Atelier  Aleister Crowley

Catalog of Paintings and Drawings

Atelier Thelema – Aleister Crowley's paintings and drawings - 1 Atelier 

Atelier Thelema – Aleister Crowley's paintings and drawings - 2 It is well known that Aleister Crowley had an enourmous influence on the artistic sphere during past century - and still today.

In a 1947 article, the international review Time recognized him as "the unsung hero of the hippies". Nevertheless the limited reference to a size that is just a part of his influence (that extends to the complete literary world and to philosophy) this definition allow to see how his thought and the works through by it is expressed had permeated the whole dimension of the most popular forms of contemporary art.

Beat literature is in fact strictly melted with rock music, and the shadow of Aleister Crowley is everywhere in this domain, because his writings owe the kind of modernity that contemporary times looking for.

Atelier Thelema – Aleister Crowley's paintings and drawings - 3 The article quoted above begins saying that «Edward Alexander ("Aleister") Crowley was born (...) into a conventional world. Being conventional, that world pretended that it was easily shocked. Aleister determined to be a shocking young man. He went to Cambridge and became interested in magick (as he insisted on spelling the word). On a legacy of £30,000 he traveled to China and Tibet for further studies in the black art. Most of his books and poems (Clouds Without Water, The Winged Beetle, Confessions') were printed privately because of their obscenity.”»

Here we may recognize the common stereotype about his personality: to be an eccentric and to be a person interested in magic and therefore a satanist. But Aleister Crowley was too aware of the complex nature of the soul to fall in a so easy and superficial misunderstanding.

Atelier Thelema – Aleister Crowley's paintings and drawings - 4 The object of the research of A.C. is a modern way to conceive magic as a system to inquire the unconscious and, doing this, conquering new spaces of consciousness.

This is the prismatic light through by we may see the convergence between the early years of XX century (the Liberty, l'Art Noveau and the first steps towards the understanding that the industrial revolution could set free people from hard work, going towards the spiritual dimension of life) and the restarting process after WWII that permeates new music and art with the touch of the revival of magic and the beat literature.

In his writings, A.C. demonstrates to understand the metaphysical level of interpretation of phaenomena, the supreme unity of all beings into the perfect Light, as well the uncomplete dimension of the earthly experience, that cannot relegated in the unbalanced dualistic understanding, that is just for stupid people.

Atelier Thelema – Aleister Crowley's paintings and drawings - 5 The better explanation is given in the book of the Four L - Liberty, Love, Life and Light - the four gifts given to each living soul.

Even the famous phrase “Do what thou wilt”, usually took by adverse critics as demonstration of arbitrary thought, in the writings of A.C. is clearly disposed in a different way.

«“Do what thou wilt” does not mean “Do what you like”. It is the apotheosis of Freedom, but it is also the strictest possible bond», as he wrote on Liber 2.

This explanation shows another understanding of big importance, that is the way to find real Will as key of realization. Real Will is beyond the egoic level, and needs to meet the transcendental Will to be realized.

This is not related to egoistic desires and neither to ordinary consciousness: the uneasy understanding of this has been produceing mistakes and the attempt of adversary to reduce the meaning of this philosophical work.

Atelier Thelema – Aleister Crowley's paintings and drawings - 6 These words are just an introduction to the complex world of A.C.'s thought and works.

In add, we are presenting here not the thinker but the painter. Painting was for Crowley not the main form of his work but, nevertheless, another dimension of his need of expression.

In the first exhibition at the Nierendorff Gallery in Berlin in 1931, his painting were labeled as “expressionist”.

We may find something of that way to use colors and of that special attempt to transcend ordinary perceptions of reality. Kirchner, a major exponent of that avant-garde, was used to quote Nietzsche affirming that «man is a gate, not a goal». In a similar way, we may find in the works of Aleister Crowley something of the “need of expression” that in Kandinsky's writings keads to the spiritual meaning of painting, if we dare interpret “spirituality” as in beat literature.

Atelier Thelema – Aleister Crowley's paintings and drawings - 7 Approaching the work of Crowley as a painter, the key is not in trying to find or not the same kind of artistic quality between writings and paintings. The real theme is to add a new instrument to go deeper inside the psychology of the artist.

This is the reason to create this catalog, that we show here as a gift.

Do what thou wilt and no one shall say nay.

Atelier Thelema, MMXII,  in 

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Aleister Crowley ca 1920 Entering A.C. Imaginery

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Aleister Crowley ca 1920 Alchemical Allegory

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Aleister Crowley 1920 Attraction towards experiences of joy and pain

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Aleister Crowley 1920 The uniqueness of the Crowley's touch is in every object of his art

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Aleister Crowley>/artist> ca 1920 Even in a neutral subject as it is landscape, Crowley is able to find a way to describe the full sense of mystery that is inside nature

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Aleister Crowley May 1918 The Liberal Club was located in Greenwich Village in Manhattan; the portrait (that was realized in watercolor) shows the psychological inquire attitude of Crowley. The portrait is given at a date that is before the season of Crowley's experiments with oil.

