Enchanted Alchemies: Magic, Mysticism, and the Occult in Art

In 1924, the surrealist manifesto stated that art serves as a magical act, invoking mysteries beyond the visible world and turning the mundane into something wondrous. This exhibition, spanning the century from then until now, whets the appetite for an even more in-depth exploration

Ithell Colquhoun, Alcove II, 1948 (detail). Oil on board. Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan.

Lévy Gorvy Dayan, London
1 October – 21 December 2024

by ANNA McNAY

“That which is below is as that which is above, and that which is above is as that which is below.” It is with this quote, originally from the medieval Hermetic text of the Smaragdine Table, but cited in an article by the British surrealist painter and occultist Ithell Colquhoun (1906-88), that the Hayward Gallery’s chief curator, Rachel Thomas, begins her essay in the publication to accompany Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s current exhibition, Enchanted Alchemies: Magic, Mysticism, and the Occult in Art.¹ I would like to use it here, too, since this concept of above and below, and a mirroring between the two, runs like a thread through the works in the show.

There has been renewed interest of late in the intersections between art, magic, alchemy and occultism, and, in the centenary year of André Breton’s proposal, in his surrealist manifesto, that art serves as a magical act, invoking mysteries beyond the visible world and turning the mundane into something wondrous,² this exhibition takes up the challenge of looking afresh at these connections, with a clever curation interweaving old and contemporary works, so that there are many fascinating juxtapositions noted and conversations sparked.

Elda Cerrato, Despolarización mutua de dos entes o Comunicaciones del Ser Beta. Etapa activa, from the series Entes extraños. Epopeya del Ser Beta, 1971. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the artists included are predominantly female, riding on the wave of “rediscoveries” and interest in women associated with the surrealist movement or concepts of alchemy and occultism (examples include: the Tate retrospective of Colquhoun opening on 13 June 2025; Leonora Carrington: Rebel Visionary, just closed at Newlands House Gallery, Petworth; Leonora Carrington: Avatars and Alliances, at Firstsite, Colchester, until 23 February 2025; and Bharti Kher: Alchemies, at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 27 April 2025). Famously, the male surrealists were fascinated by women as their muses: beautiful women, mad women, young women, or all three brought together in the figure of the femme-enfant, or “child-woman”, who served as the conduit to a different realm (above or below). In their art, the male surrealists used women as symbols of volatility, but the female surrealists – including Colquhoun, Carrington (1917-2011) and Leonor Fini (1907-96, also in this show) – suggested that “changeableness” itself could be a source of power, tapping into the long line of mythic female figures – the nymph, the witch, the fairy, the crone – who have used metamorphosis to outwit men.³

Ithell Colquhoun, Song of Songs, 1933. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan.

The promotional image for the exhibition, Song of Songs (1933) by Colquhoun, depicts an almost mythical struggle, with a male and a female body entwined, naked but for some red pumps and a necklace made from vulval jewels (both worn by the woman) with three arrows piercing between their limbs, but curiously pointing upwards – here, my first instance of an active “down below”, whence these spears have been issued. The painting’s title, Song of Songs, references the often overinterpreted book of the same name in the Bible, comprising eight chapters of ancient Israelite poetry, celebrating sexual love. In particular, the verses “Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments, your neck with strings of jewels” come to mind.⁴

While there are a great many surrealist works in the exhibition, it is not solely concerned with surrealism. It is fantastic, for example, to see two paintings by the Swedish-born, self-described “radical anarcho/eco-feminist and Goddess artist” Monica Sjöö (1938-2005), who has also recently enjoyed two solo exhibitions in the UK: one at Alison Jacques and another more substantial retrospective at Modern Art Oxford. Welsh Rocking Stone and Spiralling Spirit Woman (1992) is exceptional in the flesh, with the citric-green swirling spiral drawing you in like a fast-spinning vortex. Once again, there are references to above and below, with this vortical gyre beneath the ground, while above a whirlwind enwraps a spirit woman, who is standing atop a dolmen, as if being sucked up into the heavens, while, if you take the time to look more closely, three sperm swim across the surface of one of the supporting megaliths. The origin of these sperm seems quite irrelevant for an artist who caused a brouhaha with the exhibiting of her painting God Giving Birth (1968).

