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Lot Essay
Looking for ways to grasp the invisible matrix that interconnects life, Remedios Varo searched within herself and in the esoteric literature for answers to her questions: "What is the nature of the universe? Is the universe passive or is it an active participant in the events that take place within its confines? Is there an underlying harmony in nature that interconnects thoughts, feelings, science, and art with the universe that generates them?"
From time to time, Varo noticed patterns that suggested to her, with absolute certainty, that pure chance was less likely to be actively influencing the world of appearances than underlying affinities generated by a much larger, deeper reality. How else could she explain certain revealing moments, flashes of insight that seemed like flaws in the tissue of time-space? Once, spontaneously attending a film with a photographer friend who had shot the newsreel that neither knew would be shown on that day, she recognized on the screen Eduardo Lizarraga, her lost ex-husband, standing among other inmates in a holding camp in war-ridden Europe. Thanks to that 'accidental' visit to the movies with this particular friend, at that particular moment, Varo was able to rescue Lizarraga from a near-certain death. Such moments were behind Varo's developing theories about the natural world. Not being a scientist, she created them intuitively, poetically, and cleverly, the way children develop their theories about how things work, with the wisdom and freshness of an unspoiled eye.
Such moments of awareness became points of departure for several of Varo's paintings. Eventually, she gathered enough experiences that in the end allowed her to visualize an event that might have triggered Thee destinies. It could even have been literally, a memory of the event that took place on that extraordinary day that she went to the movies with the belief that she was only going to see a film with a friend. What Varo is beginning to fathom was how events that appeared unrelated shared the same meaning. In searching traditional science, she found it had its limitations, as well as organized religion. Yet she continued to explore as she knew that somewhere in the universe there must be explanations for unusual phenomena; after all, these events were taking place, regardless of whether they were understood or not. One recognizes Varo's struggle, slowly evolving theories of cosmic influence in every aspect of life. She created Au bonheur des dames, under the influece of the teachings of the Russian-Armenian philosopher Gurdjief who, seeking to create a wholesome world, referred contemptuously to people as being "asleep" for not thinking for themselves, for being unaware of life and of living. Varo, who was studying "The Work" (Gurdjieff's theories) at the time, portrays such personnages in Au bonheur des ames as automatons for having "succumbed to the worst kind of mechanization....they are creatures of our times, with no ideas of their own, machinelike..." Varo also implies Gurdjieff's theory of unawareness even to a scientist she painted in the Insubmissive plant that does not recognize that invisible laws effect the visible world. Even when one of the plants gives him a clue as it sprouts the mathematical formula "two and two is almost four," he still remains clueless because although he sees it, he cannot explain it, therefore he does not believe it. Finally, in The Threads of Destiny someone attempts to pull a man out of the room; but interconnected threads drawn by pulleys hold him back, impeding him to do as he wishes. When Varo created Three Destinies her concerns with personal versus cosmic determinism in the choices that one makes were accomplished. She was fully aware that something held power over every living object, that we were all interconnected.
The personnages in Three destines, do not know it yet, and we are not informed whether they ever will, but Varo conveys the moment as it is beginning to be shaped, to pinpoint her as well as our insight that everything that takes place does for an ultimate cause. Varo refused to subscribe to the belief that the universe is an accident; rather she be believed that there was a bridge that linked the gap between the subjective and the objective.
Destiny, the flaw in what we understood as reality was a complex network in which every event in the universe can be linked to an event that comes before and one that follows and they are predetermined. Destiny in Varo's work means interconnectedness, where one phenomenom affects another and another. This much is implied in what she wrote about the painting: "Each of these characters is peacefully doing what he wants to, oblivious to the others; but there is a complicated machine from which come pulleys that wind around them and make them move (they think they move freely). In turn, a pulley connected to a star in the sky, which moves the whole apparatus propels the machine. The star represents the destiny of these people; and although they are not aware of it, their destinies are intertwined: one day their lives will cross."
Varo, however, had an accurate understanding of how one needed to be attuned to the invisible world. She conveyed it in Harmony, a work in which she explains how the personnage is able to "produce music that is not only harmonious but is also objective... The figure coming out of the wall, which helps him, represents chance (a factor that comes to interplay so often in all discoveries), but objective chance. I use the word "objective" to refer to the fact that is something outside our world, that is to say beyond it, and that is connected to the world of causes, rather than to ourselves, which is a world of phenomena."
The concept of wholeness in the macrocosm as in the microcosm crystallized in Varo as she made art. In those moments of stillness, she was able to attain an existential emptiness that freed her from attachments, from fixed ideas, away from illusions. Focusing on creative tasks made reality clearer and clearer, in order to leave eternal moments on canvas for spectators to wonder.
