THE ENDURING RELEVANCE OF PIONEERING OCCULT ARTIST ROSALEEN NORTON

She's My Muse | Neshan Tung

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"I came into this world bravely, I'll go out bravely."

~ Rosaleen Norton, artist, occult practitioner, daughter of Pan, before her death in 1979

Rosaleen Norton has only recently begun to get the cultural recognition she deserves. Despite being a tremendously influential and defining artist of the mid 20th century, Rosaleen’s unapologetic artistic legacy remains relatively obscure compared to her counterparts. Perhaps this has to do with how she was outcasted, crudely mocked and relentlessly hounded by the media. She was branded by most as a depraved, satanic witch. In the 1940s and 1950s, she became a national fascination and was perceived as a major threat to the social norms and moral orthodoxy of a predominately Christian Australia. Her artwork, tragically misunderstood, was torched by the government, confiscated by police and censored by major museums and galleries in Melbourne. She remains the only Australian artist whose work was physically destroyed by order of the courts. Rosaleen also faced charges of obscenity for her provocative paintings depicting Greek gods and goddesses, female sexuality and ritual magic. In a recently made film about the artist, director Sonia Bible proclaims that Rosaleen was once “the most persecuted artist in Australia.”

Rosaleen Norton with one of her paintings, c. 1945-1950. Source.

Born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1917 and plagued with spiritual visions as a child, Rosaleen had always been fascinated by the otherworldly. What seems now to be an instance of cosmic foreshadowing, at 14 she was expelled from school for supposedly corrupting fellow schoolgirls with her “deviant” drawings. By her twenties, Rosaleen was mastering her occult and artistic skills, practicing Aleister Crowley trance magic and creating paintings that fused her search for transcendence with her spiritual beliefs. Being openly bisexual – in addition to her unconventional appearance, love for animals, bohemian lifestyle and penchant for worshipping and painting figures like Pan (a Greek god who resembles and is often mistaken for Lucifer) – made her a true outsider amidst the hyper conservative landscape of mid-century Australia. A 1949 exhibition of her work held at the Rowen-White Library in the University of Melbourne ended with a police raid and charges of obscenity. Later, her book The Art of Rosaleen Norton with poems by Gavin Greenlees (published by Walter Glover in 1952) was heavily censored in Australia and banned in America, and resulted in Glover also facing charges.

Rosaleen Norton with her cat, c. 1950. Source.

Even though she was admired by visionaries like Carl Jung and Kenneth Anger, the scope of Rosaleen’s far-reaching cultural impact has yet to be fully realized and appreciated. She was a subversive, fearless artist who spearheaded a path forward for generations of eccentric and bold female artists to be themselves. Her unprecedented body of work has endured despite decades of backlash and unlawful attempts at suppression. Over half a century later, her art has begun to slowly resurface in various Australian exhibitions— such as one held in 2000 that was solely dedicated to the display of her paintings in Kings Cross, Sydney (where she lived most of her life) by enthusiasts of her work. Others include the S.H. Ervin Gallery’s Windows to the Sacred: An Exploration of the Esoteric in 2013, and the City Gallery Wellington’s Occulture: The Dark Arts in 2017.

Rosaleen Norton sketching, c. 1945-1950. Source.

Despite renewed interest in Rosaleen, her work is not easy to access. Other than a handful of articles and images on Google, there is no widely accessible digital archive documenting her work, nor is it featured in any permanent exhibitions. Most of it resides in archives, private collections and rare books that are hard to come by. Rosaleen’s legacy and life’s work could have easily been lost to history. That begs the question: how many brilliant female artists have we lost due to museum censorship and government persecution? How can we ensure that the bodies of work produced by visionary artists who challenge the status quo are not lost due to museum practices that support nationalistic agendas? How can we reconcile with the fact that exclusion and censorship remain prevalent issues in museum spaces, and what can we do about it? All of us have the responsibility to continuously challenge and unsettle cultural institutions by questioning what gets to be remembered and who is included.

                                        Rosaleen Norton in Kings Cross, Sydney, c. 1943. Source.

References:

https://whatmagicisthis.com/2020/04/10/rosaleen-norton/

https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-why-rosaleen-norton-the-witch-of-kings-cross-was-a-groundbreaking-bohemian-154184

https://hyperallergic.com/144377/a-documentary-for-the-witch-of-kings-cross-australias-persecuted-occult-artist/

https://archive.org/details/bookofliesthedisinformationguidetomagickandtheoccult/page/n431/mode/2up?q=rosaleen+norton

https://www.talesfromthegrave.org/post/an-artist-who-practiced-the-occult-and-worshipped-pan

https://magazine.artland.com/the-fear-of-art-contemporary-art-censorship/

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/feb/09/sex-magic-occult-art-and-acid-the-story-of-the-infamous-witch-of-kings-cross

AUSTRALIAN MUSEUMS UNDER FIRE

Muse News | Michelle Wright

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In 2018 Brazil’s National Museum went up in flames, in 2019 Notre Dome in Paris suffered damages due to fire, and in 2020 Australia is burning.

Australia is experiencing the worst wildfires seen in decades. It has been reported that 28 people have lost their lives, 3000 homes being lost to the flames, and some say up to one billion animal lives have been lost, with their homes also destroyed. Help and support is being sent from around the world.

