From One Day to Another: A Ballet Scenario by Leonor Fini

Abstract

Though predominantly known for her Surrealist painting, Leonor Fini (1907–1996) was also a prolific designer of sets and costumes and produced scenographic work over a period of 28 years from 1944 to 1972. Having lain in the shadow of her male contemporaries, in recent years she has come to greater and greater prominence, but her work as a designer remains relatively unknown. This may well be due to enduring hierarchies of ‘art’ within art history that accord scenographic design a lowly status. Or perhaps it is because many of Fini's projects made at least some use of period costumes and sets rather than innovative, avant-garde aesthetics. Whatever the underlying reason, this article aims to address this neglect and presents a ballet synopsis by Fini from approximately 1938–1939; one which never made it off the page onto the stage. It offers an English translation of this document, which has never been published to my knowledge, and seeks to situate it in the larger context of Fini’s work; specifically in terms of her engagement with the metamorphic body and the role of costume in achieving this metamorphosis.

Notes

1 Leonor Fini, “Leonor Fini on Surrealism”, manuscript made in preparation for a French radio programme, c. 1960s, trans. Lars-Håkan Svensson in Brita Täljedal et al. Leonor Fini: Pourquoi Pas?, Umeå: Bildmuseet, 2014, p. 127.

2 Richard Overstreet, “Biographical and bibliographical references” in Peter Webb, Sphinx: The Life and Art of Leonor Fini, New York, 2009, pp. 285–296.

3 Interview with Leonor Fini in Edouard Roditi, More Dialogues on Art, Santa Barbara: Ross-Eriksson, 1984, p. 72.

4 As evidenced by looking through multiple newspaper cuttings held by the Leonor Fini Archive that review productions for which Fini acted as the designer.

5 See for example Alan Riding, “Leonor Fini, 87, Set Designer and a Painter of the Fantastic”, New York Times, 26 January 1996, B9; Marilyn August, “Eccentric Artist, Set Designer Leonor Fini Dead at 87”, Associated Press News, 26 January 1996. Available at https://www.apnews.com/f7a52f201270e5aaaab10652dfc656e3, (accessed 30/07/2019), and Webb, 2009, p. 270.

6 See Webb, 2009; Zukerman: Leonor Fini: The Artist as Designer, CFM Gallery, 1992. See also Vacca’s 2015 PhD thesis, The Art of ‘tra(s)vestire’ in Leonor Fini: An Itinerary of Costume Design Between Rome and Paris, and her articles in the 2014 and 2017 volumes of Memoria e materia dell’opera d’arte, Rome, and Andrea Kollnitz: “The Self as an Art-Work: Performative Self-Representation in the Life and Work of Leonor Fin” in L. Armstrong and F. McDowell (eds.), Fashioning Professionals: Identity and Representation at Work in the Creative Industries, London, 2018, pp. 121–142.

7 For my publications in this area, “States of Transition: The Femme Fatale in the Art of Fernand Khnopff and Leonor Fini” in M. Facos and T. Mednick (eds.), The Symbolist Roots of Modernism, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015, pp. 71–84; “Sphinxes, Witches and Little Girls: Reconsidering the Female Monster in the Art of Leonor Fini” in E. Nelson with J. Burcar and H. Priest (eds.), Creating Humanity, Discovering Monstrosity: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil e-book, Oxford: Interdisciplinary Press, 2010, pp. 97–106.

8 These texts include “Black goats and broomsticks: Feminism and the Figure of the Witch in Leonor Fini’s Le Sabbat” in A. von Rosen and V. Kjellmer (eds.), Scenography and Art History, London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming; “Monstrous Bodies: Theatrical Designs by Salvador Dalí and Leonor Fini”, Studies in Costume and Performance, Vol 4, No 1, 2019, pp. 9–24; “Feathers, Flowers, and Flux: Artifice in the Costumes of Leonor Fini” in P. Allmer (ed.), Intersections: Women Artists / Surrealism / Modernism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016, pp. 259–274.

9 The translation of this document is the author's, with the assistance of Richard Overstreet.

10 Key texts in the field of posthumanism include Ihab Hassan, “Prometheus as performer: Toward a posthuman culture?” in Michel Benamou and Charles Caramello (eds.), Performance in Postmodern Culture, Madison, WI: Coda Books, 1977, pp. 201–217; Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York: Routledge, 1991; Karan Barad, “Posthuman Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter”, Signs, Vol 28, No 3, 2003, pp. 801–833; and Rosi Braidotti, Posthuman Knowledge, London: Polity, 2019.

11 Leonor Fini, Le Livre de Leonor Fini, Lausanne: La Guilde du Livre et Les Éditions Clairefontaine; Paris: Vilo, 1975, p. 32. “Quand j’étais enfant, je détestais me faire phtographier. Je fuyais … Depuis on m’a toujours photographiée: costumée, déguisée, quotidienne. Me je n’aime pas les instantanés, rien n’est plus faux que le ‘naturel’ figé. C’est la ‘pose’ qui est révélatrice, et je suis curieuse et amusée de voir ma multiplicité – que je crois assez bein connaître – affirmée par ses images”. My emphasis. See Webb, 2009, p. 64 for further translation of this quote.

12 Fini, 1975, 41. “Se costumer, c’est l’instrument pour avoir la sensation de changer dimension, d’espèce. D’espace. C’est pouvoir se sentir gigantesque, plonger dans les végétaux, devenir un animal … Se costumer, se travestir est un acte de créativité … C’est une – ou plusiers – representation de soi”.

13 Translator note: The word in the manuscript is ‘lazzaroni’, most likely a mis-spelling of ‘lazzarone’ – an Italian word in an otherwise French document. Fini grew up in Trieste in Northern Italy and was multi-lingual.

14 Translator note: the clause describing the skater’s black hair and clothes is the only phrase visible in the typed-over section, but it makes little sense out of context so I have only given it as it appears in the main text.

15 Leonor Fini, D’un jour à l’autre BALLET [From one day to another BALLET], undated manuscript, Leonor Fini Archive, Paris.

16 Whitney Chadwick, The Militant Muse: Love, War, and the Women of Surrealism, London, 2017.

17 Chadwick, 2017, pp. 84, 88.

18 Ibid, p. 87.

19 Ibid, p. 89.

20 Such discarded clothing also appears in The Alcove.

21 This is a hallmark of posthuman texts and analyses. Some key examples on this specific human-plant aspect of posthumanism include Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham: Duke University Press, 2016; John Charles Ryan, Posthuman Plants: Rethinking the Vegetal through Culture, Art, and Poetry, Champaign IL: Common Ground Publishing, 2015, and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.