Art Is Magick

Dane Mitchell Non-Verbal Gestures 1–4 2015 and Celestial Fields 2012, in Occulture, City Gallery Wellington, 2017. Yin-Ju Chen Liquidation Maps 2014, in Occulture, City Gallery Wellington, 2017. Jason Greig The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 2010 and Simon Cuming Untitled 2010, in Occulture, City Gallery Wellington, 2017. Mikala Dwyer Balancing Spell for a Corner (Aleister and Rosaleen) 2017, in Occulture, City Gallery Wellington, 2017. THE TERM ‘occult’ does not deserve its bad holistic, spiritual pathways). Thomson & reputation. It simply means that which is Craighead satirise this condition with their hidden or concealed—like when the light work in this exhibition, Apocalypse (2016)— cast by a star is blocked by an object passing a luxury perfume made from the olfactory in front of it, known in astronomy as ‘stellar materials listed in the Book of Revelation. occultation’. It’s our projection onto what What was once sacred, blasphemous, or happens in this state of darkness that grants countercultural is now commodified and such phenomena portentous possibilities, marketed back to us. Kenneth Anger’s recent as well as the hubristic assumption that release of bomber jackets emblazoned with humanity observes this darkness from the logo from his film Lucifer Rising (1970– OF THE the correct vantage point. Throughout 81)—replicas of the one worn by its titular history, occult beliefs and practices have character—plays into this new condition. been shunned, banned, and driven (or have This is countercultural occult merchandise driven themselves) underground. Yet, certain reissued for the occultural moment. This is DEVIL’S PARTY: moments have welcomed their alternative occulture. possibilities. We live in one such time that Art and the occult have a long, reaches into the dark. intertwined history. There have been too many British academic Christopher Partridge occult revivals to name. Key moments include coined the term ‘occulture’ to account for this nineteenth-century fin-de-siècle Europe, CONTEMPORARY process of contemporary ‘re-enchantment’.1 when the technological and scientific advances He argues that, as the influence of traditional of the industrial revolution sent the symbolists religion wanes, a confluence of secularisation and others scrambling in the opposite and sacralisation has seen western culture direction. Kandinsky, Mondrian, and other ART AND embrace the occult, and remake it in its modernists famously sought ‘the spiritual in own image. Occult, esoteric, and spiritualist art’, but their explorations were often masked practices have stepped out from behind the by their formal emphasis—just more squares veil to take on new forms and devotees, and circles. Poet André Breton would call OCCULTURE becoming accepted, even respectable. They for ‘the profound, the veritable occultation no longer represent, in occult historian of surrealism’ in the movement’s second James Webb’s classic formulation, ‘rejected manifesto of 1930.3 Surrealism embraced the knowledge’.2 occult as a means to shatter the boundary Occulture is as secular as it is sacred between interior and exterior worlds, and AARON and is largely disseminated through popular was carried through into the shaman-based culture. It is fuelled by many things, conceptualism of artists like Joseph Beuys. including political disenfranchisement and Sol LeWitt would later write, ‘Conceptual the rejection of existing power structures, artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They LISTER 4 systems, and binary identities. It’s propelled by leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.’ cyberculture’s access to alternative worlds, as Led by Anger’s films and, later, by Genesis well as to sources of knowledge long hidden. P-Orridge’s art and music, from the late Many everyday activities are occultural, 1960s to the 1990s countercultural practices from eco-enchantment retreats (updating harnessed the occult as a force of opposition to pagan nature worship) to notions of personal hegemonic cultural paradigms and bourgeois wellbeing (emphasising the discovery of morality. Taking nineteenth-century occult 11 artist Austin Osman Spare as a guide, practices’.6 Some are practitioner-curators— encounter but has shifted our understanding to the forward, masculine drive of the avant- P-Orridge coined the term ‘esoterrorism’ occult, rather than, or as well as, occultural. or appreciation of what has gone before. We garde. The Swedish painter and mystic Hilma to explain the occult’s potential to ‘infect’ a Robert Buratti, curator of Windows to the are now likely, for example, to encounter af Klint knew the spiritual message carried corrupt mainstream culture.5 Sacred (and a contributor to this publication) surrealism through its lens.9 Occult by her large, theosophy-derived abstractions Contemporary occulture