Operation Wednesday 1969

Curator: Leonora Carrington created this striking gouache painting, titled "Operation Wednesday" in 1969. What's your first reaction to it? Editor: Eerily captivating. There's a pallid dreaminess to the colors, almost like a faded photograph, yet the scene itself is so precisely rendered. I am curious about those white figures in the scene. Are they medical staff, perhaps? Curator: They could be. Carrington fled Europe during the Second World War and witnessed institutional violence firsthand. Her time spent in asylums during the period profoundly influenced her work. Note how these spectral figures, with their vaguely medical garb, seem to both attend to and possibly threaten the veiled figure at the center. Editor: The act of veiling feels key here. The use of black in stark contrast to the clinical white creates this sense of both concealing and exposing, which could extend to notions of patient confidentiality but could just as well allude to some more complex interplay of dominance in gender. Then there is that singular eye. Curator: Absolutely, and this work could easily be viewed in light of its political and social contexts: anxieties of the time and also Leonora Carrington's background. "Operation Wednesday," might refer ironically to routines enacted upon marginalized individuals within these total institutions and other sites of social control, reflecting an era ripe with protests and resistance. Editor: Thinking about this picture's making process, using gouache in this way really highlights the luminosity while retaining a certain opaqueness. The method aligns beautifully with the painting's dreamlike and almost hallucinatory atmosphere. Is the format chosen to connect painting to labor? Curator: I don't think so. Carrington never subscribed to standard expectations, either artistically or personally. This painting showcases Carrington’s ongoing critique of institutions through an ethereal technique. Editor: In other words, technique isn’t merely ornamental; the painting technique informs meaning. Thinking through the making illuminates how these paintings act not just as representation, but interventions, that destabilize set historical, and hierarchical assumptions. Curator: Yes. Looking closely and thinking broadly about the artwork reveals the power it has and encourages conversation. Editor: Indeed. And it all begins with that strange composition and how its execution in gouache plays a role in reinforcing it.