The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art

Edited by Martin Clark, Michael Bracewell & Alun Rowlands
Published by Tate, 2009
ISBN 9781854378743


















Contents //

Introduction Martin Clark //
Lost hikers: On magic and modernism: pursuing the Neo-romantic sensibility in British Art
Michael Bracewell //
Notes from the numinous and the luminous
Alun Rowlands //
The darkness of menhirs: Landscape and mysticism in post-war Cornwall
Chris Stephens //
This dim-remembered land Philip Hoare //
The life of the inanimate object Paul Nash //
A brooding presence in the landscape Toni Carver //
Magic and necessity
Jennifer Higgie //
Children of the mantic stain
Ithell Colquhoun //
Jarman's monadology
Ed Halter //
Eidolon Brian Dillon //
You are nothing
David Thorpe //
My hand flickers your deception: A case for belief Ilsa Colsell //
Writings and statements by the artist Cecil Collins //
Time signatures: the writing of stones and the logic of the imagination Marina Warner //
Sentences on magic (after Sol Lewitt) Jeremy Millar //
Viewfinder general
Paul Bayley //
Faerie poem John Russell //
The bleak moor lies
Morrissey //
Interview with Genesis P-orridge (extract) Jon Savage //

Reviews:
The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art at Tate St Ives Brian Dillon on the occult influence on modern British art, Guardian Newspaper, 24 October 2009

Something supernatural comes this way Michael Bracewell on Magic and Modernity in British Art, TATE ETC. issue 17, Autumn 2009

Faye Pomerance, Sphere of Redemption (1967)

Samuel Palmer The Lonely Tower (1879)

The Dark Weekend
Your actions are my dreams by Linder
Saturday 31 October 2009, 14.00–15.30

Over the past three decades, Linder (b 1952, Liverpool) has used music, performance and collage as a vehicle for the examination of self through which she questions the commodification of the female form within society. This new work weaves the tradition of Guise dancing into a mythological assemblage responding to ancient customs and rituals of Cornwall and St Ives in particular. 

The performance takes place on Allantide, the eve of winter and beginning of the Celtic New Year. Collaborators include composer, Stuart McCallum (Cinematic Orchestra).

Your Actions are My Dreams ' was part of 'The Dark Monarch' and the title of the performance came from a WH Auden poem. It wove the local tradition of guise dancing into a 'mythological assemblage' responding to ancient customs and rituals of Cornwall and St Ives in particular. It took place on Allantide, the eve of winter and beginning of the Celtic New Year. Linder's collaborators included composer Stuart McCallum (Cinematic Orchestra) and writer Simon Reed. The costume designer was Richard Nicoll and the mask designer Nasir Mazhar.

Linder by Morrissey, Interview Magazine, January 2010

Photos by Steve Tanner  (copyright Steve Tanner and Tate St Ives)

The Dark Monarch Key, Sven Berlin, handwritten envelope containing
the author’s key to the characters in the novel, May 1982

Symposium at Tate St Ives: Magic & Modernity in British Art
Saturday 21 November 2009, 10.30–16.00

Contributors include: the exhibition curators ( Martin Clark - Artistic Director Tate St Ives, Michael Bracewell - writer and critic, Alun Rowlands - artist, writer and Head of Fine Art, University of Reading).

They will be joined by Chris Stephens - Curator (Modern British Art) & Head of Displays at Tate Britain as well as exhibiting artists Jeremy Millar , Mark Titchner and Clare Woods.

Alongide the symposium there will be a screening of The Incredible String Band Be Glad For The Song Has No Ending introduced by the film's director Peter Neal and followed by a discussion with Adrian Whittaker . Adrian Whittaker is a music historian and freelance researcher who edited the definitive Incredible String Band biography, Be Glad - An Incredible String Band Compendium (Helter Skelter Publishing, 2003), as well as supervising a number of ISB CD reissues. He is currently collaborating with Michael Bracewell on a feature for The Wire about The Moodies, an obscure music and performance outfit from the early Seventies.

Other creative responses to the show include the screening of a new collaborative film Dominion by author Philip Hoare and artist Angela Cockayne , which in fifteen minutes evokes the mysterious shape and forms of the sea.

Philip Hoare is the winner of the Samuel Johnson prize 2009 and is the author of six works of creative non-fiction, including Spike Island, England's Lost Eden and most recently Leviathan or The Whale , 2008 with the accompanying BBC2 Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick .

A new composition by experimental band Cyclobe integrates cutting-edge electronic music with a strong feeling for the English landscape. The work, The Woods Are Alive with The Smell of His Coming is a hymn to Pan, composed and performed by Ossian Brown and Stephen Thrower with contributions from Mike York, Cliff Stapleton and John Contreras . Recorded at Strange Hotel, on the South East Coast of England, 2009.