The Brooklyn Rail

Christening herself Cameron, Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel (1922–95) was no mere mortal. She considered herself to be an elemental, a nature spirit, an avatar transported from the mists of antiquity. Hers is an epic tale from the pages of Los Angeles occult history. In 1946, Jack Parsons (co-founder of Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and L. Ron Hubbard (founder of Scientology) went to the Mojave Desert to perform an Aleister Crowley magick ritual called The Babalon Working to summon forth an elemental mate. Shortly thereafter, Cameron materialized at a party at Parsons’s house. Seeing her flaming red hair, Parsons knew she was the incarnation of his Babalonian Scarlet Woman spirit vehicle and married her shortly thereafter. Cameron went from Midwestern, former Navy mapmaker and fashion illustrator to muse for the OTO, Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis, of which Parsons was a founding Los Angeles member. In 1952, Parsons, in a tragic blast-off, blew himself up in a horrific accident while working with explosives. Afterwards, Cameron lived with Kenneth Anger and instructed him in Crowley’s Thelema philosophy. Decked out in Rudolph Valentino’s shawl Cameron’s Whore of Babylon, upstaged Anaïs Nin’s Astarte in Anger’s 1954 cult film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. She was the wild woman antecessor to the later seventies L.A. feminists, crashing the all-boys Ferus Gallery at the invitation of Wallace Berman. The LAPD shut the exhibition down for indecency because of the inclusion of her Peyote Vision (1955), a drawing of a woman and alien creature writhing in a rear-mounted coitus.

Today, galleries and art fairs are inundated with what Bob Nickas brilliantly referred to as “sub-prime Surrealism … lacking even the most meagre powers of divination.” Few of these works feel plumbed from the depths of the artist’s psyche or rooted in genuine spiritual practices. Plagued by this deluge of mannered, largely appropriated fare, Carmeron stands out as the real thing—a long-time occult priestess of the first order. The current exhibition Sixties Surreal at the Whitney Museum missed the boat by not including her work: she should have been the exhibition’s guiding star. At Nicole Klagsbrun, we encounter a historically important selection of stunning Cameron works on paper and cardboard from different periods. This well-curated exhibition is a treasure chest filled with captivating gems. Drawings like Untitled (white gouache figure) (1960) feel like a theurgical evocation of mysterious creatures. The presence of these spirits is palpable as they venture forth and mesmerize the viewer.

In the early 1960’s, Cameron wrote to the mythologist Joseph Cambell and sent him her slides. She also read Carl Jung and was influenced by his theory of archetypes. In Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, the actors embody mythological deities, a common practice in Los Angeles occult circles. In a small self-portrait, Black Egg (n.d.), we see Cameron clad in a robe like a priestess. It is hard not to think of Joséphin Péladan (1858–1918) or Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) with their magical personas and theatrical priestly vestments. In the painting, she holds a black egg inscribed with the letters UTI. The letters reference a text, 25 Aethyr, by the Elizabethans Dr. John Dee and Sir Edward Kelly (revived by Aleister Crowley and Victor Neuburg in 1901), where a vision of The Beast is seen by the Scarlet Woman, here personified by red haired Cameron. We wonder what this black egg, a rather dark cosmogonic symbol, will hatch.

Crowley rejected characterizations of himself as the antichrist and devil incarnate. Creepy Crowley was chucked out of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn twice, and I always felt William Butler Yeats and the other members had good reasons for doing so. Crowley lore was big on sex magick and dark angels. Jack Parsons knew him personally and was his devoted acolyte. One of the most striking pieces in the current exhibition is Cameron’s portrait of Jack Parsons as Dark Angel (n.d.), floating on a gold background like an icon. The piece radiates a strange energy with his airborne hair and collar of rays. As in the drawing, Parsons hovered as a presence in her life until the end: Cameron looked for him in the stars and the desert landscapes where she retreated after his death.

A series of fossil-like floating figures, delicately drawn in white ink on black paper, haunt the exhibition like ethereal presences. Cameron produced works in trance states, used peyote, and explored altered states through esoteric studies in Kabbalah and other forms of mysticism. The winged figures in these works pulsate with psychic energy. Fossil (Unicorn) (1958) is one of the most stunning, a fragile beaklike head with a nautilus shell cut-away in the eye socket. Also memorable are a series of fourteen ink drawings sharing the same title: Pluto Transiting the Twelfth House (1978–86). Delicate vertical strokes map out energetic waves like an electrocardiogram of her psyche. Astrologically, Pluto is the planet of transformation, death and rebirth, the house of the unconscious, the hidden regenerative powers pulled from the depths. The twelfth house is the final house in the chart; these drawings extend to the later part of her life.

Cameron was a complex artist, poet, performer, and occultist. In a collection of films shown at Anthology Film Archive during the exhibition, we see her as a riveting performer. In an early Dennis Hopper picture, Night Tide (1963), she appears in black as a mysterious sea witch. Also shown was Curtis Harrington’s studio portrait of the artist, The Wormwood Star (1956). Yes, Cameron carried the anima projection for Parsons, Anger, Harrington, and others, but she was also an artist of immense power in her own right: Jack Parsons was just one chapter in her life, and even during his lifetime she periodically fled alone to Mexico and spent time with artists like Leonora Carrington. In our age of desperate careerism, it is refreshing to know Cameron largely turned her back on the art world after the 1957 Ferus Gallery debacle. This exhibition is a chance to see work that stands apart in its authenticity and depth of vision. She paved the way for women artist that were to follow, with a life few can match.