Thursday 26 June 2008

Coincidence, Remedios Varo & ITLAD

I recently went to a flea/antique market to wander about, and picked up a book about the painter Remedios Varo. She was a surrealist painter influenced by de Chirico and was the lover of Victor Brauner. If you have read my post about premonitory paintings you will know that Victor Brauner painted strange paintings marked with eyeballs. After producing these paintings he in fact lost his eye in a bar room fight. Interestingly, I learned that Remedios was likely the point of argument. She was beautiful, and an extremely talented surreal painter with feminist and socialist leanings and led a fascinating and dangerous life. She also had a strong interest in the Gurdjieff, the occult, eastern philosophy, and Jungian analysis. One of her paintings she called "Coincidence" which strikes me as very ITLADian. According to her biographer, Janet A Kaplan in "Unexpected Journeys" The Art and Life of Remedios Varo", she worked with chance imagery in this painting. An image emerges in a wall that is an exact double of the person walking past. Does that not make you thing of Anthony's Eidolon and Daemon?
The painter also explored physics in her paintings. Two that stood out for me were "Revelation or The Clockmaker" which is dealing with time, history and the universe in response I believe to Einsteins's theory of relativity, and "Still Life Reviving: which deals with the cyclical rebirth of nature, and interestingly her last work before she died. I recommend people check her out.

6 comments:

ra from ca said...

Oh dear that should have read Still Life Reviving not Revolving!!

Karl Le Marcs said...

Ra from Ca: Thank you Ruth, this is very interesting.

I only know a small amount about Remedios Varo from my Occult Studies as I know she was interested in Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Blavatsky.

Isn’t the print you have named "Revolving" actually named "Still Life Reviving" though?

I’ve always been a fan of allegorical art, with the master of course being Hieronymus Bosch, and my favourite Varo piece has always been Useless Science or The Alchemist

And another deeply ITLADic on of Varo’s is To Be Reborn

For those that may have missed Ra from Ca’s previous post that she mentions in this post I include a link below:

Premonitory Paintings & The Daemon Voice
[by Ra from Ca]


And also interesting to see our old friend Giorgio De Chirico mentioned again, as it was one of his works that was going to be the cover for Tony’s new book "THE DAEMON".

Sneak Preview of New Book Cover – and another curious thing!
[by Tony]


Great Post Ruth, thank you.

Robin said...

Beautiful imagery Ra! Thank you!

SM Kovalinsky said...

RUTH; This is a lovely, extremely well-written, and fascinating post, and very ITLADian. I had not heard much of her except the connection with Gurdjieff, but this makes me want to delve deeper. Thanks!

johar said...

Ruth,

Thanks for the post, really interesting and such evocative imagery.

My but I'm learning a lot on this blog!
x

Anthony Peake said...

RUTH: Yet another artist painting Daemonic inspiration. Thank you so much for this post. I will check this artist out pronto. Do you know if she experienced TLE, migraine or anything similar? It would be very interesting to know.

Indeed we have had a list of itladian movies why not a list of itladian artists and painters.

This is an area close to my heart. many years ago I was about to embark on a PhD in art history (with particular reference to Piero della Francesca). Circumstances failed to work out and I did my post-grad in another subject (Business Management - how prosiac!)