8/11/2019 On Edward James

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14LIFE & ARTS FINANCIAL TIMES DECEMBER 29/DECEMBER 30 2007

Where a poet played GodConstance Wyndhamon the challenges facing Edward Jamess ruined Surrealist masterpiece in Mexico

The story of how Edward James(1907-84), the millionaire poet,painter and patron to the Sur-realists, escaped to Mexico to

build a garden in the jungle has oftenbeen told. The famously eccentricJames known for boiling his paperclips in eau de cologne for fear ofgerms moved to Mexico in the late1930s to escape judgemental Englishhigh society after the collapse of hismarriage to the dancer Tilly Losch.

There, on a hillside deep in the SierraMadre jungle, outside the town of Xil-itla, James spent 40 years building LasPozas (The Pools), a name that refers tothe focal point of the garden ninepools filled by a natural waterfall. HereJames designed and built a sprawlingSurrealist-inspired garden full of large,colourful sculptures and more than 30fanciful concrete structures, some over100ft high, where James lived intermit-tently surrounded by pet ocelots and

boa constrictors.Since his death, however, Las Pozas

has been slowly losing the battleagainst the elements and the dense,encroaching foliage: James wouldprobably have delighted in the paradoxthat his sculptures are actually feedingthe jungle that is destroying them.Concrete paths wind through the dampforest, with gnarled roots forcing them-selves between the cracks. Plants grow-ing around the structures are nour-ished by minerals in the green mossand lichen that covers them. Epiphyteroots dangle down from the structures,filtering the afternoon light. One imag-ines that the place, in its semi-decayedstate and completely in tune with thesurrounding jungle, is now more beau-tiful than ever. This is the most strik-ing aspect of Las Pozas: the synchronic-ity of the creation with its environ-ment. Art and nature are so inter-twined that its often hard to tell thedifference between a concrete columnand a tree trunk.

It was obvious that the jungle wasgoing to win in the end, however.

Despite his love of the place, James,the inheritor of an American railwayand timber fortune, was famously cha-otic, and he failed to leave sufficientmoney for the upkeep of the gardens.

In June this past year, a group of LasPozas enthusiasts came to the rescue.The Xilitla Foundation, set up by Rob-

erto Hernndez and his wife ClaudiaMadrazo, with contributions from thelocal government of San Luis Potosand Mexican cement company Cemex,bought Las Pozas from the Gastelumfamily for $2.2m. Plutarco Gastelumhas been running Las Pozas since thedeath of his father also called Plu-tarco who was Edward Jamess closefriend and project manager. In lateNovember, advisers and trustees of thefoundation met for the first time todiscuss the conservation of the fragilestructures and the future of the 80-acresite. Damian Fraser, foundation chair-man and a banker with UBS, chairedthe meeting in El Castillo, a hotel thatwas once Jamess house in Xilitla.

Hernndez, the chief benefactor, is asuccessful banker turned philanthro-pist, and he convinced his friendLorenzo Zambrano, head of Cemex, toget involved. Zambrano sent represent-ative Juan Jos Flores to the meeting,while Roberto Vazquez, the regionssecretary of culture, represented thegovernor of San Luis Potos. Othertrustees are Caroline Egremont, trusteeof the Edward James Foundation,which runs West Dean, a college forconservation in West Sussex, LynneCooke of the Dia Foundation andMichael Govan, director of Los AngelesCounty Museum of Art, plus Mexicanarchitects and historians.

Salvador Dal described EdwardJames as crazier than all the Surreal-ists put together. They pretend, but heis the real thing. According to AveryDanziger, who lived in Xilitla and madean evocative film about James entitledBuilder of Dreams, he hired a composerto write a requiem for his dying alliga-

tor, and shipped his animals around incrates marked spare parts. Danzigerunderstands James, above all else, asan entertainer. He had a strange sen-sibility, he says. His love of thingswas for their surface. He loved animals,but it wasnt a real love, it was morefor entertainment.

Accounts such as these have madeJames into something of a cult figure.Irene Herner, an art historian andadmirer of Las Pozas, is, however, keenfor the foundation to see beyond theseanecdotes, and resist the temptation topreserve Las Pozas as a shrine to the

personality of Edward James. LasPozas is very much part of the local lifein Xilitla and local children come dailyto swim and frolic in the freezing pools.

Apart from Mexican families and theodd aficionado of Surrealism, visitorsto Las Pozas are mostly psychedelictourists willing to make the nine-hour

drive from Mexico City heavily dread-locked characters in search of mindexpansion can often be spotted wan-dering among the structures. The foun-dations plans to subsidise flights tothe local airport of Tamun will makethe site accessible to a wider range oftourists, but their number will be regu-lated. Entrance fees are to be enforced,but plans are for locals to have passesallowing them regular access to thepools.

We mustnt make it a Mont Saint-Michel an empty box full of souve-nirs, Herner says, and Cemex has

responded with a suggestion toinvolve artists in the conservation ofLas Pozass structures.

The foundation is in dire need ofdonations. If it is as incredible as yousay it is, we would have heard of italready, was the SmithsonianMuseums reply to Danzigers request

for funding to help save Las Pozas in1990. Danziger thinks the only way toget the $5m needed is to bring poten-tial donors to the site.

