Kenneth Grant's Visual Art

[N0T 2]

Recently I've been enjoying reading my copy of the wonderful deluxe second Starfire edition of The Ninth Arch, and, apart from finding the text entirely fresh, unexpectedly relevant and strangely, truly beautiful in ways I hadn't properly sensed before, I noticed some paintings by Kenneth that had not registered on previous skims (as I was using the old edition for study before).

I was delighted by these two full-colour paintings by Kenneth Grant, that show Kenneth was a better painter, and indeed, a better artist, than Crowley (not that it's a competition...), but I suppose knowing Spare at a young age and having an artist of Steffi's calibre as life partner must surely have given him a sharper eye and truer hand than those less lucky. I refer to plates 17 and 18:

Thumb Concentration I: Melting Cat, and
Thumb Concentration II: Mirroracle

I realised that I'd not knowingly seen an Aossic in colour before, only the pen drawings in earlier volumes and the black and white plates in the first edition.

This led me to wonder, surely there is a trove of Kenneth Grant artwork - paintings and whatever else - that, like these two wonderful surrealist paintings, has lain with its darkness hidden under a bushel for a lifetime?  Earlier, I really didn't think he was as good at art as he clearly was, on the strength of these two paintings that I've only now noticed. They're really good and you can't tell from the black and white versions, as it's all in the colour.

So yeah I'm pretty keen to see more!

Perhaps the forum can have a section alongside the Poetry, Fiction etc. sections, for discussing his artwork?

[N0T 2]

I just scoured the utterly splendid Bibliography, but could not detect any listing of his graphic work, published or otherwise, no doubt due to it being a bibliography, rather than a catalogue.

As several items of Kenneth's graphic artwork have been published, albeit only as plates within his written oeuvre, perhaps it would be of use or convenience to list them. Graphic art was clearly an immense part of his world for his entire adult life, so his own artwork would seem to naturally be of significance, for a proper appreciation of his overall aesthetic and intellectual (and occult) legacy.

I'll add items here when I can, and will update this post silently unless something is noteworthy. I hope others are also able to help list his artworks, both published and unpublished, in this thread - it could be interesting to see what pops up.

( Do pitch in - you know what they say, a pitcher is worth a thousand words...)

___

KENNETH GRANT: Visual Artworks

Art Published in the Typhonian Trilogies:


Black and white drawings on paper:

Outside the Circles of Time, Plate 9: Aleister Crowley: An Impression

Outer Gateways, Plate 8: Desmodus
Outer Gateways, Plate 17: Astral Marginalia (Scenes of S'lba)

Beyond The Mauve Zone, Plate 20: A Priest of Aossic-Aiwass

The Ninth Arch, Plate 19: The White Bat
The Ninth Arch, Plate 27: Elemental
The Ninth Arch, Illustration: Original Design with Sigils of New Isis Lodge


Sigils
Aleister Crowley
and the Hidden God, Chapter 9 The Witches' Sabbath and the Reincarnation
of Primal Obsessions, page 128 (2013 edition): [ 'atavistic resurgence...it suggests the form of a bat' ]

I'm omitting the sigils in the received texts The Wisdom of S'lba (Outer Gateways) and The Book of the Spider (The Ninth Arch), as these were ostensibly received by the mediums transmitting these texts.


Works in Colour

Paintings:
The Ninth Arch, Plate 17: Thumb Concentration I: The Melting Cat
The Ninth Arch, Plate 18: Thumb Concentration II: Mirroracle


Art published outside of the Trilogies:

Unpublished works:

[Deleted]

Great idea NOT 2. Thank you for pointing those plates out. I read 9th Arch but had been saving the Art for my next read.

Those are exquisite paintings. It reminds me of a ZOS and Dali influence fused together. Very impressive.

[N0T 2]

I am definitely keen to see more Kenneth Grant art. Particularly in colour.

For example, are there others in the series Thumb Concentration?

Are there other entire series?

Isolated works?

Being who and what he is, and was, obviously lots of his output would be, or have been, intended for no communication to anyone, or to anyone outside a private coterie, and as such "sacred" and private in nature. That is to be expected. To these, I expect no reference to be published.

But, I'd imagine, there would also be works that he simply never thought to publish whilst alive, that on reflection he'd probably not mind mad keen fans and students of his oeuvre knowing about eventually. I can't imagine his Thumb Concentration series to have simply appeared in full bloom (but then, maybe it did!) in isolation, he clearly has a lot of experience with using colour from those two paintings alone.

Yes, hungry for more Kenneths to soak in on my next S'lb-attical.

[Michael Staley]

There isn't a great deal more than the artwork that has already been published.

There is what appears to be an early holograph draft of the 'Wisdom of S'lba', spread across two notebooks that look as if they date from the early to mid 1940s. Grant's pocket diary for 1945 records that he showed this work to Crowley whilst staying at 'Netherwood' in March to May 1945, and that Crowley read it aloud. There are some pen drawings amongst the text across these two books.

There is a pastel on board - dark and faded - of what looks like a Kali Yantra. Kali being KG's ishta devata, this was likely used in sadhanas. There are also some surrealist drawings which probably date from the early 1940s.

And that's all that I have come across thus far. I don't think that Kenneth did a great deal of painting and drawing.

My favourite is 'Thumb Concentration II' in the second edition of 'The Ninth Arch'. I love the colours.

[N0T 2]

Jan 21, 2018 19:57:45 GMT Michael Staley said:

There isn't a great deal more than the artwork that has already been published.

There is what appears to be an early holograph draft of the 'Wisdom of S'lba', spread across two notebooks that look as if they date from the early to mid 1940s. Grant's pocket diary for 1945 records that he showed this work to Crowley whilst staying at 'Netherwood' in March to May 1945, and that Crowley read it aloud. There are some pen drawings amongst the text across these two books.

There is a pastel on board - dark and faded - of what looks like a Kali Yantra. Kali being KG's ishta devata, this was likely used in sadhanas. There are also some surrealist drawings which probably date from the early 1940s.

And that's all that I have come across thus far. I don't think that Kenneth did a great deal of painting and drawing.

My favourite is 'Thumb Concentration II' in the second edition of 'The Ninth Arch'. I love the colours.

Thank you for this information Michael.

Even things like his painted (?)talisman/fetish/stele of Mercury (on the bookshelf behind him in the smiling photograph of him in his study) have a wonderful quality to them.

Agreed re. the colours in that Thumb Concentration painting - quite ecstatic.