Unexpected Journeys: The Art and Life of Remedios Varo (Hardcover)

by Janet A. Kaplan (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 286 pages
• Publisher: Abbeville Press; 1st edition (September 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0896597970
• ISBN-13: 978-0896597976
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,010,982 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine book on underrated female surrealist., November 5, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This book is quite good, and to my knowledge, the only one available covering Varo's work. As such, it is essential for her devotees, and even to some extent, for fans of surrealism. Both Varo and her fellow artist Leonora Carrington, (whose works are thematically and technically very similar) deserve wider appreciation. It is, however, excessive to award the book five stars. The reader might compare it to Druick's "Redon", which, with its simultaneously wide-ranging and penetrating scholarship and analysis, and luminous reproductions epitomizes a five-star art book. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed Kaplan's book.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book changed my life., August 27, 1998

By A Customer

Unexpected Journeys is one of my all-time favorite books. Not only did it give me the opportunity to connect with Remedios Varo, but it expanded my understanding of surrealism, and feminism. The prints are amazing. I couldn't put it down. Thoroughly informative. Kaplan displays rare insight.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Dissapointing, October 6, 2004

By	M. H. Moreno (Mexico City) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Having researched the life and work of Remedios Varo for nearly two years, I have found Janet Kaplan's book a must because she had an astonishing budget and support for having a fine printed book with excellent images and a fairly good biography of this artist. However, having read almost everything published on Varo, reading her own writings and kwnowing the world she lived her last ten years, I consider Kaplan book to be too far fetched on the personal interpretation she makes about Remedios Varo's life and work. Trying her best to make her preconceived ideas about Varo's paintings to fit in, this book is will easely fool those who doesn't know about surrealism, Mexico in the fifties and Remedios Varo.