Describing Las Pozas is like tryingto describe the Rothko Chapel youcant, he says, as we sit below tower-ing bamboo-like constructions wavingin the wind. It doesnt look good onpaper; you have to come here to beseduced. Above, a staircase spirals upinto the sky and a bridge flanked byconcrete fleur-de-lys leads up to thepools, where the water pressure isdamaging some of the structures. On

the way are concrete hands, heads andan eye-shaped bath, all looking ratherworse for wear.

The challenge is how to go aboutmaintaining the spirit of Las Pozaswithout losing its character, saysFraser. But the site is a health andsafety inspectors nightmare. By mid-afternoon the brilliant sunshine isdwindling, the shadows are lengthen-ing and the moss-covered pathsare becoming slippery. Staircasesencourage visitors to climb to terrify-ing heights, and several teeteringstructures are only propped haphaz-ardly with wooden beams. The placewould be ruined by a proliferation ofwarning signs and safety rails, butmore information is needed one ideais to have signs informing visitors ofJamess poetic names for the struc-tures The House with a Roof like aWhale, for instance, or The HouseWith Three Storeys That Might BeFive. It wont be a didactic experi-ence, it must remain a voyage of dis-covery, Fraser says.

Las Pozas is already a government

protected area and the foundation ishoping for World Heritage Site status,so the site itself is secure. The worryis the surrounding land. With newmoney comes new interest , andthe renaissance of Las Pozas could beeasily exploited by other businessinterests. The foundation failed tobuy land across the road from the

entrance to Las Pozas, and it was sub-sequently bought by Juan IgnacioTorres Lander, a charismatic local pol-itician turned businessman. When hehosted a party in his restaurant underLas Pozas, Torres Lander, a rock fan,illuminated Jamess stairs and playedLed Zeppelins Stairway to Heavenat top volume.

The foundation has a range of ideasfor Las Pozas. One possibility, in keep-ing with Jamess love of orchids, isto create a centre for the study ofindigenous Mexican varieties. A planto create a studio for the restoration of

concrete has also been discussed andsome hope for Xilitla to become a glo-bal centre of Surrealism, completewith reference libraries and interna-tional symposiums. Las Pozas is fullof butterflies one story goes thatJames decided to built his gardenhere when a swarm of butterflies set-tled on Gastelum while they weresunbathing at the pools and anothersuggestion is to make a butterfly nurs-ery there, and perhaps invite the artistDamien Hirst, who spends time inMexico, to exhibit pieces he has madeusing butterflies.

Considering the bold nature of itscreator, the ambitious ideas flyinground the November meeting for thefuture of Las Pozas did not seem out ofplace. Positive spirit is rife in Mexicoand it was here, after all, that Jameswas able to build these extraordinarydesigns with nothing more than imagi-nation and manpower. When heproposed to make a simple pond out ofcoloured concrete at Monkton, hishouse in West Sussex, the gardenertold him that it simply wouldnt work.

No one knows what James had inmind for the future of Las Pozas. Heonce said he wanted it to be discov-ered as the ruins of an ancient civilisa-tion, and in another 20 years, if it werenot for the vision of Hernndez andthe work of this new foundation, thatis probably what would have hap-pened.

Paradise lost? Edward James in his Eden-like creation in the gardens of Las Pozas Main picture: www.averydanziger.com/Luis Felix Other pictures: Constance Wyndham

Psychedelic tourists insearch of mind expansioncan often be spottedwandering among thefanciful concretestructures

Arts

Edward James and the Surrealist movement

Although Edward James was knownas the English Surrealist, his fatherWilliam was an American railroadmagnate who moved to Britain andmarried an English socialite, EvelynForbes. On his fathers death in 1912,the 19-year-old Edward inherited thehuge fortune that allowed him to indulgehis artistic passions: he was a poet andoccasional painter himself but hisdeepest enthusiasm was for theemerging Surrealist movement. Withits interest in fantasy, fetishes andescapism, it was a movement born of

the upheavals of the first world war.James became one of Surrealisms

most generous patrons, as well as apractitioner: he befriended RenMagritte and bankrolled Salvador Dalthrough some difficult years in the1930s, when the Catalan was at odds

with the other Surrealists over hissupport for Franco. James sponsoredMinotaur, the Surrealist magazinepublished lavishly in Paris, andthroughout this period he was adding tothe quirky treasures at Monkton House,his home in Sussex, which came to beacknowledged as the best privatecollection of such work: he eventuallyowned more than 40 important worksby Dal. It was for Monkton House thatDal created the famous lobstertelephones and the vermilion sofa in theshape of Mae Wests lips: here too

James had a stair carpet speciallywoven that bore the bare footprints ofhis wife, the dancer Tilly Losch.

James is the subject of at least twoimportant paintings by Magritte, bothpowerful statements on alienation: inThe Pleasure Principle: Portrait of

Edward James, the sitters head isablaze in a luminous fireball; the otheris La Rproduction Interdite (left).

After 1940, when James and his wifehad parted, the increasingly eccentricmillionaire spent more and more timein Mexico, and there he created hisown Surrealist masterpiece, thegardens at Las Pozas, a magnificentembodiment of Dals definition of theideal Surrealist object, which should be:absolutely useless from the practicaland rational point of view, createdwholly for the purpose of materialising

in a fetishistic way, with the maximumof tangible reality, ideas and fantasieshaving a delirious character.

Edward James in Ren Magrittes La

Rproduction interdite, 1937 Museum Boijmans

Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, ADAGP, Paris/DACS, London 2007

Edward James would havedelighted in the paradoxthat his sculptures areactually feeding the junglethat is destroying them