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Aleister Crowley 1919 Appeared in “The Blue Equinox” n. III / 1 (Spring Equinox)

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Aleister Crowley May 1995 (drawn) This image has beeb used for the frontispiece to “the confessions of Aleister Crowley” edited by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant.(published by Hill and Wang, New York 1969) The image is very close to the one of Lam, a “disincarnated intelligence” that Crowley claimed to be in touch with him

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Aleister Crowley 1918 This drawn was used as frontispiece to Liber 71, Crowley’s commentary on The Voice of the Silence by Madame Blavatsky, published in Vol. III No 1 of The Equinox. The inscription on the Lam frontispiece was titled, ”The Way” and further said: LAM in the Tibetan word for Way or Path, and LAMA is He who Goeth.

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Aleister Crowley 1918 Perhaps the first work made as olio on canvas. Above, the words “Do What Thou Wilt”.

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Aleister Crowley 1920 Study for the V Tarot Arcanum

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Aleister Crowley 1920 Study for the XVIII Tarot Arcanum

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Aleister Crowley 1918 This drawing is relate to the The Ship (published in The Equinox I.10, September 1913), a drama where the Crowley's idea of theatre is given in complete shape, a dramatic rendering of traditional ritual, using the Golden Dawn standards: the characters are all robed; the set includes symbolic scenery and veils; and the characters all use secret signs and words

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Aleister Crowley 1920 (?) This painting can be related to the expressionist dimension of the Crowley's imaginary, and to that special “attraction to experiences of pleasure and pain” that are related to body's sensations. The attempt to go beyond and further to the “Vallum Abiegni” and the conscious choice to not avoid any experience are depicted here with a manifestation of tremendous..

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Aleister Crowley 1920 This is the portrait of the woman that was the mother of a daughter of Aleister Crowley, Lulu. Ninette stayed at Thelema abbey, and she was the last person to leave after the order given by the fascist goverrnment in 1923.

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Aleister Crowley 1920 Leah was the main partner of Aleister Crowley in his magical work. She was the leader woman during the experience of the Thelema Abbey

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Aleister Crowley 1921 In the bedroom of the Thelema Abbay

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Aleister Crowley 1921 This drawing shows the beast nature of the woman

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Aleister Crowley 1918 Section of the doors of the “Cauchemare's room”

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Book of the exhibition held at the October Gallery (24 Old Gloucester Street, London) from 8th April to 18th April 1998 As the colophon of the October Gallery's says, “Better known for his writings on Magick than as a painter, this unique retrospective of the collected works of 'the Master Therion' constitutes the only public exhibition of his expressionistic work since its first showing at the Nierendorff Gallery in Berlin in 1931. “

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Archè unknown The catalogue collects the paintings of the Abbey of Thelema

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Kenneth Anger 1969 This photogram is taken by the Kenneth Anger's film that is the connective link between Aleister Crowley's art and the beat and rock culture that were the keys to the general influence of Crowley's thought on contemporary art. The soundtrack of the film was performed by Mick Jagger.

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Kenneth Anger 1972 The picture shows Jimmy Page with the crowleyan “Stele” in the hands and the face of the Master appearing in front of him. This would have been the soundtrack for the homonimous film of Kenneth Anger, but some trouble happen between the musician and the director, so the official soundtrack was composed by Bobby Beausoleil. Page republished the material in 2012

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Jim Morrison and the Doors 1970 In the picture, Morrison holds between his hands a statue of Aleister Crowley

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The Beatles 1967 In the cover of the famous album, “a collection of people that we like” said the Beatles, Crowley is in the back row, the second person from the left.

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Beresford Egan 1929 This novel had a great influence on rock music, as in the homonimous song of The Rolling Stones and in the title of the famous Pink Floyd's album “The dark side of the moon”, that is the title of the chapter XVIII of this romance. The image appeared in the 1929's edition published by Mandrake Press

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Jimmy Page and William Burroughs 1975 In this number of the musical review “Crawdaddy”, an interview to Jimmy Page by Bill Burroughs, talking about the influence of magic on beat and rock music. About this matter, references may be find also in Ginzberg's quotation and interviews, like the one released to Hal Willner.

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Aleister Crowley 1919 The Equinox was the review directed by aleister Crowley. Herem for the first time, were published the rituals of the Golden Dawn, the main source of modern magic as way to investigate the unconscious

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Unknown Unknown Image of the house were the experience of the utopian magic community was held by Aleister Crowely

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Davide Crimi 2009 Inside the ruin of the Thelema Home

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Leon Engers Kennedy 1918 Painted from life, this image conveys the mystical and transcendental aspects of Crowley's fame, without the demonic qualities of his self-portraits. Leon Engers-Kennedy had joined Crowley's occult society in 1912, and when they re-met in New York in 1917, Engers-Kennedy gave him house-room, and they both experimented with painting. The portrait forms the frontispiece for Crowley's The Equinox (III, No.1, 1919), and the dust wrapper of John Symonds's biography, King of the Shadow Realm (1989).

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