Chitra Ganesh, Breathing Water and Air, 2024. Acrylic, ink, chalk, embroidery, faux fur, ceramic, and glass on paper. Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan.

We also encounter some mystical/mythical iconography from outside the western canon, with the striking juxtaposition of carefully coloured-in “alchemy drawings” (2019) by Bharti Kher (b1969, London, but based in New Delhi since 1993) with the über-contemporary mixed-media work of Chitra Ganesh (b1975, Brooklyn, New York), whose hybrid plant-human creature in Breathing Water and Air (2024) dances beneath a rainbow amid globules of red, red rain, which look rather as if they were discarded pieces of bubble gum, moulded to the slats of a park bench. Alongside, the protagonist of Seated Figure with Tree Shirt (2023-24) twinkles with sequins and boasts some extravagantly fake false nails. Kher’s works may seem dull in comparison, but they bring to mind the quiet abstract symbolism of another Swedish artist and mystic, Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), whose work, which she claimed was “painted directly through [her], without any preliminary drawings, and with great force”,⁵ would fit perfectly here.

Kher’s works segue nicely into what I heard termed “the quiet corner” of the exhibition. Here, four wall works whisper to a sculpture standing before them. From Ganesh’s pop, we move to two small, dark paintings by Gertrude Abercrombie (1909-77), an artist the jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie once called “the first bop artist … in the sense that she has taken the essence of our music and transported it to another art form.”⁶ Lady with Black Braid (1960) possesses all the medieval witchiness of Carrington and Fini, while Victorian Chair (1945) epitomises the uncanny. Indeed, Abercrombie once set out: “I’m not interested in complicated things or the common place. I like to paint simple things that are a little strange.”⁷ These are perfectly complemented by Fini’s Nature morte (c1945-50), comprising a fallen-over jug, revealing the mottling on its underside, a shell, dead leaves, an animal skull, some torn sacking, and perhaps a horn or broken antler. The uncertainty over the identification of these natural objects reflects a statement by the artist: “The painting instinct draws a whole world out of me and that world is me. It is always an ambivalent and contradictory place where I find myself, and that can be an astonishing experience at times.”⁸

Stacey Gillian Abe, The Moonlight, the Swamp, 2023. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan.

The sculptural piece in this corner is Photo-Collage (Three Graces with One Ball) (2008) by Goshka Macuga (b1967, Warsaw), a writhing section of tree root, on which black-and-white magazine images of three naked and voluptuous 1950s beauties playfully pose, one with a large inflatable ball. In turn, this blends perfectly with the photomontage half-hidden behind it, Le Theatre: Transmutation of Essence (2024) by Linder (b1954, Liverpool) (one of a series of which more are on display in the gallery’s reading room) and the myriad acanthus flourishes on the wall of the gallery itself (this first-floor room used to be the ballroom when the building was part of the women-only private members’ club, the Empress Club, purpose-built in 1887 and inaugurated by Queen Victoria, herself a member – a history which intensifies the feminine mystique of this exhibition).

Linder, Mantic Stain 8 (Sphere of Venus), 2014. Enamel on magazine page. Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan.

Another piece by Linder, Mantic Stain 8 (Sphere of Venus) (2014), comprising a painted-over magazine image of a young woman, legs spread, eyes closed, most likely at work self-pleasuring, would be well paired with something of the tantric art produced by the self-proclaimed “feminist surrealist” Penny Slinger (b1947, London), who, unlike Linder, is one of the first artists I would have thought of in the context of the title of this exhibition. Not everything or everyone can be included, however, and I am pleased to discover these pieces by Linder, which truly do the job well. Furthermore, Linder has spoken about the influence of spending time with Colquhoun’s archive, and, indeed, the title Mantic Stain references an essay by Colquhoun⁹ in which she refers to the Rorschach ink-blot test used by psychoanalysts. By the time she came to surrealism, the search for a pictorial equivalent of automatic writing had ceased to be its core concern. Instead, debate now focused on what Breton described as “the occultation of surrealism” – that is, the search for the certain point in the mind at which opposites cease to be perceived as contradictory – “as above, so below”.¹⁰ He wrote: “It contains fusion and germination, balances and departures, it incorporates an understanding between cloud and star, we can see all the way back and all the way down … the image of the universal sperm circulates through it.”¹¹ Just as Linder and Sjöö capture this pictorially (the idea of “universal sperm” fitting perfectly with the latter’s believe in the universal Goddess), so Colquhoun captured the spirit of Breton’s words – as well as of the exhibition – in a poem about the invisible beings that share our world yet are completely unknown to us:

