Marjorie Cameron Mystery Babylon

Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel (April 23, 1922 – June 24, 1995), who professionally used the mononym Cameron, was an American artist, poet, actress, and occultist. A follower of Thelema, the new religious movement established by the English occultist Aleister Crowley, she was also the wife of rocket pioneer and fellow Thelemite Jack Parsons..Born in Belle Plaine, Iowa, Cameron volunteered for services in the United States' Navy during the Second World War, after which she settled in Pasadena, California, where she met Parsons, who believed her to be the "Elemental woman" that he had invoked in the early stages of a series of sex magic rituals called the Babalon Working. They entered a relationship and were married in 1946. Their relationship was often strained, although Parsons sparked her involvement in Thelema and occultism. After Parsons' death in an explosion at their home in 1952, Cameron came to suspect that her husband had been assassinated and began rituals to communicate with his spirit. Cameron's recognition as an artist increased after her death, when her paintings made appearances in exhibitions across the U.S. As a result of increased attention on Parsons, Cameron's life also gained greater coverage in the early 2000s, while in 2011 a biography of Cameron authored by Spencer Kansa was published.

Cameron's occult beliefs closely impacted her artworks.According to The Huffington Post, Cameron's artwork merges "Crowley's occult with the surrealism and symbolism of French poets, yielding dark yet whimsical depictions buzzing with otherworldly power".The art curator Philippe Vergne described her work as being situated on "the edge of surrealism and psychedelia", embodying "an aspect of modernity that deeply doubts and defies cartesian logic at a moment in history when these values have shown their own limitations".

Cameron's biographer Spencer Kansa was of the opinion that Cameron exhibited parallels with the Australian artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton, both in terms of her physical appearance and the similarities between their artistic styles.Harrington also saw similarities in the work of Cameron and the artists Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini.On the website of the Cameron Parsons Foundation, Michael Duncan expressed the view that Cameron's work rivals that of "fellow surrealists" like Carrington, Fini, Remedios Varo, and Ithell Colquhoun, while also appearing "fascinatingly prescient" of the works by later artists Kiki Smith, Amy Cutler, Karen Kilimmck, and Hernan Bas.In later years, Cameron would often be erroneously labelled a Beat artist because she inhabited many of the same social circles as prominent Beat poets and writers.Rejecting this label, Kansa instead described Cameron as "a pre-Beat bohemian, whose heart lay in Romanticism"Wikipedia

The fantastical world of Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama ( born 22 March 1929) is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, but is also active in painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. She has been acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan
"Yayoi Kusama is the artist who filled up her world up with brightly painted spots. Suffering hallucinations and obsessive thoughts since she was a child, her career has been characterised by abrupt shifts in the areas in which she works – film, painting, poetry and ‘happenings’ to name just four of them. Its incredibly immersive nature, what she has occasionally referred to as 'obliteration', has remained the one constant - from her earliest, 1940s four-inch square drawings influenced by traditional Nihonga paintings, to the work she is still creating today, by all accounts, as formidable as ever at 80-years-old."(uk.phaidon.com)

 

Jerzy Bereś - sculptor and performance artist

Jerzy Bereś (September 14, 1930 in New Sącz – December 25, 2012 in Kraków) was a Polish sculptor, author and performance artist.
In 1956, he completed a program in sculpture in the Academy of Fine Arts in Xawery Dunikowski.His first solo exhibition was in 1958 in the Kraków House of Artists, where he presented the sculptures: 'Lullaby', 'The Sun', 'Mother', 'Eve', 'anxiety', 'Idyll' made of plaster and reinforced concrete. His experience at this exhibition influenced his decision to halt the work he had been doing up to this point and along with it the traditional methods he learned from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Just before 1960, he created his first sculptures of wood:'Rzepicha' and 'Bart'. However, these were very realistic renderings that led the artist to turn to minimalism. Since then, his sculptures in wood have become increasingly simple and stay as close as possible to the nature of the material used. In 1960 he created work out of natural materials in the series hallucinations and ine 1967 in the series The Oracle. He used field stones, hemp rope, scraps of canvas bag, leather straps (the characteristic of materials for his work).In 1968, Beres presented in Foksal Gallery in Warsaw first artistic manifestation of prophecy 'I'. It opens up a whole series of speeches that are a commentary on politics, religion, art and philosophy, in which the artist often uses his own body and the object. His work called "Masses" discusses the most important Polish problems; the Mass Romantic,the " political Mass, and the Mass in Polish.Wikipedia

 

Peter Grzybowski - Polish multimedia and performance artist and a painter

Peter Grzybowski (born 16 June 1954 Kraków, Poland, died 29 August 2013) was a Polish multimedia and performance artist and a painter. He studied at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (ASP), graduating in 1982. He first performed in 1981. He was a figure in the Polish performance art movement of the 1980s, performing individually and with Awacs Group (1982–87) and KONGER (1984–1986). From 1985 he lived in the USA.
His paintings imitate objects such as photographs, boards, marble and metal plates. They are included in collections such as: John Hechinger Collection,Norton Center for the Arts, Bob Rotchild Collection, Michael Rakosi Collection, Raymond and Arlene Zimmerman Collection, Exchange Gallery and many other collections in USA, Canada, France, Germany and Poland.
He created multimedia performances and installations, in which he used computers, digital video, sound, UV lighting (the installations were shown e.g. at Entropia Gallery in Wroclaw, and New York galleries TIXE, Fusion Arts Museum and Now Gallery as well as interactive CD-ROMs (presented among e.g. at the International Art Meetings in Katowice 2000, WRO International Festival in Wroclaw 2001 and Chashama in New York 2002. Wikipedia