Crossing the Threshold: Mysticism, Liminality, and Remedios Varo’s Bordando el manto terrestre (1961–2) (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Re-enchantment of Surrealism: Remedios Varo’s Visionary Artists
Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 2018
The visionary prowess of the artist was established, in both the visual and verbal arts, by the Symbolists in fin-de-siècle France. This article asserts a continuity between the avowed spiritual dimension of their work and the visionary power of surrealist art asserted—despite strong resistance from the centre—by a group of renegade surrealists in the 1920s and beyond. To do so, it explores the representations of artists that Spanish-born Mexican painter Remedios Varo (1908–1963) depicts in her work, demonstrating how they might be better understood when analysed in relation to Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff’s (1866?–1949) esoteric aesthetics. In doing so, it reveals a neglected, postsecular trajectory in the history of Surrealism.
Shifting Realities: Migration and Surreality in the Work of Remedios Varo
Opticon1826, No. 13, Special Issue: Fragile Realities, 2012
This paper will examine Spanish painter Remedios Varo’s attempts to capture the complexities of immigrant reality during her exile in Mexico between 1941 and 1963. It will analyse themes of displacement and migration within her oeuvre, focusing on the following three concepts: migration as escape, perpetual motion, and permeable spaces. Through this analysis, it aims to interrogate the manner in which the unfixing of traditional notions of reality, seen within Varo’s work, was both influenced by and articulates the experience of exile.
Reconfiguring the Surrealist Gaze: Remedios Varo's Images of Women
Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 2011
A large number of surrealist theorizations were devoted to defining the role woman played in the creative process, where she held a polarized position. Within such theorizations the gaze held a key role. It was the gaze of the male poet, painter or photographer, his way of seeing and imagining femininity, which constructed the icon of the surrealist 'feminine'. This article elucidates upon how remedios Varo's paintings revise both the surrealist gaze that sets out a concrete type of female identity and the woman who abandons herself to the (masculinist) cultural conceptualization of what she is. The article presents an analysis of several of Varo's paintings that reflect upon the construction of 'femininity' through an allegorical dimension that makes it possible to understand Varo's plastic images as a direct response to surrealist theorizations on women's psyche, existence and images. Resumen Existen en el surrealismo numerosas reflexiones de carácter teórico acerca de la función que la mujer desempeña dentro del proceso creativo; una función que, no está de más decir, ha mantenido siempre un carácter ambivalente. Dentro de dichas teorizaciones, la noción de la mirada ha jugado un papel fundamental, puesto que fue precisamente la mirada del poeta, pintor o fotógrafo, su manera de ver y de imaginar la feminidad, lo que llevó en su momento a construir el icono de lo 'femenino' dentro del surrealismo. Este artículo elucida sobre cómo la pintura de Remedios Varo examina dichas concepciones teóricas sobre la mujer a la vez que, de lúdica forma, las subvierte. Por un lado, los cuadros serán entendidos como vehículos que inspeccionan tanto la mirada surrealista que establece un tipo concreto de feminidad como a la mujer que se abandona a sí misma a la conceptualización masculinista de lo que ella es. El artículo ofrece así pues en un análisis de varios cuadros que especulan sobre la construcción de la feminidad a través de una dimensión alegórica que hace posible entender las imágenes plásticas de Remedios Varo como ataque estratégico a las teorizaciones surrealistas sobre la psique de la mujer, su existencia, y su función en el proceso creativo.
“César Moro’s Transnational Surrealism.”