is not counter- is a member of Ordo Templi Orientis and connections have become one of surrealism’s was not for her own time. On her death in . cultural. Occulture has become a central, even the A. .A. He said, ‘I tend to keep my primary points of current interest. In Language 1944, she insisted that her work not be shown clichéd dimension of the cultural landscape. If professional life apart from my personal, but of the Birds, American esoteric artist Jesse for twenty years. The wait would be even anything, contemporary culture has infected this exhibition has seen a very happy and Bradford recreated the magic chalk circle longer. Since resurfacing in the mid-1980s, the occult. According to Partridge, pop culture fruitful crossover.’7 Pam Grossman, curator used by surrealist Kurt Seligmann in a 1948 her work has shaken art-historical wisdom— is its chief propagator. Television, cinema and of Language of the Birds, is a writer, academic, performance to summon the dead. especially in her developing abstraction almost music are constantly feeding on, remixing, and and teacher of magical practice. She calls The increased visibility of Aleister a decade before its accepted pioneers. The disseminating it. Contemporary art is another herself ‘a pragmatic witch’.8 Both bring a deep Crowley’s paintings represents another same can be said for late-Victorian spiritualist agent of this process. understanding of esoteric practice to their occultural attempt to expand art-historical Georgiana Houghton, whose automatic ‘spirit One sign of art’s current occultation are curatorial projects. Both invoke exhibition traditions. The English ceremonial magician, drawings’ were guided by the hands of dead exhibitions exploring connections between making as a magical act, and build ritual into writer, and founder of the Thelema religion artists, such as Michelangelo and Titian. Her contemporary art and the occult. Our show the experience. Far from speaking just to the started painting in the 1920s, seeking to work predates those celebrated moves into runs concurrently with As Above, So Below: initiated, Buratti and Grossman share the integrate art and magick (Crowley spelled abstraction, and indeed af Klint’s, by decades. Portals, Visions, Spirits, and Mystics at the Irish larger occultural interest in bringing esoteric magick with a ‘k’ to distinguish his practice The importance of af Klint’s art—and, Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Language art and culture into broader consciousness. By from ‘performance magic’).10 His painting has to a lesser degree, Houghton’s—has been of the Birds: Occult and Art (2015) at 80WSE comparison, the objectives of (and marketing long been considered derivative of Gauguin, reasserted recently. A 2016 exhibition at Gallery, New York University, offered art campaigns behind) the contemporary art of secondary importance to his writing, and London’s Courtauld Gallery was the first as a form of magic. Australia has given us curators can feel a touch more classically only of interest to zealous followers, like UK showing of Houghton’s work since 1871. Believe Not Every Spirit, But Try the Spirits occult than occultural—playing into or Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, who, as well as While such reassessments are important, (2015) at Monash University Museum of Art hamming up the subversive promise of this purchasing his art, acquired Boleskine House, the emphasis on who did what first risks (MUMA), Melbourne, and Windows to the art to confront visitors or upset the gallery his former estate on Loch Ness, Scotland. relitigating old art-historical debates and Sacred: An Exploration of the Esoteric (2013) at experience, another brand of dark tourism. Renewed interest in Crowley’s painting ignoring what is most interesting about these Buratti Fine Arts, Perth. Then there’s Hobart’s The same goes for artists. Some artists and his magickal approach to it resulted in artists: their work and the higher forces that annual Dark Mofo festival, which unites art, in the esoterically generated exhibitions major exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo and guided them. As art historian Briony Fer film, performance, and music under the tag- are unlikely ever to cross over to the Pompidou Centre in 2008, and his inclusion in says of af Klint, ‘It is not anteriority—who line ‘new wonders, new horrors’—an artistic contemporary-art context. Similarly, some The Encyclopedic Palace, the curated exhibition came first in the history of abstraction—that take on dark tourism, itself a product of the artists in the contemporary-art-focused at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Crowley’s new matters, but interiority, here turned radically occultural turn. exhibitions would be dismissed by the initiated visibility

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