Remedios Varo’s whimsical recipes, dream mapping exercises, and blending mysticism directly into active art production.
Varo didn’t view her mind as an untamed wilderness; she viewed it as a laboratory. She followed the teachings of philosopher George Gurdjieff, who believed that true higher consciousness requires immense personal discipline, active self-observation, and deliberate physical action.
To bridge the gap between her waking studio hours and her sleeping hours, Varo relied on core psychological rituals to deliberately prime her imagination:
- The Absurd Recipe (Environmental Programming): Varo didn’t just passively hope for a good idea before bed. By writing out elaborate, meticulous behavioral instructions, like sleeping with clothespins on her toes at precise 45-degree angles or scattering specific feathers across her bedsheets, she was practicing a form of psychological conditioning. She proved that taking highly structured, intentional actions in your physical environment tricks the subconscious into waking up and producing vivid imagery on command.
- The Mathematical Distortion (Perspective Games): Varo grew up learning engineering drafting from her father, meaning she understood flawless, rigid perspective. But she actively chose to break it. She would mathematically map out a room or a scene, and then deliberately distort the lines to see how an altered reality made her feel. She used precise rules strictly as a launchpad to step into a dreamscape.
- Weaving the Spells (Collaborative Play): Alongside her friend and neighbor, the artist Leonora Carrington, Varo spent evenings in the kitchen creating physical “spells” and surrealist dinner parties. They would mix bizarre ingredients, write letters to complete strangers chosen at random from the phone book, and treat everyday domestic life as a playground for the subconscious. By actively seeking out wonder in the mundane, her brain was always on high alert for creative lightning.
Armed with Varo’s philosophy that a structured, physical disruption of your routine can shock the subconscious into action, I decided to stop being a passive bystander to my own dreams. I wanted to see if her alchemical framework could actually yield usable imagery for my toy photography.
So, I gathered my supplies, modified her checklist to protect my household from total chaos, and conducted my own controlled dreaming experiment.
The Fated Night
It was about 10 PM. I put about a tablespoon of fresh horseradish in a small bowl, grabbed my notebook a pen and 2 clothespins and made my way down the hallway to bed. I had already taken out my contacts and realized this would make the being silly in the mirror portion a bit difficult, so I settled for being silly in my phone. One of the clothespins disappeared either in my climbing into bed or my walk to the bedroom so I elected to silly walk down the hallway to grab another then silly walk back. I turned on my side table lamp and off the overhead lights and sat down in bed, my horseradish on my side table, my pillow to the side of the bed to interrupt my sleep without moving furniture, and my notebook and pen to the foot of the bed for easy reach in the morning.
I made silly faces and danced while looking at myself in my phone’s front camera, put clothespins on each of my big toes, then laid my head down on my oddly placed pillow, turned off my lamp and grabbed my horseradish to breathe in.
I couldn’t fall asleep.
The clothespin on my left toe while noticeable, sat painless. The one on my right toe hurt. So I decided one clothespin on one toe would due, took the clothespin off my right toe, laid my head back down, breathed in more horseradish, and soon enough I was able to fall asleep.
Although I went to bed a little earlier than normal, I slept late, getting to work an hour and a half after I should have. I thankfully can get away with that on occasion.
I had dreamt. Nothing I can think of a good image for currently, but I’ll relay the dream to you anyway.
A note that you shouldn’t take the personal details of my dream as true in my waking life. They are not.
I was in the car with my boyfriend, we pulled into a movie theater parking lot. It was very busy and we couldn’t immediately find a spot. Eventually we did, we pulled in, got out of the car and made our way to a 2-walled booth, similar to a bus stop, where we sat to look at the movie titles.
Others also wanted to get into the booth but it was for one customer at a time. We turned into a different couple and tried to scare a man away. It didn’t work and he joined us in the booth.
We went back to ourselves and climbed out of the booth awkwardly as a child and her mom came in.
Next we were inside the concession room, a large cafeteria. Ariana Grande was there working and avoiding me. I knew her well from my masters program classes we were taking together but I think she was embarrassed by this being her job. I asked James, my boyfriend if I should say hi or leave her be. Internally I thought of the other boyfriend I had when I was at school and wondered if Ariana thought the two didn’t know of each other.
James sent me to go alone into the other room to look for and purchase movie tickets. I opened the door and got some sort of sticky substance all over my hand. I went to the restroom to scrub the substance off and while doing so met many employees and joked with them for some time.
I finally got to the room to buy tickets and couldn’t find a listing of either of the movies we were looking for, although I continually forgot the name of one of the movies. I decided to buy popcorn (which for some reason could also be bought in the ticket room), and to tell James we would just enjoy the popcorn at home. I thought of my elimination diet (that I am currently doing in real life) and how I am not supposed to have corn. A handful wouldn’t hurt…
I then woke up, having slept through 2 alarms.
Will I try this again? I’m not sure. There is something to mixing up your sleep process and infiltrating your senses I’m sure, and I have looked into trying a similar practice with mugwort. However, the clothespins and watching myself be silly don’t seem useful at least personally. Time will tell.
Your Turn
So what do you think of this process. Have you tried it? Will you? Was my failure in not filling my whole space with smells (my boyfriend is asthmatic) and not moving all my furniture? Leave a comment below to let us know all your thoughts.
Sources Used in this Post:
- Letters, Dreams & Other Writings by Remedios Varo: The foundational source for her eccentric, satirical behavioral recipes (deftly translated into English by Margaret Carson).
- The Art Institute of Chicago (Remedios Varo: Science Fictions): Technical findings and archival records from the landmark exhibition, which analyzed her precise architectural drafting, drawings, and unique canvas techniques.
- “A Taxonomy of Techniques” Conservation Research Video: A comprehensive material study by museum conservators Mary Broadway and Katrina Rush, detailing her mechanical transfer process, sgraffito, and physical studio artifacts.
- The Cosmic Fantasies of Remedios Varo (Apollo Magazine): Historical analysis documenting her connections to George Gurdjieff’s esoteric philosophies on rigorous physical discipline and conscious self-observation.
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