They are both here and there, they penetrate all ways
They go both north and south, they are past and to come
They pierce all directions at once, they move and are still
They are the profound tilt, the absolute angle
To things that we know.¹²

Colquhoun understood that for an artist to use automatic processes was akin to a patient generating his or her own Rorschach cards, and that, by interpreting them, she (and, by implication, viewers) would gain access to the hidden contents of her unconscious. This is best exemplified by Alcove II (1948), an example of decalcomania, or, as people might better know it, the childhood artistic technique of creating a butterfly – or Rorschach-like image – by painting on half of a sheet of paper and then folding it in half to print the (near-) identical opposite. Colquhoun’s resulting image is womb-like in appearance: a deep blood-red around the outside, with a paler pink cushioned interior, in which amorphous blue and yellow shapes are cradled. For the surrealists, receptivity to the internal unconscious was their motivation; for occultists, their driving force was to gain access to the spirit world. Colquhoun was open to both these eventualities. By choosing the word “mantic” to describe her automatic methods, she was deliberately using a word which, derived from the Ancient Greek μάτις, references the prophetic pronouncements arising from the power of divination. To return to Linder, and her studies of Colquhoun, she adds a further layer to this, describing how: “In homage to Colquhoun, I let enamel pigments spill over halftone dot imagery to reveal hidden contents – not only of my psyche but also of those who contemplate the works.”¹³

Leonora Carrington, The Lovers, 1987. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan.

Whatever air of magical mysticism is conjured in this upstairs gallery, it is multiplied tenfold in the small downstairs room, entered separately when an invigilator is present (already evincing a level of mysterious curiosity), painted entirely black, with just a few choice, fantastically spotlit paintings. These include Song of Songs (1933) by Colquhoun, The Lovers (1987) by Carrington and two works by Elda Cerrato (1930-2023), one of which – Redundancia en las experiencias Relativas al Okidanokh. Acumulación Energética Estable Faz I y II (1967) – looks like a heartbeat or a breath, reflected above and below two parallel horizontal lines, calling back to mind once more the “as above, so below” of the Smaragdine Table quote. This work is painted both recto and verso, and it is suspended by nearly invisible wires, as if held in place by some unseen levitational force.

The Carrington painting is understated yet intense, not only opening the doors to her unconscious, but ushering the viewer right through into the dreamscape – or, rather, nightmarescape (spellcheck tells me there is no such word; this is clearly an omission from our vocabulary) – where one unwittingly becomes a participant in the strange ritual that is taking place. A stooping hyena, with one foot in plaster and hobbling along on crutches, moves towards one of a number of white-hooded figures, this one holding out a dress, underneath what seems to be a large tent somewhere in a starry-skied desert. This recollects an early short story by Carrington, The Debutante (1935), in which the protagonist – a barely disguised self-portrait – avoids going to her coming-out ball by sending her friend the hyena in her place, disguised with a mask made from the torn-off face of the maid. Hyenas appear a lot in Carrington’s early works, referencing herself, as, for example, in Self-Portrait (c1938), in which the shadow of her own image sitting on a chair blurs with that of a lactating hyena. This is a rare later appearance, but with the hyena now shown as aged, it likely still references the artist (who once proclaimed herself like a hyena, owing to her “insatiable curiosity”). The lovers of the title, however – peculiar red and blue creatures facing one another in a bed – are rendered mere backdrop to this scene.  

In 1955, Carrington hand-painted her own deck of tarot cards (which only resurfaced in 2011). She was a devout student of tarot, who not only read spreads but also incorporated icons such as the Magician, the Hanged Man and the Chariot into her paintings. As art historian Susan Aberth and curator Tere Arcq write in their book The Tarot of Leonora Carrington,¹⁴ tarot symbolism “permeated most of her work and just kept recombining in new ways to suit her esoteric thinking and development,” and she was a lifelong follower of mystical traditions, even attempting to learn to levitate¹⁵ (perhaps she is the unseen force holding the Cerrato in place?) This, again, brings to mind another artist whose works would have perfectly suited this exhibition: Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002). In her final year of life, she, too, created a deck of tarot cards, and, four years earlier, her vision of a Tarot Garden, built, to her design, on top of an Etruscan ruin in Tuscany, was opened to the public.

