A central role of a nurturing mother, be she Goddess or mortal, is the provision of food. In Colquhoun’s late constructions the emphasis on food is striking. The association lies not only in the subject matter, it is built into the very fabric of the works. Many of the constructions are made from food-related packaging. At a mundane level an artist will find and use objects from her local environment. It may be, therefore, that in later life Colquhoun was not an enthusiastic cook and preferred convenience food. At a deeper level, according to Breton, the discovery of a found object fulfils a previously unarticulated personal desire or obscure need so that the object is, in some strange way, linked to the finder’s destiny.
Cardboard packaging, plastic cups, disposable wooden forks (Angel with a Gold Collar, 1980) and plastic trays for microwaved meals (Byzantine Cross, 1964) were conjured into fresh identities. She saw that a tray for containing fruit at the grocery, could become the multiple breasts of Diana of Ephesus, goddess of fecundity; containers of a different nourishment (Ephesian Diana, 1967). She saw, too, that a collection of egg-boxes could become a robotic fetish figure (Embryo Fetish, 1965). One focus of the Freudian notion of the Uncanny is confusion between the animate and the inanimate. Embryo Fetish is a good example of this and offers, in fact, a tripartite correspondence: the animate, the inanimate and the robotic.
There are similarities in the imagery found in these objects and in the imagery of other female surrealist artists. In La Gouvernaute (1936) for example, Meret Oppenheim dealt with food, containers and sexuality, whilst in La Couple (1957) she made the association between containers and sexuality. The writings of Leonora Carrington, too, contain frequent references to food and eating. Carrington’s women ‘officiate at the chopping board and mixing bowl like priests’ (1). This is not necessarily a harmonious domestic activity, however. Carrington associates food with oral aggression – what Carroll (2) referred to as ‘The Avenging Appetite’. Linked with savagery and barely controlled sexual desire, food, for Carrington, represents a struggle for survival and dominance in a competitive untamed word, far removed from the nurturing qualities it represents for Colquhoun.
Notes
1 Warner, M. Leonora Carrington’s Spirit Bestiary: or the Art of Playing Make Believe. In Schlieker A. (ed.) Leonora Carrington Paintings, Drawings and Sculptures 1940-1990. London, Serpentine Gallery, 1991, pp10-23.
2. Carroll, R. ‘Something to see’: Spectacle and savagery in Leonora Carrington’s fiction. Critique 1998. 39, 154-66
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