Journal for Surrealism and the Americas , 2013
Known primarily as a surrealist poet, César Moro also created numerous paintings and collages in a surrealist mode. Born in Peru, Moro made the obligatory sojourn to Paris in 1925 to immerse himself in European avant-garde activities. In 1928 he met André Breton and began to experiment with surrealist technique as a means to push both his painting and his poetry in new directions. Moro was one of the first Latin American artists to take up collage as an autonomous art form, creating images that combine text with photographs from advertisements, scientific journals, and newspapers in bizarrely incongruous ways. When he returned to Peru, Moro organized the first exhibition of surrealist art in Latin America at the Academía Alcedo in Lima, Peru in 1935. Given the dominance of Indigenism in the visual arts in Peru, this was a bold move on Moro’s part. While the exhibition baffled the public, it introduced new possibilities to young artists working in Peru and challenged the ascendancy of Indigenism. In 1938 Moro left Peru for Mexico where he would remain for the next decade. There he renewed his contact with Breton and the two joined forces, together with the painter Wolfgang Paalen, to organize the Exposición Internacional del Surrealismo at the Galería de Arte Mexicano in 1940. This essay will trace César Moro’s extensive engagement with surrealism, from his early participation in Breton’s surrealist group in Paris, to the exhibition he organized in Peru, and finally to Mexico. By examining closely Moro’s surrealist collages and paintings, I hope to reveal the depth of his involvement with the movement, as an artist, poet, and organizer on a transnational scale.
Entanglements. Envisioning World Literature from the Global South. Ed. Andrea Gremels, Maren Scheurer, Frank Schulze-Engler, and Jarula Wegner. Hannover: ibidem Press , 2022
The chapter develops a concept of transversal surrealism that questions Eurocentric and normative concepts of world literature. From their perspective as Latin American writers, Cortázar’s and Paz’ poetological essays re-envision surrealism as an all-embracing world view or even cosmovision. Their defense of surrealism is closely linked to their search for a multiple modernity. Cortázar’s and Paz’s re-envisioning of surrealism as world literature thus destabilizes and de-hierarchizes the logic of centre and periphery. Surrealism’s responsibility, as both authors claim, is that of assuming the role of a global eccentric—whose task is that of challenging any established (literary) norm and (world) order.
Quaderns de Filologia: Estudis Literaris, 2024
Remedios Varo (1908-1963) wrote numerous surrealist texts that dialogue with her prolific artistic production. Alchemy, feminism, and psychoanalysis have been studied as central themes in her paintings, yet this paper focuses on humor and parody in Varo's written works-including her letters, short stories, and dreams-to uncover the seminal ideas and images that emerge in her visual art. Humor and parody are fundamental links between Varo's narrative and paintings. She embraces the spontaneity of the surrealist écriture automatique and the illogical amor fou but at the same time pushes the limits of surrealist dogma and creates a uniquely nonpatriarchal universe in which the female has agency and the blurriness between the male and female anticipates current theories of queer sexualities. Seen through a theoretical lens of parody (Linda Hutcheon) and queerness (Jack Halberstam), Varo's works propose an alternate reading of surrealism.
Ruedas metafísicas: ‘Personality’ and ‘Essence’ in Remedios Varo’s Paintings
2014
While most critics have noted the profound affinity Remedios Varo felt with the ideas she encountered in the esoteric philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and his pupil P. D. Ouspensky, only in recent years have they begun to uncover the extent to which this teaching informed her richly symbolic work. This article shows how Gurdjieff’s views on ‘personality’ and ‘essence’, as outlined in Ouspensky’s exposition of his master’s ideas, In Search of the Miraculous, informed Varo’s depiction of a quest for spiritual equilibrium. In doing so, it brings to light the importance Varo placed in the development of a robust, spiritual Self.
Phenomenology from Robbe-Grillet to Julio Cortázar: An Essay on the Poetics of Presence
One of the most appealing aspects of comparative literature is its capacity to accommodate the undecided. Those who love scholarship but hesitate in their intellectual endeavors between different forms of art, national literatures, or disciplines, are welcome in the field of comparativism. And certainly some of the undecided are those who oscillate between the areas of philosophical and literary inquiry. A particularly meaningful declaration of unconditional affection to both philosophy and literature is found in Martha Nussbaum's Love's :