Student Essay for CWR 209 / ART 223 / COM 240 / GSS 277 Along the\nEdge: Leonora Carrington
\n\nThe ritual has begun. Two robbed figures flank a vulnerable bird. Frozen\nyet fleeting, her fear breaks through the window of her eye and searches for\nrescue. Hope is futile in this acid world; rescue will not come. A plain of\ngrass presents nowhere to run and a house stripped to its skeleton provides\nnowhere to hide. A collection of apertures, including a bird shape mirroring\nthe one in the bath, the home’s functional purpose seems to have faded, placing\nit in the realm of the ornamental. No longer able to sustain life, the house\nnow stands flatly for the destruction of it. A ruin or prop of this ancient\npractice. Carrington herself was twice a trapped bird. First in the English\nestate, Crookhey Hall, where she was raised and second, in Santander, the\nSpanish mental asylum where she was tortured. Her writings of these experiences\nare visceral, this painting vivid. A short story as much as a visual work, The Bird Bath evokes the plain eerie\nquality of Carrington’s writing.
\n\n Sparse and intentional, more plot comes to light in the fine\ndetails of the work. We can only see one executioner’s face. An elderly woman\nspraying a mist the same color as her hair onto the bird. Her stale face\nappears stale, as if she has stripped many vibrant birds of their vitality and\nsanitized them white. Her features are just as delicate as the mist and the\nsheet. But her hunched back and her spindly fingers are not frail. She is still\npotent. If forgotten, she reminds with mist. Her partner needs a mask, she does\nnot.
The other executioner lends only their eye to the viewer.\nExhausted grey wrinkles replace the alarming red veins the bird’s. He pinches a\nsheet as if to hang it on a clothing line. Banal it all is to them, the\nmisting. Their next patient or victim–there are always two sides to a story–is\nalready waiting in the queue. Lurking near the horizon, another captive bird\nawaits its destiny of the bath. Three birds, and three figures in black\npopulate this desolate world. The opposing trinities echo Carrington’s favorite\nduel of all- that between man and animal. Those with wings are trapped- in the\nconfines of sterile metal, rotten wood, or shadowed hands.
Will they escape? Will they revolt? We are given only a snapshot-\nthe moment before mist stains the bird’s face again. The suspended specks of\nwhite give the characters a life during the misting, and the possibility of a\nlife after. A stunning visual narrative, The Bird Bath leaves me wanting to flip to the next page.
Rachel Kennedy, Princeton Class of\n2021
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