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As part of our recent WhollyBooks weekend ‘Retreat’, we took part in an informal, low-key gathering to discuss Alternative Beliefs and Creativity in the setting of a private house turned Spiritual Community surrounded by woodlands in the middle of the Hampshire countryside.

As well as Readings and a Show of recent work, there were Discussions, Group Meditations, and Solo Retreats in the surrounding heavily wooded grounds.

During the weekend, Matthew Levi Stevens gave his presentation on ‘The Magical Universe of William S Burroughs’ and Emma Doeve took part in a discussion with our old friend Ian Cooper of Guildford Psychogeographical Society (and currently a lay-member of the Community)

Here is a transcript of her Interview:

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Tell us a bit about WhollyBooks?

Well, WhollyBooks is a kind of umbrella for the various projects that Matthew and I have going – either collaboratively or individually.

A kind of ‘Third Mind’, then?

Very much so, yes!

I know a lot of people here are probably more familiar with the idea popularised by the writer William Burroughs and his friend the painter Brion Gysin, borrowing from the book by Napoleon Hill, ‘Think and Grow Rich’ – ironically a sort of ‘self-help’ book for would-be salesmen – where he says:

“No two minds ever come together without, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind…”

And although I recognise the relevance of that, and the impact it has had, personally I see it as an expression of a much older idea that I am more familiar with from Alchemy, say – and that also crops up in certain areas of Psychology.

Another area that you are obviously very interested in that combines both collaborative ventures and exploration of consciousness through Art is Surrealism. Could you say a bit more about that?

Surrealism in a way is overlooked, ironically because it seems to be everywhere now! But to return to the original Surrealists – yes, they were artists and writers that very much had a serious interest in psychic exploration, and whose Art engaged with shall we say more esoteric areas.

You have particularly focused on the Women Surrealists?

Well, as a woman artist myself of course I am interested in the example of what others have done before – and although socially the Surrealist circle was dogged with the typical double standards of the time where women were concerned, at least there were actually a number of women active within the group, and some of them are actually better painters!

On some level it is a little bit like what Matthew is attempting with his material on ‘The Magical Universe of William S Burroughs’ – an attempt at a reappraisal, re-examination. I mean, for all that Salvador Dali is technically brilliant and undoubtedly very accomplished, he’s much more ‘showman’ than ‘shaman’ – whereas if you take somebody like Max Ernst, there’s clearly something darker and deeper going on… And particularly if you look at Ernst during his time with Leonora Carrington – for all that their mundane relationship suffered because of personal circumstances, the War – there is something much more alchemical and shamanic going on, and their work reflects this.

There is an excellent book, ‘Surrealism and the Occult’ by Nadia Choucha, that is probably the best single source on all this – and it has a chapter on Ernst and Carrington, ‘Alchemy, Shamanism, and Psychoanalysis’. Leonora Carrington is of particular interest to me – a woman who famously said she didn’t have time to be anybody’s muse because she was too busy trying to be a painter! And her writings are quite exceptional, too – the short story where her young debutant self swaps places with a hyena, and her novel ‘The Hearing Trumpet’, which is full of alchemical and gnostic references. She was clearly a devotee of the Great Mother, and gives us her own unique Grail Myth in there – all wrapped up with Surrealist observation and wonderful black humour!

WhollyBooks has also included references to Marjorie Cameron, Maya Deren, Anna Kavan?

In a sense I am re-discovering a lot of these figures, strong women who were not afraid to be different, to make Art on their own terms, engage with ‘Other’ spiritualties, explore and express their sexuality and their relationship to the Body – particularly the female body – and to Nature, and a number of them were great innovators and accomplished artists as well. I’m thinking in particular of the Women Surrealist painters, like Valentine Hugo, Leonor Fini, Remedios Varo – who was great friends with Leonora Carrington, incidentally, they were like ‘Witch Sisters’ together! And then you also have somebody like Ithell Colquhoun, who was a practicing occultist, and in typical neo-pagan fashion a member of all manner of weird and wonderful groups and lodges and orders. And of course Maya Deren was an authentic initiate of Voodoo. She was actually welcomed, invited in so to speak, when she went to Haiti to make her film – because the Voodoo Community recognised her sincerity. They felt she had been called by the loa.

