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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.”
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.
"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.
Rosaleen Norton sketching, c. 1945-1950. 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
