Thoughts on Ian Trowell's Article on Heaven 17 and the Yuppie 1980s in SIG News 4 (Sept. 2025)

Ad for the album Penthouse and Pavement by Heaven 17 

Artwork by Ray Smith (Virgin Records 1981)

 

 

I. 

 

It's interesting to ask why some musicians who might have strapped themselves into a pair of bondage trousers in 1977, suddenly started wearing formal business suits in the early 1980s and subscribing to an entirely different sartorial code ...

 

One possible answer, put forward by punk stalwarts The Clash, is that new groups were not particularly worried about récupération, i.e., the process whereby the radical ideas, images, and practices of punk were absorbed into mainstream culture and commodified for the market place. 

 

Dressed for success, these new groups embraced the idea of transforming rebellion into money and laughed all the way to the bank [1].     

 

 

II. 

 

However, if that's true of many new groups who preferred to be thought of as post-punk, it wasn't true, argues Ian Trowell, of Heaven 17 ... An English band, from Sheffield, who combined "Yorkshire awkwardness, conceptualist pranking [...] and an attention to visual detail" [2] with a commercial electronic dance sound [3].           

 

Not wanting to be pigeonholed and hoping to subvert clichéd ideas of what a band in 1981 should look like, these socialist synth-popsters wore expensive-looking suits "designed to confuse the expectations of anti-conformity-conformity ushered in by a 'cookie-cutter' punk uniform" [4]. 

 

By deliberately styling themselves as businessmen - albeit with a certain youthful swagger - they emphasised that the music business is a business and that recording artists are simply cogs in a money-making machine. 

 

This idea is further reinforced, as Trowell reminds us, by the cover design for Heaven 17's debut album, Penthouse and Pavement (1981), shown above, which amusingly hijacks the visual language of the corporate world [5]. 

 

 

III. 

 

So: Heaven 17 were not real yuppies - and, in fact, Trowell convincingly argues the case that they were not even parodying the yuppie look and ideology; that this is a contemporary misremembering. 

 

For although the word yuppie first appeared in print in 1980 [6], it was then just a neutral demographic descriptor for a class of young urban professionals. 

 

It wasn't until the middle of the decade that the term became fully conceptualised in the sense we understand it today and its use became widespread in the media to refer (almost always negatively) to a "fashionable go-getter who fetishises a luxury business suit and lifestyle" [7].   

 

As Trowell also amusingly notes at the end of his piece, in a Melody Maker feature on the band from October 1981, lead singer Glenn Gregory is compared to Michael Heseltine, not Bud Fox [8].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Récupération is a core concept in Situationist thought, particularly as developed by Guy Debord, and it is seen as one of the main methods by which dominant powers maintain control. 

      I'm referring here to lyrics (written by Joe Strummer) from the 1978 single by The Clash '(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais' (CBS Records): The new groups are not concerned / With what there is to be learned / They got Burton suits, ha! you think it's funny / Turnin' rebellion into money.

      There's an irony, of course, in being lectured on the perils of selling out by a band who signed the previous year to a major American label for $100,000.   

      

[2] Ian Trowell, 'Let's All Make a Bomb: Heaven 17 and the Yuppie 1980s', in SIG News, Issue 4 (UAL, September 2025), p. 4. 

      Ian Trowell is an independent writer and researcher who has published in the fields of punk and post-punk, fairground culture, fashion, photography and art. He recently published Throbbing Gristle: An Endless Discontent (Intellect Books, 2023). He also regularly publishes work on Substack: click here.  

 

[3] Heaven 17 were a trio consisting of Martyn Ware (keyboards, drum machine, supporting vocals), Ian Craig Marsh (keyboards), and Glenn Gregory (lead vocals). Ware and Marsh had originally been founding members of the Human League and Gregory had previously sung in a punk band with Marsh called Musical Vomit.

      The groups's name was taken from a fictional pop band mentioned in Anthony Burgess's dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange (1962). Whereas Phil Oakey's Human League went on to achieve major chart success, Heaven 17 struggled to make a similar impact. Their debut single '(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang' - taken from the album Penthouse and Pavement (Virgin Records, 1981) - was banned by the BBC but became a minor hit (reaching 45 in the UK singles chart). A remastered version from 2006 can be played on YouTube by clicking here. 

