Surreal Women

I’ve never really been a connoisseur of the visual arts. I’m not drawn to them the way I am to music or writing, so I don’t really know much about them - any artists beyond the famous ones, the terms for techniques, movements, styles.

However I do know, on a basic level, what I like: surrealism. So when I was in Spain with my family this summer, I requested a daytrip from Barcelona to Figueres, where the Dali museum is housed. It’s a bizarre place, with eggs on the walls and sinks on the ceilings - there were many individual pieces I liked but overall it gave the impression of a man being weird for the sake of being weird. Since I’ve come home, I’ve been doing what I’ve never done before: researching painters.

This woman is my favorite that I’ve found so far: Remedios Varo. From her wikipedia article, which describes her about as well as any other article I’ve found:

The sense of isolation was achieved again and again as Varo secluded her characters in one environment or another, conveying an extraordinarily powerful message to those who paid attention long enough to notice it. Her use of seemingly autobiographical characters---confined and held captive by forces unknown---could be seen as exposing the dynamic of superiority that is inherent in male surrealist’s misuse of women as muses. It could be interpreted that her paintings are responses to the marginalization of women; portrayals of the characteristic misogynist treatment of women artists by the male surrealists by likening her characters and chimerical figures to prisoners.

Here are some of my favorite paintings of hers:

The Useless Scientist

Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle

Reborn

Hairy Locomotion

The Other Timepiece