A Garden of Earthly Delights

Author(s): Mathew Holmes

Source: AA Files, No. 66 (2013), pp. 37-41
Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture
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This is the English aristocrat Edward James A r\ For insPratin creating this mood

A Garden of

(1907-1984) nailing down the essence of his VJclILlCll Ul of altered reality James's eighteenth-cen

folly-strewn garden at Xilitla, in northeast- ^ tury precursors looked to the paintings of

Earthly Delights

ern Mexico, in a television documentary Krl T.n IV I )| 1 P^HS Claude or Poussin, depicting a polished,

made in the late 1970s. The tower he is talk- ' ^ perfected nature - idealised versions of the
ing about is formed of two immense con- Italian landscape, with all the rough edges

Holmessmoothed out (as god himself would surely

crete columns shaped much like an orchid's Mathew
Mathew Holmes

reproductive organs, with two sets of con- have arranged, if only he'd allowed a day
crete stairs coiled precariously around or two more for the creation). Las Pozas

them, like skewed vertebrae. At a height If I asked my heart and conscience the channels a different kind of baroque. 'An
of around 20m the stairs twist away from incentive behind building a tower, effect reminiscent of Magritte' is what
the columns and collide with each other in p have to admit it was just pure mega- James told a friend he was striving for in

mid-air to create an Escher-style viewing lomania. I think the Aladdin pantomime a scheme that (perhaps thankfully) was
platform. This vertigo-inducing machine had something to do with it, because never realised: a replica of an equestrian
is called the'Stairway to Heaven', reflecting , , ,. , , statue by Verrocchio, blown up to many
, , J . , Aladdin's palace had towers and cupolas . . ... . , ....
its dual aspect: it transports you into the , , , times its original size, and made to teeter
r , , , , 1 rather like this. And then the shapes are
soaring rainforest canopy, but at the same ^ over one of the rainforest cascades.5
time it has no handrail, so if you lose your taken from the shapes of the forest. James was wealthy enough to indulge
any kind of whim. He had inherited a vast
footingyou're in for a breakneck fall. They re sort of instinctively flower
Other structures at Las Pozas ('The shapes and leaf shapes, above all, which estate at West Dean, Sussex, from his father,
Pools') pose different challenges. There's a are inspired by everything around and a second fortune following the prema
'cinema' with no screening room, a 'library' here, but of course nothing is finished, ture demise of his Uncle Frank, who was

with no books, doors that don't open, but- so some of them look very odd.1 crushed by an elephant. Right from the start
tresses that hold nothing up. The concept he used this wealth to pursue his interest
of utility is noticeably absent. So, too, is the concept of shelter. Take in the arts. At Oxford University his circle included Evelyn Waugh

the 'House with Three Storeys that could be Five', for instance, and John Betjeman. He published Betjeman's first book of poetry,
which was notionally a place for visiting friends to stay. It has grand and wrote and published some poems of his own - though another
fireplaces and a dramatic staircase that give it a quite palatial feel: Oxford contemporary, W H Auden, was snarky about his efforts, dis
you could almost be in a stately home - except there are no walls in missing him as a dilettante. While still in his 20s he financed three
the upper storeys, just the minimum of supporting columns, and productions by George Balanchine's first company, Les Ballets 1933,
the floor slabs have circular holes cut in them. If James had ever got admittedly with the ulterior motive of getting the attention of his

around to finishing the place, it would have had a round birdcage disastrously ill-matched wife, an Austrian dancer called Tilly Losch.

elevator that ascended through the floors, allowing its occupants Among these productions was 'The Seven Deadly Sins': music
to eyeball an assortment of wild animals: or vice-versa, because this by Kurt Weill, libretto by Bertolt Brecht, sung by Lotte Lenya and
was going to be a zoo in reverse, with the animals roaming freely starring of course Tilly Losch.
and the humans behind bars.2 'I'd always wanted a place to conserve From ballet James moved on to painting. He became a key patron
wildlife, every conceivable animal,' James said, 'I'd be like Noah and of the early surrealists, taking to their out-of-kilter world like a duck

the Ark if I could'. to water. One of Magritte's most famous works, Not to be Reproduced,
Aladdin's Palace, Noah's Ark... if you were playing a game of free shows us James looking into a mirror. According to his friend, Lady