      The funny thing is, this was one of the few songs I remember taping off the radio at the time and I used to play it endlessly (even though synth-pop was never really my cup of tea and I wouldn't have considered for one moment actually buying the record).   

 

[4] Ian Trowell, op. cit., p. 5.

  

[5] Essentially, to employ another term drawn from the Situationist handbook, this is an act of détournement; i.e., one involving the appropriation, reimagining, and recontextualising of existing cultural elements in order to subvert their original meaning and expose their inherent ideology.  

 

[6] The first time the word yuppie appeared in print was in a May 1980 Chicago magazine article by Dan Rottenberg. He would later admit, however, that he had heard other people use the term and hadn't coined it himself.  

 

[7] Ian Trowell, op. cit. p. 5. 

 

[8] Michael Heseltine was then Secretary of State for the Environment in the Thatcher government; a somewhat flamboyant figure - always well-dressed with coiffed blonde hair - he had earlier enjoyed a long and successful business career. 

      Bud Fox is a fictional character in Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987); a young, ultra-ambitious stockbroker played by Charlie Sheen.  

 

 

 

Heaven and How to Get There

Revival Movement Association

revivalmovement.org 

 

 

I. 

 

One of the ironic consequences of mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa is that there are suddenly lots of evangelical Christians on the street corners, preaching the gospel and reaching out as missionaries. 

 

In other words, having been colonised and converted by bible-bashing Europeans in the nineteenth-century, they are now attempting to undo secular modernity and effectively plunge us back into a world of religious mania.   

 

Thus it was I was given a little leaflet this morning, encouraging me to turn away from sin and put my faith and trust in Lord Jesus Christ, Saviour, as well as promising to reveal not only what Heaven is like, but, more importantly, how to get there.  

 

 

II. 

 

According to the leaflet, Heaven is a wonderful place whose beauty is incomparable:

 

The God of the Bible is a God of beauty, and this is why Heaven will be perfectly beautiful. It will be so beautiful that it cannot be compared to anywhere here on earth.   

 

Note how Heaven is capitalised, but earth is not: Nietzsche would argue that this provides a crucial insight into the Christian mindset; to the fact that Christianity prioritises that which comes after life whilst, at the same time, devaluing material (mortal) existence and is therefore profoundly nihilistic [1]. 

 

But let's leave aside the anti-Christian case against Heaven until later and continue with our reading of the leaflet ... 

 

Interestingly, no sooner are we told about the beauty of Heaven than we are informed that this is its least important aspect. What matters far more is the fact that Heaven is the place where all the purest, humblest, most unselfish people the world has ever known finally come together as one flock. 

 

And, to top it off, Jesus Christ Himself is there - as well as God in all His glory! Thus, in Heaven, we will finally have the opportunity to see God with our own eyes! 

 

I find the emphasis on this selling point a little perplexing; I'm no bible scholar, but didn't Jesus say somewhere or other that blessed are those who who have not looked upon the face of God and yet still believe in his majesty? Are we not encouraged to doubt our own eyes on the grounds that the senses can deceive us? [2]  

 

 

III. 

Moving on ... The little leaflet also tells us that Heaven is a place of happy reunions - i.e., a place where the dead and the living can catch up and renew relations, reminisce about old times, etc. 

 

There's no consideration of the fact that not everyone wants to meet with their former friends, partners, and family members - and certainly not if we are then never more to part. For as Larry David (mistakenly) reveals to his wife Cheryl in an episode of Curb, the great attraction of an afterlife is the thought of being free and single once more and able to make a fresh start: click here [3].  

 

 

IV. 

    

Clearly, as much as those who long for Heaven hate earthly life, the thing that really motivates their faith is fear of death, as this (inadvertently hilarious) passage makes abundantly clear:

 

Another great truth about Heaven is that there will be no death there. We will never have to endure the heartbreak of watching a loved one passing away. We will never again have to watch the undertaker as he screws down the coffin lid on the one we loved, there will be no black ties, no funerals passing through the streets, no standing by an open grave and watching a coffin lowered into it, no listening to the clods of earth as they fall remorselessly on the box that contains the remains of the one we love so much and whose death has left us so sad and broken. Thank God there is no death in Heaven!

