Remedios Varo at the Art Institute of Chicago

 

Remedios Varo,  Creation of the Birds, 1957 (detail)

Thanks to Seymour Rosofsky and other Chicago Imagists, our local artworld is familiar with a secular, lighthearted, even comic variation of that European inward looking practice called surrealism.  Remedios Varo (1908-1963) has some of that, but her work is infused with historic Christian art rather than American popular entertainment.

Uccello, Procession of the re-ordained in a church, 1469 (from the Miracle of the Desecrated Host)

Her imagination was strongly affected by the early Renaissance in Italy - especially Paolo Uccello’s  (1397-1475) conflation of Albertian pictorial space with Christian mysticism.  Isn’t the above example magical and delightful?  It’s also horrible - ensconced in a narrative series that culminates with the public burning of a Jew at the stake on absurd charges - along with his wife and two young children.

Varo, Out of the Tower, 1960 (detail)

There’s something strange and a bit creepy about the above image by Varo, but the iconography is strictly personal and puzzling.  Much more charming than malevolent, or even ominous.  More like fanciful - and so we can consider her work more like entertainment than prophesy or revelation.  Like Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, Varo provides charm and technical virtuosity —  with a shiny veneer of erudition.  The exhibit is like a box of  expensive ,  hand crafted, chocolates filled with creams of exotic flavors.  And her technique is especially impressive - with the linear precision of engineering drawing combined with  paint that has been dripped and blown as well as brushed. The sense of a dream-like inner illumination rather than sunlight is also remarkable.

 

Though far removed from Chicago gallery artists, Varo is not so different from another local artist,  Rita O'hara,  whose work is more distant from the Quattrocento, but often more like a serious encounter with a contemporary human psyche.

 

 

 

Rita O'Hara 

This piece appears to be an homage to Varo. 

It’s the heartfelt imagination escaping from a dreary existence.

Varo, The Juggler (Magician)  (detail), 1956

I’m not sure that this piece was meant only to entertain - but if the intended content were serious, what might it be?  Something wrong may be happening: having lost their identity,  those poor, dreary people are in thrall to  some kind of magical spirit. It would certainly work as an allegory for contemporary American populism.  Other interpretations see it as a positive, enlightening experience for the crowd.

Or perhaps - that ambivalence was intended.

Hieronymus  Bosch, The Conjurer, 1502. (Possibly a copy)

Some have related it to this earlier painting.