Parodies of Pleasure: Remedios Varo’s Queer Surrealism in Narrative and Painting

Abstract

Remedios Varo (1908-1963) wrote numerous surrealist texts that dialogue with her prolific artistic production. Alchemy, feminism, and psychoanalysis have been studied as central themes in her paintings, yet this paper focuses on humor and parody in Varo’s written works –including her letters, short stories, and dreams– to uncover the seminal ideas and images that emerge in her visual art. Humor and parody are fundamental links between Varo’s narrative and paintings. She embraces the spontaneity of the surrealist écriture automatique and the illogical amor fou but at the same time pushes the limits of surrealist dogma and creates a uniquely nonpatriarchal universe in which the female has agency and the blurriness between the male and female anticipates current theories of queer sexualities. Seen through a theoretical lens of parody (Linda Hutcheon) and queerness (Jack Halberstam), Varo’s works propose an alternate reading of surrealism.