Desert Islands: Magic and Modernity in the work of Ithell Colquhoun
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- q18wv
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
-
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- Book title
- Intersections: Women Artists / Surrealism / Modernism
- Publisher
- Manchester University Press
- ISBN
- 9780719096488
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- September
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
-
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Matheson’s book chapter contributes to the development of scholarly understanding of the role of women artists within the field of surrealism and more generally within modernism. The chapter analyses the work of the British surrealist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun and builds upon recent work that has increasingly demonstrated the importance of areas such as mediumistic spiritualism, occultism and magic to the development of modernism. Matheson’s analysis is based on original research, including unpublished and primary sources (including correspondence, manuscript notes, draft articles), carried out on Colquhoun in the Special Collections of the Senate Library, Courtauld Library, British Library and particularly the Colquhoun Archive at the Hyman Kreitman Research Centre.
The chapter takes as its focus the theme of utopianism and the motif of the desert island, using both historical sources dating back to the seventeenth century (including the magical writings of Thomas Vaughan and others), together with modern theoretical writing and in particular the work of Gilles Deleuze. Matheson’s analysis combines both historical and primary sources and reads that material through the prism of contemporary theoretical writing on the theme of desert islands as utopias. The chapter argues for a reappraisal of the role of the work of Colquhoun and more generally of occultism within the history of surrealism. Matheson also provides original readings of a number of Colquhoun’s occult artworks, based on the theoretical analysis of her writings and on the historical occult sources that underpinned her ideas.
The chapter advances our understanding of the work of Colquhoun and of the role of ‘enchantment’ (as also developed by Alex Owen and Corinne Treitel) in the development of modernity and modernism, while critically engaging with both Colquhoun’s writings and her visual artworks.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