 

Now, experiencing Angst - as Heidegger was at pains to explain - is a fundamental aspect of being human. Angst isn't merely a form of anxiety born of thanatophobia; rather, it is how Dasein grasps the idea of finitude and confronts the void at the core of existence [4].

 

In other words, angst allows us to understand that being-in-the-world rests upon non-being. An unsettling thought, perhaps, but ultimately a liberating one that dares us to live and become who we are (or find authenticity and accept responsibility for our own choices, as Heidegger would say).    

 

And those who would deny us this - and who would, in effect, rob us even of our own deaths - deserve our contempt.  

 

V. 

 

Finally, as to how to get to Heaven ... 

 

There is, apparently, only ONE way: and that is by accepting Jesus as your Lord and Saviour:  

 

Jesus is the only way, and no man can come to the Father except through HIM. If you reject Him you shut the door to heaven on yourself. 

 

Well, that's unfortunate, perhaps, because I do reject Jesus - and I don't even think, like Lawrence, that there are many saviours and that man can secure himself a spot in paradise via a number of paths leading to God [5]. 

 

And - just to be clear - I wouldn't want to go to a Heaven in which the purest, humblest, most unselfish people are all gathered; because these people are very often nothing of the kind and they seem to spend a good deal of their time revelling in the misfortune and torment of those burning in that other place, which, let us remind ourselves, has a sign above its gates declaring: Built in the name of eternal Love [6].  

 

Ultimately, I stand with the naked and damned and not the smug and saved in their new white garments; and I choose to be amongst the scarlet poppies of Hell rather than in a Heaven "where the flowers never fade, but stand in everlasting sameness" [7].   

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche speaks of afterworldsmen who create a vision of paradise born of suffering, impotence, and an impoversished form of weariness: "It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven [...] They wanted to escape from their misery and the stars were too far for them." See Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), p. 60. 

 

[2] See John 20:29. The KJV reads: "Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." 

 

[3] Curb Your Enthusiasm season 4, episode 9: 'The Survivor' (2004), dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, starring Larry David and Cheryl Hines.    

 

[4] See Heidegger, Being and Time, Division I, Chapter 6, where Heidegger not only discusses Angst as a fundamental mood, but relates it to his important notion of Sorge (usually translated into English as care and which provides the basis for Heideggerian ethics).   

 

[5] See the fragment of text written by Lawrence given the title 'There is no real battle ...' in Appendix I of Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 385. 

      In this piece, Lawrence argues that "the great Church of the future will know other saviours" and that the reason he hates Christianity is because it declares there is only one way to God: "'I am the way' - Not even Jesus can declare this to all men. To very many men, Jesus is no longer the way. He is no longer the way for me." 

 

[6] This idea of the sign is found in Dante's Inferno Canto III. Lines 5 and 6 of which read: Fecemi la divina podestate / somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore (My maker was divine authority / the highest wisdom and the primal love). But note that Nietzsche says it displays a certain philosophical naivety on the part of the Italian poet and that if there is a sign it is placed rather above the entrance to Heaven, with an inscription reading: Built in the name of everlasting Hate. See my post - 'A Brief Note on Heaven and Hell' (18 October 2014): click here. 

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 144.   

 

In Defence of the Red-Haired Girl in the Freshpet Commercial

She's right ... and he's a schmuck

 

 

I. 

 

One of the ads on TV that I always like to watch - even though it increasingly irritates me - is the one for Freshpet, starring Gabrielle Johnsen and Jeff Heapy (and featuring Pepper the dog) [1] ...

 

You know the one, I'm sure: it's the one in which a man dumps his girlfriend because she objects to his keeping dog food in the fridge, despite his smug parroting of the manufacturer's tagline: It's not dog food, it's food food. 

