism and surrealism along the way.

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was an English surrealist artist and writer who emigrated to Mexico after the Second World War. This volume approaches Carrington as a major international figure in modern and contemporary art, literature and thought. It offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the intellectual, literary and artistic currents that animate her contribution to experimental art movements throughout the Western Hemisphere, including surrealism and magical realism.The book contains nine chapters from scholars of modern literature and art, each focusing on a major feature in Carrington's career. It also features a visual essay drawn from the 2015 Tate Liverpool exhibition Leonora Carrington: Transgressing Discipline, and two experimental essays by the novelist Chloe Aridjis and the scholar Gabriel Weisz, Carrington's son. This collection offers a resource for students, researchers and readers interested in Carrington's works.