February, 2008

Bizarre Vehicles and Terrifying Vessels: Metaphors of Journey in the Work of Remedios Varo

The highly imaginative and fantastic mechanical hybrids and contraptions seen in Remedios Varo’s’ mature work suggest her equal loves for the intuitive and mystical on the one hand, the logical and scientific on the other. In Remedios Varo: Unexpected Journeys, Janet Kaplan calls the artist “an engineer’s daughter who read science as much as she read metaphysics” (Kaplan, 169). Her introspective and personal imagery reveals much about her life long uninhibited sense of creativity, her early training in mechanical drawing, and her affinity with the 15th century Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch. Varo developed in her paintings a repertoire of strange and isolated characters who move about either as passengers in fantastical vehicles, or as self propelled, part-human, part-vehicle hybrids whose own body parts morph into devices of locomotion. In these works, Varo chronicled a lifetime of longing for escape from situations which impinged on her personal liberty and autonomy, and made poignant references to her experiences as an exile and a refugee. The Boschian bizarre vehicles and fantastic vessel were, for Varo, metaphors for the many journeys, both spiritual and physical, that she embarked upon numerous times throughout her life.

Varo spent her lifetime in search of freedom. As a child, she dreamed of escape from the restrictive atmosphere of her traditional Spanish Catholic family. Her childhood fantasies of adventure and travel assumed concrete form in her mature paintings, with the journey becoming a central metaphor in all her work (Kaplan, 148). Her early days, restrictive as they may have been, were essential to her development as an artist since her father, a hydraulic engineer, encouraged her artistic development, and even taught her the meticulous craft of mechanical drawing himself. Her ability to draw mechanically would lead to the fantastical designs of vehicles and elaborate contraptions in her adult work. Unusual for her day, she was permitted to attend the prestigious Academia de San Fernando in Madrid, where her technical abilities to paint mechanical forms in a European miniaturist style were perfected. This training is clearly evident in the precise and perfectionistic techniques seen in her life’s work. Even though she balked at the strict discipline and lack of support for experimentation or imaginative impulses, Varo used this technical training throughout her life in her expert executions of perspective and fantastical mechanical inventions.

The small boat with the large paddle wheel in The Tower, 1947, is an early example of Varo’s’ use of a fanciful, dreamlike vehicle used to suggest exile or escape. While not as technically elaborate as the contraptions that would epitomize her later work, this vehicle embodies many of the journey metaphors seen in her later works. A small, canoe-shaped boat, ridiculously equipped with the large paddle wheel of a riverboat, drifts amid a walled-in sea. By means of a long, awkward arm that appears to defy all laws of physics, this wheel is connected to an oversized windmill, which in turn supports another impossibly cantilevered arm. Upon this arm, a small, isolated figure (likely Varo herself), stands peering beyond the crumbling stone walls that detain her to contemplate the impossibly distant horizon.

Escape from this watery prison seems possible, but unlikely. A tiny, twisted road (which will reappear in many later works) morphs into a ladder on the edge of the seawall. A sprightly figure runs along the road toward the horizon. Is Varo contemplating the freedom of land travel, if she could ever complete her journey by sea? Or has she realized that the road is not a means of escape, but only a trap? Another road leads to the horizon on the opposite side of the wall. Here we see a somewhat more liberated figure, balanced on a circus-like wheeled contraption, free to make her journey.

Kaplan has suggested that the bizarre vehicles are metaphors for her difficult departure from France when Varo fled during the Second World War. The crumbling tower within the sea walls might be Europe, while the distant horizon, which seems impossibly difficult to reach could be the foreign land offering hope as well as uncertainty. The vehicles symbolize escape, yet they are, like future inventions, dubiously ill equipped for their purpose, suggesting the insecurities of her refugee experiences.

Two other works make use of elaborate and imaginative vehicles to symbolize Varo’s’ refugee experiences. In Caravan, 1955 and The Vagabond, 1957 isolation, and rootlessness struggle with a desire for security and autonomy. In Caravan, a coach-like house on wheels, equipped with a puzzling array of wheels, paddles, and pulleys is propelled through and eerily dark and foreboding forest. Like a horse-drawn coach, the interior seems fully enclosed as its driver guides the craft from outside. Using miniaturist painting techniques reminiscent of the 15th century Flemish style, Varo cuts away enough of the building’s exterior to show us the mostly unoccupied and empty rooms, save for one, which contains a piano being played by a solitary woman. Kaplan suggests the sense of safety and security implied by this closed-in house. It protects the woman from the uncertainties of the outside world and allows her the luxury of engaging in her artistic passion. Her security is tenuous, however. Her wheeled home is not truly rooted, and her solitary state could suggest isolation.