Many museum specialists have been involved with the monitoring of the wildlife populations. Dr. Mark Eldridge, the Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Museum in Sydney, has been working with other scientists at the museum to give detailed estimates of animal death tolls. Other specialists like Mike Lee, a biologist at the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, states that the estimate of animal deaths tolls does not include bats, frogs or invertebrates, and the invertebrate losses alone could number in the trillions. These scientists and specialists will be instrumental moving forward to understand the full impact of the loss of wildlife and hopefully be able to help in the aftermath of this disaster.

Smoke due to fire along the highway in New South Wales, Australia. Photo courtesy of Maddy Lewis.

While museums in Australia are not the first thing to come to mind when people are thinking about the wildfires, they are important and at risk. To date, no museums have been in danger from the fires, however many museums to be on high alert and alter their programming and operations accordingly. Within the first week of January of this year the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra closed its doors due to the smoke-filled air which could cause harm to the works inside. The National Gallery’s director, Nick Mitzevich, confirms that the artworks are not under any threat, and precautions are being taken. The biggest concern at the moment is the smoke, as Mitzevuch explains: “Those airborne particles can have any number of carcinogenics in them. If they settle on a painting or a textile or a photograph, they could have a corrosive effect on the surface. Anything in the air that is a foreign body has the potential to deteriorate artworks over time.” Currently the Gallery is home to a special exhibition featuring works by Matisse and Picasso on loan from the Tate in London and the Musée national-Picasso in Paris. All parties are mindful of the situation and being kept informed of the Galleries precautions and decisions.

National Gallery of Australia Canberra. Source.

Other Australian museums have been affected including the Murray Art Museum Albury, though the smoke is worse than Canberra, the museum remains open as a relief from the heat and smoke, especially for those who have been displaced. Other museums such as the Show and Tell Gallery in Corryong became a temporary shelter for 30 people on New Year’s Day, including a staff member who lost their home that day. Museums all over the country are taking steps to protect not only their works but also their people.

THE TRY GUYS TRY A LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Breaking the Glass Case | Alexandra Forand 

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If you are anything like me, you consume the art that is short-form video content, AKA YouTube videos. On November 2, 2019 the Try Guys released the video “The Try Guys Become Zookeepers for a Day,” which was the first video of their 4 part mini-series Try Australia. This video is unique because it opens with a land acknowledgement. The Try Guys are an American online comedy company that produces YouTube videos among other things. The YouTube Channel that promotes these videos has 6.5 million subscribers (at the time this article is being written).

(Source)

The land acknowledgement in the video reads:

“We acknowledge that this series was filmed on Wurundjerland, and we pay our respects to the elders past, present, and emerging.”

It was brief. It was simple. But it was there.

As Canadians, this may not be a new experience, since we read (or are read) a version of a land acknowledgment from an approved template at meetings, the first day of school, or various celebrations. This practise of reading a land acknowledgment gained momentum after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released its final report. Although, it is important to understand that land acknowledgments were being done before the TRC released their report and the practise of acknowledgment started spreading on its own accord with little to no government intervention. It should be noted that there is no one single acknowledgment, but many depending on where you are in the country.

In Australia, another country with a similar dark colonial history like Canada, it isn’t called a land acknowledgment. Instead the statement that the Try Guys featured in their video is a Welcome to Country statement, which has been practised since the early 00s and incorporated into parliament opening ceremonies since 2008. The Welcome to Country statement is often performed by an elder and accompanied with traditional smoking ceremonies, dance and/or music. In the event that an elder isn’t present a simpler welcome is offered.

Another example of Welcome to Country Australia employs (Source).

The practise of a land acknowledgment and Welcome to Country, both in Canada and in Australia, has attracted criticism from politicians, journalist, and historians as being a form of tokenism (Tokenism: the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to be inclusive to members of minority groups).

Other critics, such as Stephen Marche points out that practising a land acknowledgment is the equivalent of saying sorry and not meaning it, because speech is easy and speech is free. Unless there is a true movement towards reconciliation these words are empty. This would include paying for the education of First Nation Schoolchildren, who still receive 30% less funding than their white counterparts or ending long term drinking water advisories which disproportionately affects Indigenous communities.

At the University of Toronto, the acknowledgment reads: 

“I (we) wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

While there is no wrong way to do a land acknowledgment, when writing, giving, or hearing one, it is important that they are approached with humility and treated as a learning opportunity. The example above is a template, and only a template  and the larger purpose of a land acknowledgment is to transmit knowledge to people who may not know the history of where they are standing. The example above is prescriptive, but there is plenty of room to bring your own voice and meaning to a land acknowledgment.

No matter what your feelings are towards land acknowledgments, the video that inspired this article has 2 million views (again, at the time this article is being written). If we turn to the comments section (a notoriously inhospitable place in the online community) we see that the comments that mention the Welcome to Country are positive and thankful it is present.

Comments reacting to the Try Guy's Land Acknowledgment on a recent video. Photo courtesy of Alexandra Forand. 

 This is not to say that the Try Guys solved colonialism, but it is heartening to see them using their immense platform to set a precedence for other Youtube channels, artists, and dare I say… Museums?

As always, I encourage you to leave a comment, send me an email (allyforand@gmail.com), or if Twitter and Instagram are more your speed my handle on both is @Ally_but_online.