Crookhey Hall,

1987

<p>Exquisite Corpse #4 </p> <p>Inspired by <em>Crookhey Hall</em> and Coleridge’s <u>Kubla Khan</u></p> <p>Composed 16 October 2019</p> <p>Her anxious grasp, her baffled gaze!</p> <p>Her lifeless body, her vacant stare!</p> <p>His nimble feet, her slim physique!</p> <p>His flashing eyes, his floating hair!</p> <p>Her giant legs, her massive frame!</p> <p>Her haunted face, all too fair!</p> <p>Her flaxen hair, his gaudy gape!</p> <p>She hastens from his devilish glare!</p> <p>Her outstretched arms, her wispy gown!</p> <p>She shouldn’t touch, proceed with care!</p> <p>His dire glance, her ghostly home!</p> <p>And all should cry, Beware! Beware!</p>

Carrington grew up in northwestern England in a Gothic-revival mansion called Crookhey Hall. Her childhood home appears repeatedly in her artwork, reflecting the troubling memories of that time that remained with her throughout her life. The ominous building in this print—based on an earlier painting of 1947—also carries associations with the mental asylum in Santander, Spain, to which Carrington was committed after she suffered a psychological breakdown in 1940. In her autobiographical novella <em>Down Below</em> (1944), she described the harrowing account of her psychiatric treatment, during which she was given the drug Cardiozol for convulsive shock therapy.