Visions Of The Occult: An Untold Story Of Art And Magic
Victoria Jenkins Tate Publishing £25 ★★★★★
Mention the ‘occult’ to people and you can expect raised eyebrows. We like to pretend we are rational creatures, and this word conjures ideas that are decidedly not: demonic spirits, hexes and unseen dark forces.
So why do ideas of the occult still appeal to so many today? In Visions Of The Occult, archivist Victoria Jenkins offers theories as she takes us on an unexpected tour of the riches of Tate Britain’s collections. From the ‘automatic methods’ of painter and occultist Ithell Colquhoun to sculptor Henry Moore’s fascination with Stonehenge, she reveals the influence of occultism, myth, ritual and magic on artists, as well as the subject’s enduring appeal across the centuries.
What becomes clear is that the occult does not exist in a hermetically sealed world. The fears, curiosities and characters that inform these matters permeate our everyday lives – they are simply expressed differently. In a section on tarot, Jenkins illustrates some of the cards with artworks. Sir Nathaniel Dance-Holland’s wild-eyed A Devil With Torch And Spear (date unknown) illustrates the Devil and his vices, while Chris Ofili’s No Woman, No Cry (1998) represents strength, which calls for inner resolve. Neither image was intended by the artist to illustrate the tarot but both draw on the archetypes depicted in the cards – the stories are universal.
The section on witchcraft brings to mind the line from Pam Grossman’s 2019 book Waking The Witch: ‘Show me your witches, and I’ll show you your feelings about women.’ In Jenkins’s account we find crones and seductresses: figures that live on the margins of society, by choice or as pariahs. There is Arthur Hughes’s hag, The Wicked Fairy, for the children’s book At The Back Of The North Wind (c. 1870), and Sir Edward BurneJones’s powerful, opinionated and, crucially, unmarried woman Sidonia von Bork 1560 (1860).
Expressions of witchcraft can be taken literally but, as Jenkins shows, they also shine a light on the attitudes of the time.
This rich and revealing book shows us that occult is embedded in our culture, our art and our everyday lives – it is not as strange and distant as we might like.