Are magic and the occult an important part of it?

Well there are different kinds of ‘occult’ – Austin Osman Spare on some level is still a truly ‘occult’ artist, in that he is hidden – almost secret. He may be well known to occult enthusiasts who are immersed in all-things-Crowley, or have read the books of Kenneth Grant, or they know about him as the “grandfather of Chaos Magic” or whatever – but there is still an appalling lack of awareness of him just as an artist – and a very fine artist, at that. I studied at Leiden University, and then after coming to England studied Art at Hereford and Cheltenham – did a Fine Art Degree, at the same time as some very fine draughtswomen like Mila Furstova, who works with Dreams & Myth, and Sarah Simblet, who is a very precise anatomist – but where was Austin Spare? He was never even mentioned!

For my dissertation I wrote about ‘Vampires and Shades: Art in the Shadows, Malaise in Modernism’, instinctively homing in on the ‘magickal art practice’ of a Picasso, for want of having someone closer to hand, like Austin Spare! Camille Paglia was a real inspiration while I was writing it – I’d love to know what she would make of him…

So it is very much a concern – an influence, or inspiration?

As I say on my Statement for WhollyBooks:

“What we now think of as the Arts – all Dance, Poetry, Storytelling and Theatre – had its origins in the Magical & Religious impulse, and the same is equally true of drawing & painting.  It is to be remembered that the Ancient Egyptian word for Magic, heka, means ‘maker of images’.”

I can relate this totally to a kind of expression that I see in certain artists, writers – and now even musicians. Although it was not an area that I was familiar with before, I can see in the work of a number of the artists that Matthew has engaged with a central concern with magic and the occult. Of course I had heard of a writer like William Burroughs, but I was not particularly familiar with his work – and Matthew has made me aware of a whole dimension that I think has been previously overlooked. To some extent also film-makers like Derek Jarman, or Kenneth Anger – whose work I had of course seen, but I hadn’t really thought about what was behind it. And this whole ‘Industrial Music’ scene was completely unknown to me!

Has it been difficult finding connections?

Even though Matthew and I to some extent come from different areas, different directions, we like to think of it as being like a territory that we are exploring, working in – we may have started from different, even opposite, shores – but it is the same island!

Also, the spirit of engagement these different artists have is something I recognise, despite the different forms. The music of a band like Coil might have been completely new to me when I met Matthew – who of course had ‘grown up’ with this stuff, quite literally! – but I recognise a certain Romanticism, something from the same Dark Heart of that ‘Other’ England that called me to these shores all those years ago…

Thank You for speaking to us, Emma!

My pleasure, Ian.

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Emma is currently revisiting her ‘Elemental Series’ from 2003, which were a group of figure studies relating to the classical Western system of Elements: Air, Earth, Fire, Water.

As well as developing some new depictions of the Elemental entities and personified forces as she has experienced them, she is now beginning a further series exploring her perception of the Eastern system of Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood.

Her intention is to create an alchemical synthesis of the two so as to balance both Eastern and Western experience of the Elements and Elemental Forces.

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Valentine Hugo (16^th March 1887 – 1968)

Born Valentine Gross in Boulogne-sur-Mer, she studied painting in Paris, and in 1919 married the great-grandson of Victor Hugo.

She met the Surrealists around 1928 and actively participated in the Movement, taking part in many of the group experiments: numerous examples survive of the infamous Cadavre Exquis – or “Exquisite Corpse” – created with Breton, Dali & Gala, Eluard & Nusch, Tristan Tzara, et al., as a kind of Surrealist ‘Third Mind’ Party Game.

Successful as a Graphic Artist, Hugo illustrated the Works of Paul Eluard, as well as that Black Bible of Surrealism, ‘Les Chants de Maldoror’ by le Comte de Lautréamont (pen-name of Isidore Ducasse), and their beloved de Sade and Rimbaud.

She also created designs for ballet by her husband. French artist Jean Hugo (1894–1984), and for Jean Cocteau.

She died in Paris in 1968.

