Visions of the Occult: An Untold Story of Art & Magic

by Victoria Jenkins

The first major survey of the occult collection of artworks and objects in the Tate Archive

“The word ‘occult’ comes from the latin occulus, meaning ‘hidden.’ The underlying assumption is that there is another, unseen world beyond that of the day-to-day existence—with magic offering the possibility of connecting these two worlds.” —Christopher Dell, The Occult, Witchcraft & Magic, 2016

This lavishly illustrated magical volume acts a potent talisman connecting the two worlds of Tate—the seen public collection and the unseen secrets lurking in the archive. The pages of this book explore the hidden artworks and ephemera left behind by artists for the first time and will shed new light on our understanding of the art historical canon. Expect to find the unexpected with artists such as Ithell Colquhoun, John Nash, Barbara Hepworth, David Mayor, Max Armfield, Cecil Collins, Jill Smith and Bruce Lacey, Francis Bacon, Alan Davie, Joe Tilson, Henry Moore, William Blake, Leonora Carrington, and Hamish Fulton. For the first time, the clandestine, magical works of the Tate archive are revealed with archivist Victoria Jenkins acting as the depositary of its secrets. This book explores the symbiotic relationship between art and the occult and how both can act as a form of resistance to challenging environments. This book will change perceptions forever and illuminate the surprising breadth and extraordinary ways in which artists interpret not just the physical world around them but also the supernatural, and in doing so, make the unseen, seen. If you think you know Tate artists, it’s time to think again.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Witchcraft, History, Occult

176 pages, Hardcover

Published January 10, 2023

About the author

Victoria Jenkins is a young woman growing up in West Palm Beach, Florida. Despite her “teenagery” look, she is well spoken as both a student and an author. From a young age Victoria was always enthralled in a book, reading under the covers past her bedtime with a flashlight. Now, she’s writing poems in the margins of her notes during class, or reading under the covers past her undefined-bed-time with an iPhone flashlight. She is always politically active and voices her opinion, sometimes using her poems as a microphone, sometimes using her voice during class. Victoria is working her way through high school, aiming to graduate with an IB Diploma. She then hopes to attend a university in London, England. Coffee enthusiast and avid explorer, you can typically find Victoria sitting in a cafe thousands of miles from home, sipping an artisan latte and writing poems in a nearly-full notebook.

Reviews

[Mizuki]

If you are into occultism and artworks and you want some basic information about the subject matters, please read this book. Visions of the Occult provides a lot of great artworks and knowledge about magic, occultism and the spiritism around the world.

I do like the chapter about witchcraft and its history a great deal!

More to come.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this a disappointing book but perhaps I was expecting too much. If you have more than the most basic knowledge of occult and esotoric lore the text will not tell you very much that you did not know already. This is for the very general reader looking into a by-way of art history.

Another limitation is that it is just an excuse to plunder what happens to be in the Tate's own archives by someone who knows them well as an archivist. As a result, it is heavily driven by what is in those archives rather than by a desire to explore more extensively occult thought in art.

There is certainly an over-dependence on Ithell Colquohoun (someone genuinely engaged in esoteric thought) and perhaps on Cecil Collins but the overwhelming effect of the book is to suggest, in fact, that genuinely occult thinking plays very little consistent role in art after all.

Is this true? Yes, to some extent insofar as few artists seem to move away from doing into thinking and much of occult practice is driven, in fact, by ritual, language, text and theory or even ideology than by the artistic 'object'. The 'work' is the person themselves and not their product.

The artist often creates themselves through their product, moving on quite quickly from one object to another (and, in this sense, they are occult) but the process is deliberately untheoretical in such cases, a case of doing in order to become.

Occultists are engaged in a process that is more highly conscious of such things as lineages, tradition, initiation, secrecy, performance (more like theatre in this respect) and, above all, 'gnosis'. The 'work' is centred on the person as process where the 'thrown-away-once-done' is the ritual.

Artistic occulture or occult artistry consciously centre the process on physical works (unless we count ritual as performance art) so that is what we should be looking out for. Not art as psychotherapy but art as consciously directed creation where there are 'forces' to be harnessed.

