COL49 - Chap 1: Remedios Varo

[kelber at mindspring.com]

The tryptych:

http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/varo.htm

A slide show of some of her works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV_TPGDP0cY

Varo links:

http://www.hungryflower.com/leorem/varo.html

A biography:

http://www.amazon.com/Unexpected-Journeys-Janet-Kaplan/dp/0789206277/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241541783&sr=8-6

Ekphrasis, Escape, and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 by Stefan Mattessich. A paper exploring the use of Remedios Varo's artwork in Thomas Pynchon's book, "The Crying of Lot 49":

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.598/8.3mattessich.txt

After looking at Varo's paintings it's easy to think that they inspired the creation of Oedipa and the entire book.  Depending on when Pynchon first saw the Varo exhibit, Varo may have inspired V as well.

Remedios is almost as elusive as V herself.  It's surprising she's not more widely known.  The only record I could find of a museum holding her painting is one painting in Spain, two owned by something called the Virtual Museum of Canada.  Curious, has anyone here ever seen an exhibit of her work?  Looking at her work in miniature seems inadequate.

The Mattessich essay is written in heavy academic-speak.  Whatever points it's making were pretty much lost on me.  Mea culpa!  There's this, though:

"If The Crying of Lot
     49 can be said to contribute in its emphasis upon escape
     to the theorization of political freedom or of a
     genuinely public space in America today, it does so by
     giving us a glimpse of what a rhizomatic "experience"
     might look like. I do not imply by this that Pynchon has
     embedded in his text some "real" content which the
     reader might salvage and claim as its political message,
     but neither do I mean to occlude the "real" behind the
     signifier, or confer upon language the monolithic
     character of a metalanguage."

Again, I don't have a clue what Stephen's getting at here, but it jogged a thought pattern in me.  Is the fascist/control versus anarchistic/freedom divide that Oedipa discovers a political one?  Or is it more of an apolitical meditation on order versus entropy?  I.e., is this a novel, in part, about fascism and political liberation, as VL was?  Something to think about.

The Bordando el Manto Terrestre painting makes Oedipa cry:

"What did she so desire to escape from?  Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, 
soon realizes that her tower, it's height and architecture,are like her ego only incidental:  
that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from 
outside and for no reason at all."

He's not talking about Oedipa the housewife, he's talking about us.  What is the nature of the magic that holds us in our metaphorical towers?  He doesn't appear to be talking about political oppression, social repression or anything of that ilk.  The nature of consciousness? Contemplative, self-aware-intelligence that traps us? Liberation comes from communicating, via WASTE (or via waste.org, as we do).

Laura