association here, you might want to add Alice in Wonderland into Diana Menuhin, it's a 'pitch-perfect portrait: Edward looking at the
the mix. The sheer oddness of the structures works together with back of Edward's head, not knowing what he was himself,

the wild beauty of the natural setting - with its primordial trees, Dali's Myth of Narcissus was also painted for Edward James and
trailing lianas and carpets of moss richer than the richest green vel- was in many ways about him.6 James bought all of Dali's output
vets3-to provoke an emotional response: a sense of excitement, but in 1938, and that same year the two of them 'remodelled' Monk
also of confusion, like you're a child again, let loose in a place where ton House - a building his father had commissioned from Edwin

no one has told you the rules. Lutyens - aided and abetted by Kit Nicholson (Ben Nicholson's
Las Pozas is often described as the work of someone unleashed architect-brother) and a youthful Hugh Casson.7 'If I have a criti
from traditional means of expression. But to some extent it can also cism to make of Lutyens, it's that he rather went in for being cot
be seen as the transplanting, into a subtropical setting, of elements tagey', James said. So to get away from that 'cottagey' look new
of the English garden tradition.4 The English garden was a stage for pieces of furniture were designed for the interior: a huge canopied
playing out fantasies of a pastoral or mythic or just plain megaloma- bed based on Nelson's funeral hearse for James's bedroom and
niac character. If you were wealthy enough, you could recreate the a pair of Mae West lips sofas for the living room. James also wanted
Golden Age of Antiquity in your own backyard. A Wiltshire meadow to have the living room walls flop in and out like the insides of
cut through by a stream could be transformed, with a little imagina- a dog's stomach, but in the end had to settle for a static covering

tion, and the use of massive earth-moving of Chesterfield-buttoned velvet instead. On

machines, into the Elysian Fields and the the exterior, the brick facade was enlivened
Overleaf: Edward James and Plutarco Gastelum,
Gastlum,

River Styx. Hollow out a rockface, and you Las Pozas,

Las Pozas,
Xilitla,
Xilitla,Mexico,
Mexico, 1962-84
1962-84 with PurPle and Sreen- PlaSter aPronS were
Edward JamesLas
Archive,
Las Pozas,
Mexico placed under the windows, like sheets
could have Dido's Cave. Edward James Archive,
Pozas,
Mexico
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37

hanging out to dry, and the drainpipes ^\ \ E^EBEI orchids and other plants on the site, like
were made to look like stems of bamboo. Indian shot leaves (papai/a). They became

James and Dal also went together more permanent, too, constructed almost

to visit Sigmund Freud, newly arrived tTM uniformly out of concrete. Which is not

in London, in his house in Maresfield fiel , pr to say that there was any overarching
Gardens, just off the Finchley Road. plan for the garden. Instead, the concrete

Whether or not they talked about the [3 V BE-- / ^orms rew pele-mele. James would do
implications of James's assault on his jiT ^j|hEE^H(PW 'rather clumsy sketches' (his words) for
father's house is not recorded. James BL. Jf, -IS; fragments of structures and then hand
reported simply that they had a 'lovely EBpS; - them over to local workmen - most often
chat'. Dal, however, seems to have tried I - igEil the carpenter Jos Aguilar - for execu
hard to persuade Freud to analyse his tion: 'I do it a bit a time, you see. If
friend, on the grounds that he was 'crazier I said, "Now look, this is how it is going to

than all the surrealists put together. They ^E^ be", they would forget it... The ideas come

pretend, but he's the real thing.' Non- quicker than they can be executed, but
retorts Diana Menuhin. James was I like to make a on every idea.'

'simply an English eccentric, which Dal, For some, this method of working

being Spanish, did not understand'. might suggest a deficit of attention. For

'English eccentricity' is of course ^^E||i^Ej '' others, it's akin to 'surrealist automatic

defined in counterpoint to a rigid social writing', seeking 'only liberation, free

conformism. Increasingly in the late 1930s association and beauty'.9 When asked

James found himself at odds with the PEj^S about these qualities in the late 1970s,
prescribed codes of conduct of his social james himself downplayed his early links

milieu. When his wife sued for divorce, alleging homosexuality, to the movement. He was 'not an intellectual', he said: he did not
he countersued, alleging adultery - which was, in the eyes of his work from his 'intellect inwards', but from his 'subconscious out
peers, a most ungentlemanly thing to do, and they let him know wards'. And 'If I'm a surrealist it's because... I was born one. A great
it. 'In England, the truth is always in bad taste', James reflected number of people are surrealists without every having heard of the

ruefully, years later. movement. These are people for whom the world is not completely
Increasingly, too, James felt hounded by people who were inter- logical. They make the illogical logical... more vivid than life, in the

ested only in his money - meaning not just artists with a project way that dreams can sometimes be more vivid than life.'