Eileen Agar. Budding Figures, c1967. Acrylic on board, 20 x 24 in (50.8 x 61 cm).

Featuring more than 50 works by 27 artists, spanning painting, sculpture, ceramic, watercolour and collage, Enchanted Alchemies is one of those exhibitions that serves to liberally whet one’s appetite and arouse one’s thoughts as to who else might have been included, realising what a vast number of (predominantly female) artists have devoted themselves not just to the painterly concept of alchemy and magical transformation, but, more widely, to mysticism and the occult in art – and in life. To this end, the gallery’s creation of a reading room, with shelves filled with books by and about the artists included – and more – is a fabulous additional treat, and a resource I only wish I had more time to explore. The hang of the exhibition is also set to change midway through its run “to reflect the transformative and alchemical themes of the artists’ works”^₁₆ – no doubt also because there are simply too many wonderful and fitting works to choose from.

Not only are we spoilt for choice when it comes to artists and works, we should also acknowledge that there are potentially as many experiences and interpretations of each work as there are viewers – or, more accurately, as there are views, since, just as you and I are no longer the people we were yesterday, so no two encounters with any one of the works included will ever be the same. As the artist duo pascALEjandro (husband and wife Alejandro Jodorowsky, b1929, Chile, and Pascale Montandon-Jodorowsky, b1972, Paris, whose work is also on display) note: “Art is for magical eyes.”¹⁷ That is, magic is not just an alchemical trick performed by the artist, but something in the eye of the beholder – or, as in the earlier Linder quote: the imagery reveals hidden contents, not only of the artist’s psyche, but also of those who contemplate the works. I conclude with a final comment by Caroline Bachmann (b1963, Lausanne, Switzerland), whose Loupe (2018) comprises a pregnant bulge akin to those of Cerrato, reaching “as above, so below” the surface: “Artists are driven by the need to transform – the choice we have is to look carefully with curiosity and love.”¹⁸

References
1. Enchanted Alchemies: Magic, Mysticism, and the Occult in Art, exhibition catalogue, Lévy Gorvy Dayan, London, 2024.
2. As summarised by Thomas in her essay, ibid.
3. Leonora Carrington Rewrote the Surrealist Narrative for Women by Anwen Crawford in the New Yorker, 22 May 2017.
4. Song of Songs, 1:10.
5. Hilma Af Klint: Topics and Central Works, Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
6. Gertrude Abercrombie by Susan Weininger and Kent Smith, Illinois State Museum, 1991, page 71.
7. Ibid, page 12.
8. Cited in Beauty and/Is the Beast: Animal Symbology in the Work of Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Leonor Fini by Georgiana MM Colvile, in Surrealism and Women edited by Mary Ann Caws, Rudolf Kuenzli and Gwen Raaberg, MIT Press, 1991, page 175.
9. The Mantic Stain by Ithell Colquhoun in Enquiry 2 no 4, 1949, pages 15-21, later expanded as Children of the Mantic Stain in Athene 5 no 2, 1951, pages 29-34. See also ithellcolquhoun.co.uk/automatism.htm.
10. Manifestoes of Surrealism by André Breton, translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R Lane, University of Michigan Press, 1967, page 178.
11. Surrealism and Painting by André Breton, translated by Simon Watson Taylor, Harper and Row, 1972, pages 183-88. 
12. Les Grandes Transparentes by Ithell Colquhoun in The Bell 8, no 6, 1944, page 537.
13. Op cit, exh cat.
14. The Tarot of Leonora Carrington by Susan Aberth and Tere Arcq, Fulgur Press, 2021.
15. Revisiting the Lost Tarot Deck of Surrealist Leonora Carrington by Claire Voon in Art & Object, 2 August 2023.
16. As stated on the gallery’s website.
17. Op cit, exh cat.
18. Ibid, my emphasis.