The Vagabond also suggests a desire for the securities and comforts of the home. Kaplan mentions the state of being in which a person who lives a nomadic life is always on the move (en marcha). A lone traveller, a gypsy of sorts, makes his way along a narrow twisted road through the same foreboding and unpopulated woods as seen in Caravan. In an imaginative twist that can only have come from Varo’s childhood musings, his outer coat morphs into a self-contained vehicle that serves as everything he needs, all-in-one: clothing, vehicle, and home. The traveling machine is equipped with wheels, pulleys, and paddles to catch the wind. His cloak opens to reveal the interior of his “home”, where we see he has all the essentials for comfort: books, cooking implements, a photo of a loved one, and even a pet cat. He thinks he is an autonomous vagabond, but with all these trappings, is he truly able to make it on his own? His needs for the trappings of a comfortable home suggest he is not a truly “liberated vagabond”.

The fantasy vehicles in Caravan and Vagabond are clear symbols for her sense of personal dislocation and her tenuous sense of security. Perhaps as an exile of two wars, Varo felt a lifelong sense of rootlessness and insecurity known to all who have ever been refugees. Mexico seemed to satisfy her longing for security, permanence, and domestic comfort, but the wheeled vehicles suggest her reluctance to ever fully let her guard down.

Varo’s use of vehicle as metaphor seems to have been in part inspired by the strange hybrid vessels seen in Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. According to Kaplan, Bosch’s odd hybrid vessels were metaphors for the randomness of life. The “ship of fools” suggests that in life, we are all passengers on a ship which we cannot control. For Varo, this suggests a journey that represents both physical exile and a spiritual quest.

Varo makes use of another Boschian vessel in Exploration of the Sources of the Orinoco River, 1959. Here we see a woman traveller, wearing a fashionable traveling coat and a derby hat. She rides through a flooded forest in a boat that has been formed from her overcoat. Like The Vagabond, her outerwear sensibly morphs to serve practical multiple purposes. Her coat, which is her source of protection from the elements doubles as her means of escape. Varo must have spent a great deal of time as a child contemplating mundane objects like her overcoat, and wondering what might happen if she could turn it into a vehicle to take her away. Her tiny ship is propelled by an odd paddle in the rear, a pair of angel wings connected to her hat, and the flapping lapels of her coat. The woman manipulates these elements of locomotion and steering with an elaborate set of strings, which also strap her in and bind her to the craft. Like the Vagabond, she is not as free as her apparatus makes her appear. Her means of escape is also her source of isolation and imprisonment. Traveling may lead one away from what binds them, but travelers are rarely as free as they seem.

Like Bosch, Varo liked to combine unlikely inanimate objects with humans to serve as part of their character or part of their costume. She was fascinated with the human body having inanimate mechanical parts. In many of her works, her characters have wheels in place of legs, gears in place of hearts, and other mechanical substitutions for human components. Human/machine hybrids with wheels for feet and legs figure prominently into much of Varo’s mature work. Homo Rodans, 1959, a rare surviving three-dimensional object made of chicken, fish, and turkey bones depicts a humanoid form that Varo claims to be a predecessor to the modern Homo Sapiens. “He moves not by walking erect but by riding upright on his wheel” (Kaplan, 156). I find it interesting that in Homo Rodans, Varo suggests human evolution, both in terms of physical mutation as well as human invention. Homo Rodans is a pre-human being, supposedly lesser evolved than the current form of human existence. Yet he is upright due to one of the most innovative inventions of early man: the wheel. Varo clearly feels a strong affinity to our most basic or primitive impulse for travel, movement, or locomotion.

The sense of high fashion seen in Exploration of the Sources of the Orinoco River and upright self-propulsion by wheel seen in Homo Rodans come together in Woman’s Happiness, 1956. Here Varo presents the epitome of a Boschian hybrid society and her fascination for humans with machine parts. Elaborately dressed wheeled women race toward a ladies’ fashion boutique. In the display window and on shelves inside the store, fashionable replacement parts such as wheels, pulleys, and gears sit for sale. There is something humorous in this commentary on fashion and consumerism, but at the same time it is alarmingly dystopian. Varo loved science but did not always trust it. Her paintings criticize scientific abuses of authority and an infatuation with gadgetry. She felt that science should not dominate nature but be in harmony with its natural forces.

In conclusion, Remedios Varo delighted in the highly technical renderings of her fantasy machines and hybrid creatures and vessels. They gave her outlet to express the metaphor of journey, isolation, and security that was so central to her work. Boschian “bizarre vehicles” and “terrifying vessels” gave her a means of escape through fantasy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kaplan, Janet A. Remedios Varo: Unexpected Journeys. New York: Cross River Press, Ltd. 1988.