 

For as the pretty, well-dressed young woman with red hair logically points out, if it's food you feed your dog, then it's dog food - regardless of any marketing bullshit to the contrary.  

 

 

II. 

 

Now, I suspect most people - even those who, like me, prefer cats - would agree that our canine companions deserve the best quality food; i.e. delicious and nutritious meals made with farm-fresh produce and high quality sources of protein that will hopefully ensure they enjoy long, healthy, and happy lives. And if the ingedients can also be locally sourced thus helping to support small-scale farmers, all the better! 

 

(Scott Morris, the co-founder and president of Freshpet, is another of those corporate hippies promoting a green agenda who likes to be seen as a virtuous and responsible member of the business community; caring for pets, people, and planet, as he puts it.) [2]      

 

However, that doesn't justify some jerk ejecting a young woman invited over for dinner from his expensive apartment and then slamming the door in her face, simply because she's uncomfortable with the idea of storing food intended for human consumption alongside food designed for mutts in the same refrigerator.  

 

It's incredibly rude, if nothing else. 

 

And the fact that he would rather eat on the kitchen floor next to his dog and thus pass up the opportunity for intercourse with a beautiful woman - albeit one who is perhaps a little overly concerned about food hygiene and maybe a tad cynophobic (as sensed by Pepper from the start) - makes him a fucking schmuck, as Richard Lewis would say.    

 

 

  

  

Notes

 

[1] To watch the Freshpet dinner date commercial on YouTube, click here. 

      The ad was made by the independent agency Terri & Sandy (NYC) and first broadcast in April 2023. 

 

[2] See the Freshpet website: click here.  

 

 

More Yellow, More Blue: Further Thoughts on an Exhibition by Megan Rooney

Emily LaBarge and Megan Rooney

against Rooney's Yellow Yellow Blue (2025)

Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas 

(200 x 152 cm / 78.5 x 60 in)   

 

 

I. 

 

Having visited an exhibition by an artist I was shamefully unaware of until very recently [1] - and having come away greatly impressed by the paintings and a little in love with the painter - I simply had to attend an event hosted by the gallery in which said artist, Megan Rooney, was to be joined in conversation by her friend and interlocutor, the Canadian writer Emily LaBarge [2]. 

 

And so, on a sunny Saturday morning, it's back into Town and back to the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (located in one of Mayfair's finest eighteenth-century mansion houses: Ely House) ... 

 

 

II.        

 

As I said in the original post written on Rooney's exhibition, it was the title of the show - Yellow Yellow Blue - that first caught my interest: I like yellow and I like blue, although maybe not with the same obsessive intensity as Megan; she really loves these colours and the chromatic territory that lies between them. 

 

But whilst yellow makes her want to tap her foot and dance and be swallowed by the sun, and blue makes her want to contemplate the secret of a colour that comes in many different shades and varies dramatically in intensity and brightness, I'm still not sure she offers us a new concept of these colours. 

 

But then, to be fair - even if abstract art is an attempt at some level to dissolve the distinction between art and philosophy - Rooney is an image-maker first and foremost and doesn't claim to be a philosopher. For whilst the latter are concerned with metaphysical constructions that define and enable a style of thinking, artists, as a rule, are more interested in novel combinations of sensation and feeling. 

 

In other words, art is a game of percepts and affects, not concepts: just as important and as vital as philosophy, but a very different way of confronting chaos [3]. For whereas philosophy wishes to give to chaos a certain consistency (and moves from chaos to concept), art wants to create forms invested with a little wild and windy chaos, whilst steadily moving from chaos to composition [4]. 

 

In sum: what Deleuze and Guattari say of artists in general, I would say of Rooney in particular; she struggles with chaos "in order to bring forth a vision that illuminates it for an instant" [5]. 

 

In fact, it would be more accurate to say that she's struggling less against chaos and more against the thing that all artists dread: cliché. And the reason she inflicts such violence on her canvases is in order that she might erase any trace of the latter and not simply scrub away the colour. 

 

But that's not an easy task; for the cliché is pre-existent and even after one primes or treats a blank canvas, it's still there, hiding, and threatening to ensure artistic failure (even if one produces a conventionally successful picture that is praised by critics and public alike).      

