Gail Hampshire - Creative Commons

Herbariums: Immortal Gardens

04 | 09 | 2021

On the spirit, history, and beauty of herbaria.

Since time immemorial, herbariums have embodied the rarest and most delicate connection between science and art. Books of dried plants, they’ve been a way of immortalizing one of the most essential (and necessary) of human activities: that of exploring nature, interpreting it, and making it our own (or rather, making ourselves a part of nature). In natural science, such documents were born in the Middle Ages. They consist, in essence, of collections of dehydrated flora gathered for research. Specimens are analyzed and decoded. They acquire a scientific name, and then a detailed description to highlight their specific characteristics.

Such compilations of plants have served many purposes. They’ve been used to create medicines, and to record and study the types of life found in one ecosystem or another. They’ve also inspired our creativity and sense of aesthetics. It could be said that herbaria are proof that we’re indebted to the landscape and our interactions with it.

Herbaria are also the materialization of one of the obsessions of human beings: collecting. They imply a desire to know, to apprehend, and to organize the world, or at least our experience of it as we pass through.

The History of Dried Plants

Some experts believe that humankind began storing and preserving plants as soon as their nutritional value was understood. That is, since people have been on the planet. In ancient times, the species understood that the plant world has to be preserved for the species to survive.

But the history of herbariums is linked to the birth of the botanical gardens which not only precede herbaria, but also give them a reason for being. It’s thanks to these spaces that naturalists have been able to understand, gather, and experience living flora.

The first collections of dried plants were known as hortuss siccus, which might be translated as “dried gardens.” The first herbariums came about nearly simultaneously across the world, specifically in Mesopotamia and China, and from these regions they reached Europe and, of course, the Americas.

For their part, the first known herbaria date back to the Middle Ages. These included rather imprecise illustrations of the plants which coincided, more or less, with their descriptions. Later, science brought paper and dissecting technology and, thus, herbariums as we know them today came to be.

How Does a Plant End Up in an Herbarium?

For centuries, botany relied on the observation and conservation of plants for field research. Today, scientists make trips in search of unique, rare, or endangered plants. These are then stored, dehydrated and, in most cases, taken to laboratories and botanical gardens.

Before being archived, dehydrated plants are stored in huge, air-conditioned rooms with temperatures ranging from 10 to 12 degrees Celsius. These rooms are full of unclassified flora. Some specimens will receive their descriptions in 15 days and others may take up to 50 years. It all depends on whether the specimen’s family has been previously researched or not. To be part of an herbarium, specimens need to be in good condition, i.e., not mistreated or broken. Then, a group of specialists will attach each (with glue or needle and thread) to a particular sheet of paper.

Once the relevant information is collected, the document becomes part of the herbarium, a kind of library with iron shelves and sealed doors in which, instead of books, there are flowers and plants arranged, not alphabetically, but according to their families.

But human history has seen in herbariums not just scientific records (never lacking in their beauty), but also herbariums that are works of art. Put more simply, they’re the sources of aesthetic pleasure for their owners. Below are but three remarkable herbariums worth mentioning.

The Mexican National Herbarium

This collection belongs to the National Autonomous University of Mexico. It’s the biggest in Latin America. It was created in 1888 and contain 1.3 million specimens. These are divided into seeds, fungi, lichens, and woods. In this great herbarium, you’ll find specimens found during the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Spain, for example. It was the first great compendium of Mexican plants made after the arrival of the Spanish.

The William and Lynda Steere Herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden

This New York City herbarium is the fourth largest in the world. The collection includes more than 7.3 million species including not only those endemic to the United States, but also many from precise historical moments —such as a type of moss collected by Charles Darwin during his famous voyage on the Beagle. The collection also preserves a series of branches collected during an expedition by James Cook in 1768.

The New York herbarium has placed many of its archives online so that anyone can consult them from anywhere in the world.

The Emily Dickinson Herbarium

A work of art and a delicate collection of mounted plants, this herbarium was compiled by the American poet when she was only 14 years old. A remarkable document dating from 1845, there are at least 424 types of wildflowers collected from the fields of Massachusetts. The volume shows not only the writer’s deep connection with nature, but her extensive knowledge of botany, too. Many of the species contained in the herbarium have been used for subsequent scientific research.

Needless to say, Emily Dickinson’s herbarium is unique, not only for the flora that runs through it, but also for her own handwritten descriptions of the flowers.

