Remedios Varo: What Artists and Writers Can Learn From Her Magical Imagination
By Thea Fiore-Bloom, PhD
“Remedios Varo created three hundred and eighty-four paintings “[…] peopled by owl-artists, insect-geologists, crazed botanists and magical astronomers who overturn our arbitrary assumptions about how things ought to work.”
– Janet Kaplan
Like many Spanish and Mexican painters of her day, Remedios Varo was a magical realist. And not just on the canvas.
Varo (1908 -1963) gave her cosmic-sized imagination freedom.
Freedom to roam her art life and her daily life.
By that I mean Varo found magic in, and made magic out of – everyday things others might overlook.
Like white fruit.
Let’s look at an example:
“Strolling along a Mexican street one evening, she [Varo] noticed plants with beautiful white egglike fruits. Fascinated, she took one to her apartment, set it among her plants on the terrace in full moonlight, and carefully nestled tubes of paint around it. She felt this conjunction of the special plant, her paints, and the moon might prove auspicious for the next day of painting.”
-Janet Kaplan
Are You Like Remedios Varo?
When I first read that story, I thought this gal Varo could be slightly unstable or at least taking this whole “I’m a creative” thing too far.
But then ten seconds passed.
Embarrassingly, I realized I’ve done similar stuff.
Frequently, in fact.
I just don’t admit it.
Even to myself.
But here is what I remembered 10 seconds after reading that passage about Varo and the moon fruit that put me in the same camp as her.
Just last year my boyfriend and I were hiking in Utah, staying at a cabin on the Colorado River next to Arches National Park.
Before I went to sleep on the last night of our stay, I almost unconsciously started arranging natural objects I’d found on the trip along with my writing supplies and a new necklace I’d bought under the amber glow of a harvest moon on the little deck we had overlooking the rushing river.
When I was done, I saw I had carefully alternated my found red rocks with pointed clear quartz crystals and writing pens in a circle atop a new, blank Moleskine notebook.
Like Varo, I suppose I was banking on the stuff being infused with the creative enchantment of the place by dawn.
Have you ever done anything odd like that?
If you just nodded your head yes, I’m relieved I’m not alone; I mean — that’s good news for you.
Why is it good?
Why You Too Should Be Making Rituals With Moon Fruit
Because that same inexplicable wiring that has us making moon rituals with art supplies also allows us to see, hear, sense, and connect what others don’t.
Our enhanced, alchemical rainbow wiring enables and encourages us to invent, innovate, provoke, or delight others with our art.
That eccentric flame we carry gives us the gorgeous guts to showcase those inventions, innovations, and provocations to others on canvas or the page.
(For more support on this, check out my post, Letting Go of Approval: A Story for Artists.)
We sometimes are ashamed of our penchant to honor our wonder via ritual; it may seem childlike.
But as actor/comedian Ricky Gervais says;
“You have to let yourself go to be creative. Children possess this quality but then seem to lose it as they are told, ‘it’s not the done thing.’ Pablo Picasso summed it up well; ‘Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
Let’s look at one final example of Varo’s admirable ability to remain an artist after she grew up.
Varo and her artist friends, like Luis Buñuel, Alice Rohan, Kati Horna, and others, would throw elaborate costume parties or play surrealist games whilst living in exile as war refugees in Mexico in the 1940s.
Remedios Varo’s Letters to Strangers
Varo especially loved composing intriguing letters to complete strangers she chose from the phone book.
People whose names or professions piqued her curiosity.
Here are a few excerpts of a draft of one of Varo’s amusing letters to strangers Kaplan discovered in the artist’s sketchbook:
“Dear Stranger,
I am totally unaware if you are a solitary man or a father of a family, if you are a timid introvert or a bright extrovert, but one way or another perhaps you are bored and wish to fling yourself intrepidly into the middle of a group of unknown persons with the hope of seeing something that interests or amuses you. […] I propose that you come on New Year’s Eve to house number ______ of the street _____ […].
On second thought, I am more loca than my goat.
[…] I am almost sure you will not come; it would require enormous aplomb to do it and very few people have that.
[…]I hope that you yourself are not a gangster or a drunk; we are almost abstemious and semivegetarian.”
(Varo Sketchbook, Gruen Archive).
Did Varo send letters like these?
Did any of these strangers show up at her parties?
I don’t know.
But wouldn’t it be inspiring to have had Remedios Varo as your neighbor and friend, as artist/writer Leonora Carrington did?