to be funded, but also the taxman. He began to move around, The making of these dream structures required a vast input of
a kind of rich but despairing Flying Dutchman, never settling labour - an average of 40 masons, carpenters, bricklayers and black
for more than three months in one place.8 When the Second World smiths worked continuously on the site over a period of 25 years;
War broke out he went to the us, travelling from New York to in the most frenetic period of construction in the late 1970s and
California, to New Mexico and eventually, in 1945, to Mexico itself. early 1980s over 150 were employed. This was a skilled workforce,

What he found there delighted him: an ^ EHH fel H who contributed their own ideas and
environment far removed from the stric- | El knowledge. (In Mexico some 80 per cent
tures of English upper-class society - and * ^domestic construction is self-build, so

the English climate. ' ^ iif&mf a 'arSe percentage of Mexicans know

Edward James acquired Las Pozas, better than most architects who have just

a derelict coffee plantation, in 1947, and SRm L left: school in Europe, how to lay bricks

with his friend, travel guide and admin- ^EB 1| V and build concrete structures.) The

istrator Plutarco Gastlum Esquer began ^^3|: IE U EhEBk^H^B construction was additive, with little
to cultivate orchids (his latest obsession) iBHE . EEBfl^^l thought as to the final scale, but of a high
on a grand scale. To complete the'Garden r Ml ^EE If standard: the'Bamboo Palace'(an echo of

of Eden setup', as he called it, there was a |Sf Monkton) has a particularly fine group

motley collection of animals (birds, deer, } %, over 20 bamboo-like columns,

boa constrictors) that he had been given more than 10m high but only 15cm wide,
or had rescued on his travels. The first anc^ so tensile they almost flutter in the
structures in the garden were designed breeze. In general, though, the structures

to house this menagerie. When a 'once are over~engineered (as are most things
in a century' frost in 1962 wiped out the built without an engineer), using about
orchids, James was forced to shift direc- ~*-1 twice the amount of reinforcing steel as

tion. Looking for something that would 's necessary.

not be destroyed by freak weather, he redi- ^^^EBSBSw During James's extended periods of
rected his efforts towards building. The EEB^ES^?^^ absence, Plutarco Gastlum felt free to

structures began to multiply and take on press ahead with the construction. He
more extravagant forms, mimicking the ^SEHX3e\ -JtL. was the practical one who got things built.
38

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66

Indeed, Gastlum's son Kako describes of man's intelligence by forces that are
Las Pozas as the outcome of a kind of primitive, elemental and irrational'.12

'amicable argument' between the two IJ Which brings us to the question: if you

men. At Plutarco's instigation, the pools see in Las Pozas something worth pre

in the garden were developed to make J fi$- BB serving - a kind of poem in the image of
f *> A
them more enjoyable for everyone to w gp^ Bp
|g a moment in art - how do you slow its
use, including the locals (all waterways : -Bp V BB I \ deterioration, its inevitable progress

in Mexico are publicly owned, even when I; J BH B V\_ jB towards a ruin? Where do you even begin
they run through a private estate).
Y'j The h yB B? BK B . \. l| with an architecture that 'is "wasted" in

new facilities proved just too popular for BB Bju1 : ... an unprecedented fashion ... expensive,
James's liking, and he built up the walls B^BKt H'X B S gratuitous, disorderly, irrational' - and
on the side of the river in an attempt -BH& BB9BH \ ft tbats according to the Unesco World

to stem the influx of people. James was BeBA Heritage Centre's 'Justification of the

displeased, too, when Plutarco drove his BBfljB '&!&*% I I I 31 - Outstanding Universal Value' of the site.13

jeep inside the garden, so he had a circu- Hh| This is precisely the question that the con

lar concrete gateway built that was just ySp^l%j "[ "tf35B ' IB^^^^B- sortium which bought Las Pozas in 2007 a little too narrow for it to squeeze ^ the Fundacin Pedro y Elena Hernndez,

through. The same mould was later used ; | along with the government of San Luis

to make a number of other gates, which Potos and the cement company Cemex one writer tells us 'divide the garden into J, has been trying to figure out.
sections, but never introduce a different 200g saw the start of a delicate pro
mood or a distinct compartment. They ^^^^BBBBB^HBBj^^^&MMMSflH gramme of conservation that treats the
are a surrealist device to mark your pas- sculptures and their natural environ
sage from somewhere to nowhere and back again.'10 ment as two aspects of a single whole. Accordingly, any action to