Aleister Crowley's drawing of Lam (not in the Book) may not be great art but it is genuinely occult. Leonora Carrington's 'Elohim' (in the book and in Tate Modern) is art and reaches out with authenticity to the occult, that which is hidden behind things and is more than the 'subconscious'.

These are fine points but it is not enough to claim that someone who paints witches like Goya is interested in the occult. Rather they are interested in fear or folklore or popular memes or the market. The book does not, for example, include the work of the witch Rosaleen Norton.

It could be argued that I have missed the point - a great deal of art is intrinsically occult and inexplicable to the lay person, a process of creation in which material is alchemically transformed into meaning. Still, our interest should be in artists who deliberatively reflect on this aspect of their work.

Most artists may be engaged in an occult practice without realising that they are. They have, of course, their own art school and peer group initiatory processes with some who, like the dark magician Francis Bacon, seem to leap into creation largely from outside such tradition.

A serious book of the occult in art might simply be an investigation into the creative process but that is not what we needed here. Instead, the book should have been focusing much more on artists with a sense of that process coming not just from within but from the hidden world.

In other words, occulture is not (for example) surrealism (until that moment when surrealism engages with Jungian archetypes) because it is not about psychology but about the hidden wellsprings (in the eyes of the artist) of creation within existence itself, perhaps in the Being of Being.

The question should have been not does this or that artist portray witches but is this or that artist a witch? Or not whether an artist designs tarot cards to order but do they imbue those designs with deeper meaning? Do they consciously transfer an alchemical mind-set into their work?

Then again, there should be some distinction made between the construction of occult themes in popular culture (as in the design of record covers or in cinema for effect) and the expression of the occult in the artist (as in Colquhoun) or through a cinematic auteur.

'Visions of the Occult' has difficulty drawing the boundaries between 'illustration' of text (the author seems to have recognised that sticking in Sutherland's 'Ram Heads' to make a point was 'mauvaise foi') and 'example' of occult art and between occult art creation and popular use of occult illustration.

In short, what we should want is a book not about occult representations from multiple social viewpoints (there is a lot of this available in any case) but a book about occulture itself and its lineages, influences, drives and social context.

Of course we will probably find that occulture is as marginal in fact as, say, outsider art but it is there and it needs to be understood critically, including its obvious failings, as more than illustrations for 'Man, Myth and Magic'.

Many of the items offered in this book have been force fed into a very broad definition of the occult to mean things simply irrational and strange, even New Age. In fact, the occult is much circumscribed than this - it presupposes not strange things in the world but what is behind them.

If the occult is not necessarily Surrealism, it is also not Forteanism. It is not Arthur C. Clarke's magic as undiscovered science. It is not pseudo-science. It is not necessarily counter-culture or psychedelics. It is not simply the irrational.

As a smaller-scale coffee table book with some very nice pictures illustrative of its theme, it comes across well enough. I would certainly not discourage anyone from owning it if that is what is required but as a serious investigation of the occult in art it does not pass muster at all.

If the text had spent less time regurgitating a primer on occult themes (with added 'woke' in places as is customary today) and more time on searching out the occult thought processes of those artists who were aware of these things themselves as 'serious endeavour', it would have been more useful.

It is a pleasant enough book that will be educative as a basic primer to those who know absolutely nothing of occulture and it will introduce the reader to works not easily seen (which is a service) but it will not tell him or her much about occult artistic practice and art's role in occult practice.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Tate has a fine collection of odd artwork, much that can be shoehorned into a book about the occult. The text is OK, but is nothing special. A decent read.

[Julie Prehn · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a lot of meh, and equal parts of, “oh interesting”.
However I haaaaated the setup of the book, cause why on EARTH would you dedicate two pages for an entire photo, which is yeah alright big, but then make it so the text isn’t coherent with what was on the last page!! It’s so abruptive for the eyes!

If I were to do it, I’d want to show a picture and then say a little about it underneath it while having the main text about the chapter on a different page. If that requires it to be longer, then so be it.

[Antônio Xerxenesky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Texto muito básico, para pessoas que não sabem nada de nada. Mas a seleção de imagens é fera e faz valer a pena.