Crossing the Threshold: Mysticism, Liminality, and Remedios Varo’s Bordando el manto terrestre (1961–2)

In this article we propose to take up the question of the painter’s work in connection with liminality more explicitly. We will argue that the limen Varo’s heroines cross is a psychological one that takes them through a process culminating in a rebirth of the self, and that to the extent they are in-between identities and involved in a process of initiation, they can be considered liminars (Turner). We will also argue that in order to develop this theme, which culminates in her most autobiographical work, the triptych Bordando el manto terrestre (1961–2), the artist needed to find a way conceptually to bridge surrealism and her interest in mysticism. She would have found a sympathetic approach in Jung, one of the founders of psychoanalysis, who turned explicitly to the question of religion in the troubled thirties, though, as we shall see, she revised his androcentric approach. We will suggest that Jung’s writing helped the artist make a transition from surrealism to esoteric spirituality.

The Re-Enchantment of Surrealism: Remedios Varo’s Visionary Artists

The visionary prowess of the artist was established, in both the visual and verbal arts, by the Symbolists in Fin de siècle France. This article asserts a continuity between the avowed spiritual dimension of their work and the visionary power of surrealist art asserted—despite strong resistance from the centre—by a group of renegade surrealists in the 1920s and beyond. To do so, it explores the artists that Spanish-born Mexican painter Remedios Varo (1908 – 1963) depicts in her work, demonstrating how they might be better understood when analysed in relation to Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff’s (1866?-1949) esoteric aesthetics. In doing so, it reveals a neglected, postsecular trajectory in the history of surrealism.

Commentary on Fine Arts Copyright Act 1862

Legislation conferring copyright protection on paintings, drawings, and photographs for the life of the author plus a seven year post mortem term. The Act was also innovative in de-coupling the copyright term from the event of publication, in providing artists with a new form of ‘moral rights' protection, and in introducing the concept of "originality" as the standard threshold for copyright protection.
The commentary explores the background to the legislation, and in particular, the international copyright regime, the nature of the art market in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the role of the Society of Artists in lobbying for legislative protection, and the impetus which the International Exhibition provided for securing the same. The commentary also considers how the 1862 Bill, in its earliest incarnation, incorporated elements that would have signalled a radical departure from established copyright norms. In particular, the Bill proposed: that copyright protection should not be contingent upon registration; and that protection should be offered on a universal basis, regardless of an artists' nationality, and regardless of where the work in question was created.