Just as there was no intellectual rationale underpinning the consolidate a structure has to respect, as far as possible, the exist
garden, there was no planned end in sight to the construction. But ing organic growth. Any accumulation of microorganisms or plants
this didn't perturb James. He'd probably have to live to be 100, he becomes part of the patina of the sculptures, unless it compromises
said, to finish it all: 'But then there's an Arabic proverb that someone their structural stability. Any damaged materials are seen less as
told me once, "Never finish to build thy house", always keep adding something that needs automatically to be eradicated or fixed, and
something. Some Arab sage thought of that, so I can't be too dotty.' more as qualities inherent in the work.
In fact, construction on the site only came to an end when James Initial conservation efforts on individual structures have
died in 1984. He bequeathed the garden to the Gastlum family, but focused on shoring up the House with Three Storeys that could be
made no provision at all for completing or maintaining the struc- Five, and on taking Edward James's Cabin back closer to its origi
tures. If James ever thought about the after-life of his garden, then, nal state. The polar opposite of the sumptuous interiors he was

he perhaps imagined it as an enigmatic ruin, entwined with the accustomed to inhabiting, the cabin forms the simplest possible

encroachingjungle, his own contribution protective carapace: in a poem scrawled

to Mexico's rich culture of ruins. ~ Pencil on one f the walls, James

In practical terms, this makes abso- ' ^^HjB ___ S j describes it as a 'shell', a 'chambered nau

lute sense: there are few environments tilus'. On the ground floor is a cooking

more efficient at consuming buildings ^^Bgfp |S jj; jB^P. area and studio, where the timber floor
than the rainforest, with its rampant g V ' ' has been rebuilt and the walls returned

vegetation, dripping humidity, founda- L vJL ' to their original blue. Near the base of

don-erasing landslips and battalions the wall are two small openings with
of insects. Aesthetically, too, there is little doors, designed to allow James's

a strong justification for this approach. f^fl B B fi *^BBJ8 Pet hoa constrictors to slither into the

Ruins exert a powerful hold on our imagi- ^^^BQBfl BH B B BHB!BB:tB^^H cabin from the cage below (an exquisite

nation, suggesting feelings of both pleas- ^^H^B HHHBjjj^^B structure by the Spanish sculptor Jose

ure and fear, while the combination of | I; Horna, now also restored). Above the

ruins and nature almost always delights. ffW studio is the bedroom, which in turn is

Flaubert rejoiced in 'the sight of vegeta- BBmL^l,/ | jSPB connected to an aviary above: whenever
tion resting upon old ruins; this embrace [ I James felt like some feathered company in

of nature, coming swiftly to bury the work ; I tbe moming> be could open a wire mesh

of man the moment his hand is no longer , J BBB^H^Bm panel and let the birds come in. Outside,

there to defend it'.11 In the same vein, the bamboo facing has been replaced;
Andr Breton and his surrealist group otherwise, the exterior finishes are being
were 'enchanted' by the wild, overgrown left as is - fixed in a way that retains the
eighteenth-century garden at the Dsert weathered feel of the existing paint, with
de Retz, seeing in it 'a symbol of the death H^^^^^^HBBBHBBUH^^^HHB out letting it deteriorate any further.14
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39