A Very Happy Picture, Dorothea Tanning (Vortex of Joy - Creative Commons)

The Women of Surrealism

By: La Vaca Independiente

16 | 11 | 2021

A list of original, subversive, and essential artists.

Something about surrealism makes it a movement impossible to overlook. Perhaps it’s that it works as a panoramic window into our innermost depths, the deepest part of our minds and emotional lives. Many male artists have championed Surrealism, but great female artists were part of the movement, too. And they don’t always get the place they deserve, the women of Surrealism.

The artistic movement was born as a reaction to the catastrophe of the First World War. Its father was a poet and follower of psychoanalysis named André Breton. After living through the devastating armed conflict, he concluded that rational thinking had led humankind to destruction. He felt it was time to rebel against traditional institutions and their modes of thought —to take refuge, perhaps, in the absurdity of Dadaism.

To overcome his lingering pain, Breton began to practice automatism, a writing technique that consists of choosing words at random and then using them to form sentences. Little by little, these exercises with the unconscious led Breton to take notice of the hidden part of his own mind. It’s a recondite place of blocked memories, disconnected ideas, and desires that we’re unwilling or unable to admit.

One night, Breton dreamt of a man cut in half by a window frame. Upon awakening, he had an epiphany: he would create a movement that would give life to Freud’s theories through art. It would be a current that would reconcile the rational with the irrational, which would rescue the dream world, and transform the world through the unconscious.

In 1924, Breton got together with a number of artists who shared the samThe Women of Surrealisme concerns, and after the drafting of a manifesto, Surrealism was founded. It was a space for rebels, anarchists, and madmen who strove to celebrate irrationality.

Despite being an avant-garde movement, one capable of challenging the social order, in the beginning its members were almost exclusively male artists. They were men who saw women as muses or lovers, and never as colleagues.

Feminine Surrealism

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman,” wrote Virginia Woolf. That little sentence cleverly and aptly describes the tiny space female artists have had throughout art history.

The traditional narrative holds that women have served more as an inspiration than as creators themselves. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Proof of this is in the many female painters, sculptors, photographers, and writers who, since the 1930s, joined the Surrealist movement. They are artists who’ve left a mark in a male-dominated environment, at a time when equality was more of a Utopia than anything else. They were brave women who rejected social conventions and explored their own freedoms. They were creators who exercised personal and artistic autonomy, and sometimes didn’t receive the recognition they deserved.

For all the reasons listed above, it’s worth recovering the memory and work of some of them. We’ve chosen five little-known Surrealists whose work definitely changed the way we see the world.

Dorothea Tanning

Tanning is one of the central figures of Surrealism. In her work, one ventures into a universe of dreamlike explorations and unreal spaces. These are almost always divided by doors separating that which no one sees from that which everyone sees. Every work by Dorothea Tanning is replete with a dark symbolism that seeks to challenge our rationality.

Dora Maar

Marr is a legend who was at some point famous for her stormy relationship with Pablo Picasso. But she was a prolific photographer and painter who, from the early years of Surrealism, made clear her own particular look and sensitivity. Her works include portraits of characters excluded from society and who seem to carry their failures on their backs. One of her most famous works is a series of postcards about the creation of the mythical painting Guernica.

Eileen Agar

A British artist born in Argentina. Agar was one of the few women who participated in the legendary International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936. Her work bears a rare magic in transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. Her unique style can be seen throughout the work —from sculptures and collages, to photography. Each of her works displays an eclectic style that brings together the traditional with the avant-garde, abstraction with engineering, and order with chaos.

María Izquierdo

Mexico was home to three great surrealists —Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, and Remedios Varo— but the magnificent work of this one should not be forgotten. In 1930, Izquierdo was one of the first to exhibit her work outside of Mexico. This gave her great international recognition. Among her influences were Antonin Artaud and the great Rufino Tamayo. In her works, there’s always a tribute to the aesthetics and folklore of Mexico, as well as a social criticism questioning the role of women.

Claude Cahun

A French writer, critic, and photographer, through her work, Cahun explored her own identity and unconscious. She was a true subversive who, in addition to questioning and challenging traditional male-female archetypes, critically confronted the Nazi regime. She worked under an androgynous name and once said, “Underneath this mask, there’s another mask,” referring to the many layers making up the inner life of each individual.