Varo reminds me of Hermes, “the divine trickster.” Hermes ruled over inventiveness, art, mischief, magic, and communication (letters).
Why All Artists Need More of This Varo/Hermes Archetype In Our Lives
I wrote this post to remind us that every day and every situation is a new opportunity for us as creatives to make something out of nothing.
To make magic out of tubes of color, egg-shaped fruit, or letters to strangers, never sent.
Because, as Einstein said:
“There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
– Albert Einstein
Over to you.
What do you think?
Please share your reaction in the comments below.
It will make my day and maybe help other artists and writers, too. 🙂
You might like these other Charmed Studio Posts:
Frida Kahlo for Artists and Writers: 7 Tips from the Life of a Mexican Maverick
Alison Saar: Disrupting Classical Literature To Create Epic Modern Art
Salvador Dalí: 6 Outrageous Facts and Tips For Artists & Writers
How to Submit Your Art to a Museum Store: Insider Tips from a Top Museum Store Manager
How Tea Helps Artists: Includes Resource Guide of Best Books For Tea Lovers
Weekly Art Newsletter? The Case Against Frequency
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2-minute video: Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, and Rosa Rolanda
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VERY INTERESTING, INFORMATIVE AND
ALWAYS BEAUTIFULLY ARRANGED.
THANK YOU SO MUCH.
Raquel what a lovely gift. Thank you for this. I’m so happy you liked it.
THANK YOU SO MUCH. SO INTERESTING AND INFORMATIVE ! AND VERY BEAUTIFULLY
PUT TOGETHER
The eagle has landed!
Thank you Thea this is beautiful!! She is so magical. I do much of the same. I put stones and talisman in the window in the moonlight all the time. I wear items in little bags around my neck all manner of drawing energy and spirit to items in my life. It changes the ordinary into the extraordinary and magical. 😍
Thanks so much Gale for ensuring I don’t feel like the lone loon of wonder. 🙂 Cheers to you and your moonlight window.
I absolutely loved this post. It made me smile and realize as somebody who has never had a problem with connecting to the child within her; I’ve lost my way and have been a little too grown-up lately. It’s time to end that right now.
Well, that just made my evening! Bless you, Denise. So glad the piece pointed to your own wisdom and knowing on what is best for your beautiful soul. I loose track of the child within myself too. Or I can tend to denigrate the connection when I am aware enough to make it. So cheers to moon water and letters to strangers and interviewing people about Neuticles!!!
Amen! I was really going to be weird and off-the-wall to go along with this article to say that I’m going to grab my marbles from when I was a kid and get down in the dirt again.
No shame there my friend. I know a few artists who make marbles. There is an amazing glass blowing teacher in our hood if you ever want to go…
I love that you talk about Remedios Varo’s magical life. I think you can see it reflected in every painting. I have used moon infused water (just leave a bowl of water outside in the full moon to capture the moonlight) in my work. It’s also good for scrying- look into the bowl, let your eyes unfocus and see what you see. Another way is to drop ink into the water and see what shapes it makes, very surrealist.
Moon-infused water! Fabulous, creative, logical and alchemical. I can see that in your work. It was worth writing the post just to hear that detail of your art practice. Will have to give this all more thought. Thanks Janee!
Yep, I’ve done weird things like that too. I was especially intrigued by the letter writing idea. How fun! And brave. This makes me want to play again and get out of my head, where I’ve been staying too much lately.
Btw, I listened to the audio version this time and enjoyed it even more than reading. It’s fun to hear your voice, it’s like we’re on one of our calls but with less laughing. Lol
Thanks, Carlynne! I loved your mailing you sent out today. If I lived nearby I would be in that class! Let’s write letters to strangers. Surrealists really seemed like they knew how to have fun.
Re: audio — You know when I am recording the audio versions I often read them to you guys in my mind so it doesn’t sound too stilted or respectable. 🙂
Hi Thea,
I can relate to making ritualized shrines during and after trips with objects I have collected along with my sketches and small paintings. I hadn’t thought about infusing them with moonlight – what a great idea!
Cheers,
Donna
Moonlight is a good prescription, among many others I suppose. Thanks for reading and commenting Donna. Love your work.
Cool stuff. Another new thing I’ve learned from Thea!
You are so kind John. Thanks for reading the piece. I was amazed at how all these artists had to flee Franco and Hitler and ended up in the same city at the same time and how they made a living and helped each other recover from the horrors of war —via their art.