The principle of minimum grt) quite specific: nature on a grand

intervention extends to not add- .Y~S scale, wild, unbounded, indomi

ing any 'safety features' to the table. It was not what they would

structures (a freedom that would

I 5"o have wished for their own gar

not be permitted in other coun

tries, like the us or uk, where
most of James's built confections
would be deemed to be in fla

grant breach of every health and

dens, of course: what they were

trying for there was something
more aesthetically rounded, that

Jp

would qualify unequivocally as

'beautiful'. In aesthetic terms,

safety regulation and swathed in

hazard tape). Access to the struc

the sublime was the antithesis

of the beautiful. Both, however,

tures is controlled in terms of

were qualities that were per

numbers, but there is no kind of

ceived emotionally, beauty arous

plan to install handrails to guide Mr I 'Mr ing straightforward feelings of

people up the Stairway to Heaven ' . pleasure, the sublime something
- <^4- /Lop***.
,
- or any of the other precarious much
more
complicated: a pleas

sites - because that would go urable mix of awe and terror in

completely against James's original intention, which was to chai- the face of a much greater elemental force. 'Our Imagination loves
lenge you, stir a host of emotions including, sometimes, fear. to be filled with an Object, or to grasp at any thing that is too big for
And, ultimately, it is this capacity to provoke an emotional its Capacity',15 Joseph Addison wrote, three centuries ago. Las Pozas
response which seems to be the most crucial thingto preserve in the is just such an object, where wild nature and manmade construc
garden. James's eighteenth-century precursors would have called tions are deliberately brought together so as to unlock our response
the setting of Las Pozas 'sublime', by which they meant something to this elemental sublime.
1. Two partly overlapping documentaries

8. The Flying Dutchman image is

George Melly's.
9. From the Unesco report on the World
Heritage Centre's 'tentative' listing

- 'The Secret Life of Edward James'

(1978) by George Melly, and 'Edward

James: Builder of Dreams' (1995)
by Avery Danziger - are the source
of quotes by Edward James, Diana

llo^.

of Las Pozas at http://whc.unesco.org/

en/tentativelists/5493/.

Menuhin and Kako Gastlum.

10. Charles Quest-Ritson, 'The English

2. Another version of Edward James's

man who Found Himself in the Jungle',

Gardens Illustrated, November 2011,

intentions for this structure is given

by Miguelon, a tour guide at Las Pozas,

who says that the circular shaft was

p82.
11. Quoted by Gillian Darley in 'Nothing
Could Have Been Odder or More

going to act as a kind of funnel through

which birds would stream every
morning after spending the night
roosting in the enclosed first-floor

Prophetic', London Review of Books,

29 November 2001.
12. Diana Ketchum, Le Dsert de Retz:

space - a small-scale re-enactment

A Late Eighteenth-Century French

of the famous daily ritual at the

Folly Garden (Cambridge, ma: mit

Press, 1997).
13. Las Pozas was put on the World
Monuments Fund Watch List in 2010,

'Cave of the Swallows' (Stano de

Las Golondrinas) about an hour's
drive away.

3. The image of velvety moss is from

a letter Edward James wrote to his

and since the watch listing the Wilson

Challenge and the Fundacin Pedro
y Elena Hernndez AC have awarded

friend Mae, cited by Irene Herner in

'Edward James and Plutarco Gastlum:

more than $300,000 to support

conservation efforts. In 2013 Las Pozas

A Surrealist Installation in Xilitla'

a paper given at Rice University at the

was awarded the status of a National

end of 2010.

Artistic Monument by the Instituto

4. Dawn Ades, in a Radio 3 'Sunday

Feature: Edward James and the Surreal

Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico.

14. With the assistance of bamboo

Garden', broadcast on 17 June 2012.

5. Quote from a letter from Edward

expert William Clinton, the site

workers - some of whom go back to
Edward James's time - have been

James to his friend Mae, cited by Irene

Herner, op cit.

taught a new process of preserving

the bamboo by dipping it in a bath

6. Dawn Ades, op cit.

7. Xavier Guzmn Urbiola has written

of minerals and salts.

more extensively about this collabora

tion in 'Edward James, un surrealista

15. Joseph Addison, 'The Pleasures of the

Imagination', The Spectator 412 (1712).

ingls y su arquitectura en Xilitla' in

Ruiz-Funes, Garrido (eds), Presencia

de las Migraciones Europeas en la
Arquitectura Latinoamericana del Siglo

xx (Mexico DF: Universidad Nacional

Autnoma de Mxico, 2009), pp 126-39.

Above: Edward James, sketches for garden ornaments, Las Pozas, c 1975
Edward James Archive, Las Pozas, Mexico
Opposite: Ren Magritte, Not to be Reproduced, 1937

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

40

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- >- v

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