I owe a heartfelt gratitude to William (Bill) Perkins for his generous gift of an art book by Remedious Varo (1908-1963), a woman artist of great surrealism. The title of the above work is Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst, 1960. Thanks, Bill.
Now…the teachings. PART ONE.
I need to say a little about surrealism and what it appears to be. Basically it is art that combines the images of things in any way the artist wishes. It is said to be an attempt to portray or capture the unconscious mind. I would add, it is a method to present the images of mind that seemingly appear to be unrelated, along an irrational sequence.
In other words, it projects the random mental formations of the mind. Remedious Varo’s book title provides us with a clearer understanding of what surrealism is.
“Remedious Varo Science Fictions” is the title presented.
A wonderful title.
Let me explain my understanding of the title.
Remedious Varo is telling us she is creating the knowledge of truth in her images. Science, afterall, is an attempt to discover the cause and effect and the knowledge of truth in the world. Isn’t it?
But, she adds the word fictions to the title which I understand to be her recogniton that images are based in knowledge that is imaginary or untrue. She is painting truth using images - and yet painting images as truth is all unreal. and made up.
WOW!
Do you see your life and all the images around you as knowledge that is ultimately untrue and made up?
Boy, I hope you do. Since knowing that images are untrue and made up provides a doorway to freedom. Let me go a bit further.
What makes the title important to the Path of Teaching is we all rely on images in the mind to explain the world to ourselves. AND… using images that are known, such as a head held upside-down by fingertips, we see it as either dead or sleeping. If we look at it closely, we see what looks like a bearded man’s face hanging in space by two fingertips.
Now is this an image of a real material bearded man’s head held from the end of his beard by a woman’s fingertips?
You decide.
For this teaching I am going to suggest it is a symbol, a message, a science fiction - it is truth that goes beyond rational mental forms. Most of us might say, “IT IS JUST A PAINTING!” That’s all!
YES! Keep that truth in mind. It is a painting. That’s exactly how our mind works - it paints images of things in the mind again and again and again… sometimes with meaning and many times with confusion. We take the images in our mind to be real - don’t we?
Our mental formations prod us to take sides, to pick and choose, to like and dislike. BUT why does that happen when we see in the painting the message that the images are not real. They are disordered and helter skelter, yet we take them seriously.
What prevents us from seeing the surrealism in our mind?
We juxtapose our thoughts in such a way we believe them to be real. Say, one plus one equals two. I have to laugh at this… since what does that actually mean? 1+1 = 2. Numeric symbols placed in a particular order gives us what? It gives us a measurement of some thing in the material world that in and of itself is not real. We just agree to the symbols.
I suggest you study your mind contents as you would study the painting. Notice in the one hand there is a small basket packed with images of things. Varo has things in both hands - the upsidedown head in one and a small basket holding a baby bottle, a time watch, thread, a key, a feather in the other… all symbols in the mind. All of it unreal. None of it is real and yet, we act as though what happens in the mind is real and very, very important.
Art critics see surrealism arising from the unconscious mind - I suggest that the mental formations are random responses to the external world and arise from memories, feelings, wishes, hopes, fears, imagination, and a variety of other errors. I call them errors because most of what comes into the mind is not permanent, not longstanding. Although we often think what comes into the mind as real, permanent, longstanding. We keep all sorts of images in the mind from the external world. But the images are fleeting and changing.
End of Part One. Take a Break. Part Two is Coming at Some Point.
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