Drawing in Real Perspective

Featured

Drawing in Real Perspective
A new approach to space with natural and immediate application
Xavier Bolot
Format: Softcover/244pp
ISBN: 8781906958770
£14.99/$22
Subjects: Art/Art History/Art Theory/Drawing/Painting.

In this book we learn how to draw using a natural technique that is amazingly efficient and simple. Real Perspective is a new approach to space as seen by our eyes.

Perspective is an integral part of drawing and painting. It is however poorly understood today. Our representation of perspective in western countries dates from the 17th century, enforced by an edict made by Louis XIV despot of France. It consisted of drawing receding straight lines starting from a vanishing point.

However, the ancient Greeks used specific curves. This heritage was not taken up during the Renaissance.

In an investigative atmosphere, this book unmasks beliefs we received on the Renaissance and our contemporary culture. We learn to believe what we see, using a natural technique that is amazingly efficient and simple.


We rediscover again the Greek knowledge, and the researches among others of Leonardo da Vinci, Henri Matisse and David Hockney.

Buy UK edition

Buy US edition 

Surrealism & The Occult

Featured

 

 

Surrealism & The Occult

Nadia Choucha
Format: Softcover/164 pp.
ISBN: 9781906958749
£15.00
Subjects: Art/Art History/Surrealism/Occult.

Click HERE for the UK edition

Many people associate Surrealism with politics, but it was also permeated by occult ideas, a fact often overlooked by art historians. This occult influence goes beyond general themes to the movement’s very heart.

This occult influence goes beyond general themes to the movement’s very heart. The antinomian stance of Surrealism can be traced directly to the influence of radical nineteenth century magi such as Eliphas Lévi, whose Dogma and Ritual of High Magic was widely read by Surrealism’s ideologues. Amongst these we find its progenitor André Breton.

The book shows how many Surrealists and their predecessors were steeped in magical ideas: Kandinsky, with his involvement with Theosophy, the sorcery of Salvador Dali; the alchemy of Pablo Picasso and the shamanism of Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington.

Surrealism did not establish itself in Britain until the 1930s but a select few felt something in the air. Almost ten years before the Surrealist experiments with automatic drawing, an obscure English artist, Austin Osman Spare had perfected the technique.

Nadia Choucha shows, convincingly, that occult and surrealist philosophies were often interchangeable. Surrealism and the Occult is seminal reading for art historians and occultists alike, while artists will find it a vital guide to the unlocking of the imagination.


Praise for Nadia Choucha’s Surrealism & the Occult
”Highly readable…seminal… fascinating” – Francis X. King
”alive, with the heady mixture of occult and pictorial symbolism treated with laudable lucidity.”- Art Book News

Ithell Colquhoun

Featured

pioneer surrealist artist, occultist, writer and poet
(reprinted)
Eric Ratcliffe

cov9781869928988
——————————————————————-
Ithell Colquhoun / UK / £30




——————————————————————-
Ithell Colquhoun / USA / US$40




——————————————————————-
Ithell Colquhoun
pioneer surrealist artist, occultist, writer & poet
Eric Ratcliffe
Format: Softcover/312pp/90 illustrations (25 colour).
ISBN: ISBN 978-1869928-98-8
£30/US$40
Subjects: Art/Art History/Surrealism/Occult/Magick/Biography.


The skills of Ithell Colquhoun in her main practice, that of artist and pioneer in this country of surrealistic art, have been long recognised. Additionally, other interests – alchemy, Earth-magic, active occultism, poetry, druidism, the pre-Christian pagan calendar, the history and membership of the Golden Dawn – and writing of and involvement in these interests by book publication and in a widely scattered field of correspondence, have created a miscellany of truly gargantuan proportion.

Eric Ratcliffe considered it was time to get together some of these pieces, to add something of what is known of Colquhoun’s early life and family history and to take the opportunity of listing a comprehensive calendar of her work and exhibitions. The result is neither strictly biographical nor a treatise on any one subject, but it is a first gathering of the roots, passions and multi-directions of this artist. It is a patchwork containing many launch-pads for exploration of the magical and mythical atmosphere which this artist existed in and created. Here therefore is a contribution towards solving a jigsaw and a wind-catch of the minor cyclones of lthell’s dedicatory interests, also serving as a record of her accomplishments in the art field.

REVIEWS

‘The subtitle of this book is: ‘Pioneer Surrealist, Artist, Occultist, Writer and Poet’, this multifaceted description captures the essence of who and what Ithell Colquhoun was about. Her connection to Cornwall is through the book The Living Stones, published in 1957, which was an early contribution to discovering the power of the Cornish landscape, prehistory and tradition and folklore. Even today, it continues to inspire people with its love for the ancient land of Cornwall…Ratcliffe’s biography made me want to go back and re-read The Living Stones, and no better thing could be said of a book such as this.’- Cheryl Straffon, Editor in Meyn Mamvro – Ancient stones and sacred sites in Cornwall – www.meynmamvro.co.uk

‘The author gives an excellent account of Colquhoun’s artistic career, explaining why she has been so overlooked (she stuck to her principles against the authoritarian demands of the British surrealist clique and consequently was expelled). Ratcliffe places proper emphasis upon the artist’s magical activities. She was a member of the OTO, Order of the Pyramid and Sphinx, Order of Holy Wisdom, Ancient Celtic Church and the Druid Order.

Despite having had the good fortune to read many of Colquhoun’s magical papers I learnt a great deal from this very well informed work. There is excellent bibliographical information including listings of unpublished typescripts and also as comprehensive as possible listing of her paintings and drawings.’
Ithell Colquhoun by Eric Ratcliffe, Mandrake of Oxford.
Reviewed by Ben Fernee @ Caduceus Books

‘Ithell Colquhoun was a pioneer surrealist artist, poet, writer, pantheist and occultist. Descended from Devonian ancestry, she was of Anglo-Indian birth and received her education in England at the Cheltenham Ladies College and later at the Slade School of Art in London.

After the war she moved to Cornwall where she spent the rest of her life. While at the Slade she became involved in Theosophical circles and then attempted, without success, to join Moina Mathers’ Alpha and Omega Lodge of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Dion Fortune’s Fraternity of the Inner Light.

However during the 1950s she belonged to various occult groups including Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian OTO and Nu-Isis Temple, Dr WB Crow’s Order of the Holy Wisdom and Order of the Keltic Cross, Tamara Bourkhoun’s Order of the Pyramid and the Sphinx, as well as the Druid Order, the Cornish and Breton Gorsedd, the Ancient Celtic Church, Co-Freemasonry and the Fellowship of Isis.


This biography is profusely illustrated with many of Colquhoun’s paintings and also includes some of her writings and poetry. It is a fascinating study of a unique multi-talented woman who during her creative life contributed a great deal to both the artistic and occult fields. Recommended.’
Ithell Colquhoun, by Eric Ratcliffe.
Reviewed by Mike Howard in The Cauldron, issue 129, August 2008