Skip to main content

 

Magical Thinking.

My artistic practice may well be the unconscious expression of a form of magical thinking rooted in my early interest in the occult and alchemy. Such interests permeated Renaissance humanism and probably arose due to a revived interest in Neoplatonism. According to Philip Ball,

‘… the Neoplatonic universe is organised according to principles of correspondence, for example so that certain plants and metals are associated with particular planets that govern their behaviour in an invisible conspiracy of sympathies.’

Philip Ball, Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen (London: The Bodley Head, 2014), 20.

He also writes that,

‘These relationships were often revealed in the outward forms of nature: they could be read literally from the surface of things.’

Philip Ball, Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen (London: The Bodley Head, 2014), 20.

 

Such correspondences form the basis for sympathetic or natural magic. I was fascinated by the systems of correspondences in which different substances, plants and minerals were aligned to certain planetary influences based on a form of sympathy or similarity. Later I became interested in alchemy and early herbal medicine in which the same systems of correspondences were also at work.

After reading Carl Gustav Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy, which I came across in a second-hand book shop, I felt as though I had been given the keys to a silent language of alchemical images. A language also rooted in a system of correspondence. Slowly I began to immerse myself in philosophy and mysticism and developed an interest in Frankfurt School theory which has a marked antipathy to the work of Jung. I forgot my earlier interest in sympathetic magic and alchemy, although I have always thought of art as a form of alchemy due to its ability to effect material transformations.

I then came across the writings of Walter Benjamin and was completely entranced. I now realise that this is due to his ability to perceive correspondences, in Peter Demetz words,

‘… in an age without magic...’

Peter Demetz, “Introduction,” in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz (Boston and New York: Mariner Books, 2019), XXII.

 

Peter Demetz suggests that for Walter Benjamin,

‘It is man’s mimetic faculty in the widest sense that brings together what seems split and divided; the wholeness of the universe is sustained… by “natural correspondences” that in turn stimulate and challenge man to respond by creating analogies, similarities, something that is akin.’

Peter Demetz, “Introduction,” in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz (Boston and New York: Mariner Books, 2019), XXII.

The magical bond within my own artistic practice appears to be a resemblance or similarity, that evokes the original image first translated into an artwork many years ago.

‘The hypothesis of substitutability… is a mode of magical reasoning because it asserts the identity of like to like, behind the deceptive screen of experience. Art, too, is a manipulation of the similarities and identities proposed by the substitutional model of production. Art, therefore, cannot be understood as an enlightened successor to magic.’

Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York: Zone Books, 2010), 11.

Below are three more pages from the copy book I am working on.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Unconscious, the Collective Unconscious and Symbols.

  Jung observed that the idea of the unconscious presented by Carus and von Hartman disappeared without a trace, it then re-emerged in medical psychology. [1] He noted that at first, the unconscious denoted forgotten or repressed contents of the psyche. [2] Jung suggested that it was the study of dreams that allowed psychologists to study the unconscious aspects of conscious events, ‘As a general rule, the unconscious aspect of any event is revealed to us in dreams, where it appears not as a rational thought but as a symbolic image.’ [3] Jung then noted that, ‘It is on such evidence that psychologists assume the existence of an unconscious psyche – though many scientists and philosophers deny its existence. They argue naively that such an assumption implies the existence of two “subjects,” or (to put it in a common phrase) two personalities within the same individual. But that is exactly what it does imply – quite correctly.’ [4] Sigmund Freud, despite being aware of the m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Speed Artists Way.

  A few weeks ago, I bought myself a copy of The Artists Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron. I had a copy many years ago and remembered that it helped me to start making art again in my mid-twenties. I got a portfolio together and went to university. I re-read the book in two days but oddly, I didn’t remember any of it. I thought that I had better go back through it and do the tasks at the end of each section. It’s meant to be a twelve-step program done over twelve weeks, but I did speed Artists Way in a week. I had been feeling blocked. I just didn’t feel like making any art, so I came across the book at the right time. The two main tasks in The Artists Way are morning pages and artists dates. The morning pages consist of three pages of stream of consciousness writing done in the morning. I’ve adopted this but mine are afternoon or evening pages. I have enough trouble trying to get body and soul together in the morning without adding morning pages and...
Post a Comment
Read more

Metallic Watercolours.

  I don’t really understand my newfound fascination with watercolours. I have realised that there are a lot of interesting watercolour paints out there such as the Daniel Smith PrimaTek and A. Gallo watercolours which I have been hankering after. One of the points Julia Cameron makes in The Artists Way is that artists often deny themselves luxuries – things that artists like. We will spend money on other things but things that make the inner artist happy are deemed too frivolous. I decided that I will set up a fund that I will put a bit of money in every so often. I will then use this to buy the materials I really want, such as a set of A. Gallo watercolours or a nice pad of Arches or Saunders Waterford paper. This week I had a little tree production line going of trees in metallic watercolour on black watercolour postcards. They have the ghostly quality I mentioned before but this doesn’t come across in photographs. I remain frustrated by the whole tree carry on. I get the q...
Post a Comment
Read more