Customer Reviews

Homage to Pan: The Life, Art and Sex Magick of Rosaleen Norton

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There is no question that Rosaleen Norton was a very talented artist in her own right. Her blend of Occult imagery with erotic personal discovery is more accessible than Austin Osman Spare and less abstract than Marjorie Cameron making her a great addition to anyone's interest in Occult Art. Her "Pop" style is a welcome change from the astute seriousness of other artists although never rivaling the intensity of these peers. This has been overshadowed perhaps by her dedication to some of Crowley's most sexual teachings and the subsequent scandals involving her in a very conservative time and country. To some extent this book plays into that as it tends to focus more on that which surrounded her rather than her artwork and some of the meanings that she attached to her art. However almost everything that she has said about her art has been included in the book. Mr. Drury has done a wonderful job on this text. His sympathy to his subject is second to none and it seems as though this has been in the works for almost 20 years. He has left no stone unturned in the process and almost every scrap of data on her from personal interviews, police records and newspaper archives to letters and manuscript notations seems to have been included. It's just that it is so spread out amongst the rumors and tabloid exposes that one is left having to piece her view together for themselves up until the end.

The book only really suffers in two places. There is about 100 pages devoted to Aleister Crowley, Kenneth Grant and Austin Osman Spare (God, if I read another sketchy profile of A.C. I'll explode!) which of course almost anyone that even hears the name of Rosaleen Norton is no doubt already intimately familiar with and for those that aren't they will figure it out on their own elsewhere. This redundant information left me skipping around and feeling like I had moved very far away from the topic at hand. Of course these essays on A.C., Grant and Spare are relevant but seriously this is not a book read in a vacuum as most people should know this stuff. Just as I was beginning to be enthralled with this mysterious (to me) character in Western Occultism I was tossed back to grade school to rehash the basics. Very frustrating. If only this information had been worked into the story of her life rather than having a sizable chunk of the book devoted to it exclusively.

Which leads to the second fault with this book. The text suffers from word editor syndrome to the extreme. Dozens of sentences are repeated verbatim and paragraphs have been shuffled around so much that sometimes I couldn't tell what the hell I was reading and more disastrously where it was all going. On top of that a narrative is absent from so much information that has been compartmentalized into chapters that seem to rub up against each other like complete strangers.

I know that this was not supposed to be an art book but really these reproductions are crappy, only black and white on thin paper that shows through and leave you straining to peer into the paintings to try to see the detail he is speaking of. Most of the painting have been reduced in size as to be almost irrelevant in the discussions that he raises. Creation books are not famous for their attention to image quality or including color images but it really is a big tease.

That all being said this is really a wonderful book about a wonderful artist that I recommend highly as I do with most all of the Creation Books. But it is such a scattered jumble of stuff that it almost can't be read in one go. I pine for the days when authors and biographers would give the reader some credit and take the information and ideas they have gathered and present it in a linear narrative from the beginning to the end and trust us to follow them and understand it all. The book as simulated website is a really nasty turn of events and I only hope that it is just a fad.