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The Surrealist Constellation (depicting Paul Éluard, André Breton, Tristan Tzara, Benjamin Péret, René Crevel and René Char)

Arthur Rimbaud – ‘Les Poètes de sept ans’ (illustration 1939)

Cadavre Exquis, with André Breton, Paul & Nusch Éluard (1934)

Illustration for de Sade (1947)

Paul Eluard – ‘Les Animaux et leurs hommes’ (illustration 1937)

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The Artist (portrait by Man Ray)

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Eileen Agar (b. 1st December 1899 – d. 17th November 1991)

Left-to-Right: her art-object, ‘Angel of Anarchy’, (created 1936-40) which inspired the title of the 2009 definitive retrospective ‘Angels of Anarchy: Women and Surrealism’; ’The Autobiography of an Embryo’ (1933-4) –  She spoke of it in the context of her own childlessness, which she said was a deliberate choice. ”I was more interested in becoming a painter than in being a mother”;  a Self-Portrait from 1927, the year before she moved to Paris to study Art, met  Andre Breton and Paul Eluard, and joined the Surrealists.

“Nearly 23 years ago now, owing to my friendship with Geff Rushton (better known as ‘John Balance’) of Coil, I was invited to collaborate on material for what was intended to become a ‘Coil Book’: a kind of anthology of collected lyrics and manifestoes (back in those heady days, any of us remotely connected to the “Post-Industrial scene” who wanted to be taken seriously wrote ‘manifestoes’ not press releases!) – but also articles relating to the various obsessions and interests of Coil and their close friends & associates…

I remember accompanying Geff to visit and interview a charming old lady called Eileen Agar, who had been one of the few English artists to actually belong to the Surrealist group in Paris; when Salvador Dali died the BBC wheeled her out to explain who Dali was and why Surrealism was important, and she had just written a memoir called ‘A Look At My Life’. [ The photo below is from the cover of her book, which came out in 1988, and is pretty much how she looked when we went to see her. ] We spent a delightful afternoon with her, drinking tea and looking at old photos and paintings, while Geff tried to explain Acid House and Ecstasy to her (his current new enthusiasms at that time), and find out gossip about an alleged menage she had lived in with Max Ernst, Paul Eluard, and photographer Lee Miller… (I think!?!)

I remember she began by telling us that as a little girl she had travelled from Argentina to Britain accompanied by a cow and an orchestra, because her rich and fashionable mother believed that fresh milk and good music were essential to her well-being… ”

“I’ve enjoyed life, and it shows through” Agar said. “Like a transparent skirt, or something like that.”

It could almost be a caption to this famous photo of her dancing on a roof-top in a see-through dress, taken in 1937 when she and the Hungarian writer Joseph Bard (whom she would later marry), were on holiday with Paul & Nusch Eluard and Roland Penrose & Lee Miller at the Mougins home of Picasso & Dora Maar.

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Leonor Fini (30th August 1907 – 18th January 1996)

“Had this been the 17^th century”, George Melly wrote in his obituary of her, “Leonor Fini would have been burnt as a witch”. The imagery in her work attests to this. She was not the most talented, but the imagination was fertile and often wandered in an erotic direction, having much to draw on, as her love-life had been varied and unusual. (Among other texts, she illustrated de Sade’s ‘Justine’!) Her ethnic background was of mixed Spanish, Italian, Argentinian, and Slavic blood, a formidable genetic cocktail. Her primary inspiration, as she once said, was the ‘Theatre of her own Mind’.

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Red Vision

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‘La Prison de Zigrifine’

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Moon Goddess

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The Double

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‘Sphinge’

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The Artist

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Depictions of the Witch and the Witches’ Sabbath often took gruesome forms. They were usually drawn by men and included male fantasies of what these unknown beings were up to when nobody was looking.

Move forward a couple of centuries, and a number of women artists loosely falling under the category Surrealist, got in touch with the uncanny world of the Dream and the Dark side of the Female Psyche. They were armed with a new knowledge of the Esoteric and the Occult and they knew greater freedom and had more opportunities.

To introduce:

Dorothea Tanning (25th August 1910 – 31st January 2012)

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A little Night music

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Birthday 1942

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Palaestra

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The artist herself

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