Salomon Grimberg
Dallas, Texas, October 5, 2001
From time to time, Varo noticed patterns that suggested to her, with absolute certainty, that pure chance was less likely to be actively influencing the world of appearances than underlying affinities generated by a much larger, deeper reality. How else could she explain certain revealing moments, flashes of insight that seemed like flaws in the tissue of time-space? Once, spontaneously attending a film with a photographer friend who had shot the newsreel that neither knew would be shown on that day, she recognized on the screen Eduardo Lizarraga, her lost ex-husband, standing among other inmates in a holding camp in war-ridden Europe. Thanks to that 'accidental' visit to the movies with this particular friend, at that particular moment, Varo was able to rescue Lizarraga from a near-certain death. Such moments were behind Varo's developing theories about the natural world. Not being a scientist, she created them intuitively, poetically, and cleverly, the way children develop their theories about how things work, with the wisdom and freshness of an unspoiled eye.
Such moments of awareness became points of departure for several of Varo's paintings. Eventually, she gathered enough experiences that in the end allowed her to visualize an event that might have triggered Thee destinies. It could even have been literally, a memory of the event that took place on that extraordinary day that she went to the movies with the belief that she was only going to see a film with a friend. What Varo is beginning to fathom was how events that appeared unrelated shared the same meaning. In searching traditional science, she found it had its limitations, as well as organized religion. Yet she continued to explore as she knew that somewhere in the universe there must be explanations for unusual phenomena; after all, these events were taking place, regardless of whether they were understood or not. One recognizes Varo's struggle, slowly evolving theories of cosmic influence in every aspect of life. She created Au bonheur des dames, under the influece of the teachings of the Russian-Armenian philosopher Gurdjief who, seeking to create a wholesome world, referred contemptuously to people as being "asleep" for not thinking for themselves, for being unaware of life and of living. Varo, who was studying "The Work" (Gurdjieff's theories) at the time, portrays such personnages in Au bonheur des ames as automatons for having "succumbed to the worst kind of mechanization....they are creatures of our times, with no ideas of their own, machinelike..." Varo also implies Gurdjieff's theory of unawareness even to a scientist she painted in the Insubmissive plant that does not recognize that invisible laws effect the visible world. Even when one of the plants gives him a clue as it sprouts the mathematical formula "two and two is almost four," he still remains clueless because although he sees it, he cannot explain it, therefore he does not believe it. Finally, in The Threads of Destiny someone attempts to pull a man out of the room; but interconnected threads drawn by pulleys hold him back, impeding him to do as he wishes. When Varo created Three Destinies her concerns with personal versus cosmic determinism in the choices that one makes were accomplished. She was fully aware that something held power over every living object, that we were all interconnected.
The personnages in Three destines, do not know it yet, and we are not informed whether they ever will, but Varo conveys the moment as it is beginning to be shaped, to pinpoint her as well as our insight that everything that takes place does for an ultimate cause. Varo refused to subscribe to the belief that the universe is an accident; rather she be believed that there was a bridge that linked the gap between the subjective and the objective.
Destiny, the flaw in what we understood as reality was a complex network in which every event in the universe can be linked to an event that comes before and one that follows and they are predetermined. Destiny in Varo's work means interconnectedness, where one phenomenom affects another and another. This much is implied in what she wrote about the painting: "Each of these characters is peacefully doing what he wants to, oblivious to the others; but there is a complicated machine from which come pulleys that wind around them and make them move (they think they move freely). In turn, a pulley connected to a star in the sky, which moves the whole apparatus propels the machine. The star represents the destiny of these people; and although they are not aware of it, their destinies are intertwined: one day their lives will cross."
Varo, however, had an accurate understanding of how one needed to be attuned to the invisible world. She conveyed it in Harmony, a work in which she explains how the personnage is able to "produce music that is not only harmonious but is also objective... The figure coming out of the wall, which helps him, represents chance (a factor that comes to interplay so often in all discoveries), but objective chance. I use the word "objective" to refer to the fact that is something outside our world, that is to say beyond it, and that is connected to the world of causes, rather than to ourselves, which is a world of phenomena."
The concept of wholeness in the macrocosm as in the microcosm crystallized in Varo as she made art. In those moments of stillness, she was able to attain an existential emptiness that freed her from attachments, from fixed ideas, away from illusions. Focusing on creative tasks made reality clearer and clearer, in order to leave eternal moments on canvas for spectators to wonder.
Salomon Grimberg
Dallas, Texas, October 5, 2001