拍品專文
The Hour ofthe Angelus is one of the works that emerged from Leonora Carrington's childhood in convent schools. It is a religious scene that interprets a day in the education of St.Mary, the Virgin, as told by Jacobus da Voragine in his book The Golden Legend.
The Angelus is a daily prayer in the Roman Catholic religion, traditionally said at six a.m., noon and six p.m. in honor of the Virgin Mary (during the prayer, the Latin versionof which begins Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae, the angelic salutation is repeated in the background as a bell is rung three times and then nine).
In The Hour of the Angelus, Carrington brings together several attributes of the Virgin. The scene takes place at dusk. Yellow sunlight, the color of the Virgin, bathes all the activity. Yellow is Her color because its warmth and expansiveness cannot be stifled by darkness.
In the painting seven pubescent girls dressed in loose,unadorned garments, for modesty's sake, play protected within an enclosed garden. The enclosed garden or hortus conclusus, addressed her virginity. The seven figures combine the numbers three and four, which stand for heaven and earth. Walls protect this world from being penetrated by subversive forces, represented by the three trees of anthropomorphic shape. Within each tree there appears to be a male spirit hovering over the wall, observing the girls who are innocently at play. Though enclosed and restricted their world remains open to celestial influence.
Of the seven girls, six play unaware of the lurking danger. Four of them play carelessly with eggs, oblivious to their fragility; three are tossing one into the air and one carries an egg on a spoon. The egg symbolizes the future, and its harm means irreparable damage. In the foreground a homely, withdrawn girl is playing rope with her shadow, unaware that encountering one's other self signals tragedy, even deathe. The girl on the lower left is facing her truth as she stares defiantly into a mirror. The seventh firld stands serenely and sentiently apart from the others, in the upper left cordern of the garden. The tree that looms over her head holds no apparent negative force within. On her forehead is the all-seeing eye: she kjnows what is in store for her and she is prepared for it. Standing still she is blalncing on ther finger a bird, the mediator between heaven and earth. She is different from the other girls. She represents the young Virgin, the model for all good maidens to follow.
Salomon Grimberg
Dallas, Texas
3/7/91
The Angelus is a daily prayer in the Roman Catholic religion, traditionally said at six a.m., noon and six p.m. in honor of the Virgin Mary (during the prayer, the Latin versionof which begins Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae, the angelic salutation is repeated in the background as a bell is rung three times and then nine).
In The Hour of the Angelus, Carrington brings together several attributes of the Virgin. The scene takes place at dusk. Yellow sunlight, the color of the Virgin, bathes all the activity. Yellow is Her color because its warmth and expansiveness cannot be stifled by darkness.
In the painting seven pubescent girls dressed in loose,unadorned garments, for modesty's sake, play protected within an enclosed garden. The enclosed garden or hortus conclusus, addressed her virginity. The seven figures combine the numbers three and four, which stand for heaven and earth. Walls protect this world from being penetrated by subversive forces, represented by the three trees of anthropomorphic shape. Within each tree there appears to be a male spirit hovering over the wall, observing the girls who are innocently at play. Though enclosed and restricted their world remains open to celestial influence.
Of the seven girls, six play unaware of the lurking danger. Four of them play carelessly with eggs, oblivious to their fragility; three are tossing one into the air and one carries an egg on a spoon. The egg symbolizes the future, and its harm means irreparable damage. In the foreground a homely, withdrawn girl is playing rope with her shadow, unaware that encountering one's other self signals tragedy, even deathe. The girl on the lower left is facing her truth as she stares defiantly into a mirror. The seventh firld stands serenely and sentiently apart from the others, in the upper left cordern of the garden. The tree that looms over her head holds no apparent negative force within. On her forehead is the all-seeing eye: she kjnows what is in store for her and she is prepared for it. Standing still she is blalncing on ther finger a bird, the mediator between heaven and earth. She is different from the other girls. She represents the young Virgin, the model for all good maidens to follow.
Salomon Grimberg
Dallas, Texas
3/7/91