 

 

III. 

 

Interestingly, Rooney talks about her works as excavations; as if she's searching for something. But what is she searching for ...?

 

We know that beneath the paving stones lies the beach, but what lies beneath the multiple layers of paint she adds, removes, and reapplies to a canvas? Towards the end of their conversation, LaBarge suggested that it might possibly be love, but Rooney (to her credit) seemed resistant to that suggestion. 

 

So let's propose rather that she's looking for something that we might call truth ... Only it's a truth born of chaos and isn't tied to goodness or even beauty (although there is certainly beauty in Rooney's work and perhaps even an ethic to do with innocence and becoming rather than moral conformity).     

Perhaps we might better name this truth with the Ancient Greek term ἀλήθεια (aletheia) ... An unorthodox concept of truth first given us by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides and famously developed by Heidegger, who translated aletheia into German as Unverborgenheit (disclosure or, more literally, unconcealment).

 

Like Heidegger, Rooney seems to be enchanted by the manner in which objects reveal their presence before then withdrawing back into the darkness, never quite allowing us to grasp their truth in full. LaBarge was spot on to write that as soon as we think we have identified something recognisable in Rooney's works - a flower, a sunrise, a chimney pot - it melts once more back into light and colour, or retreats into shadow and silence [5].   

 

And it's the concept of aletheia that explains this phenomenon ... 

 

For aletheia is a radically different notion of truth and a radically different ontological model of the world to the one in which things are fixed and can be made fully present to mind. If one subscribes to the concept of aletheia then you can forget about ever being able to accurately describe a state of affairs or have full knowledge of anything. All of a sudden, absence matters at least as much as presence and being rests upon non-being as a distinct aspect of reality. 

 

In his essay 'The Origin of the Work of Art', Heidegger says the true value of a work of art is that it opens a clearing for the appearance of things in the world; and this glimpse affords human beings the opportunity to formulate not only a degree of knowledge, but meaning [6].

  

Amusingly, as LaBarge also notes, when those things momentarily glimpsed in one of Rooney's abstract (but not resolutely abstract) canvases withdraws it takes your heart with it. And that's not only a rather lovely thought, but an accurate one hinting as it does at the seductive beauty of Rooney's work. 

 

Ultimately, her canvases are like an erotic game of hide and seek; they tease and excite, without ever quite satisfying and this tells us something crucial not only about pleasure and the magical allure of objects, but about the nature of existence.         

 

 

IV. 

   

When leaving the gallery, I overheard a woman say that Rooney's canvases are so completely full of colour that they leave the viewer unable to move or breathe. But, actually, that's profoundly false and if she genuinely feels stifled, then, well, maybe she should loosen her girdle. 

 

For Rooney always leaves (or creates) just enough space to allow us to both move and breathe by making a slit in the Great Umbrella: "And lo! the glimpse of chaos is a vision" [7]; a window to the yellow of the sun and the brilliant blue of the Greater Day. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] The artist in question is Megan Rooney and the exhibition is titled Yellow Yellow Blue, at Thaddaeus Ropac (London) 12 June - 2 August 2025: click here for details and/or here for my original post on the exhibition (26 June 2025). 

 

[2] Emily LaBarge wrote the introductory text - 'Like the Flap of a Wave' - for the catalogue to accompany Megan Rooney's exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue (Thaddaeus Ropac London, 2025). Her essays and criticism have appeared in numerous publications, including the London Review of Books, and she is a regular contributor to The New York Times. For more information and to read her work, visit her website: click here. 

 

[3] See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (Columbia University Press, 1994). 

      And see also D. H. Lawrence's essay 'Chaos in Poetry', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 107-116; an essay that Deleuze and Guattari freely borrow from in their work.     

 

[4] This move from chaos to composition is crucial: for art is not chaos, "but a composition of chaos that yields the vision or sensation, so that it constitutes [...] a composed chaos - neither foreseen nor preconceived". See Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, p. 204.   

 

[5] Emily LaBarge, 'Like the Flap of a Wave', introductory essay for the catalogue to accompany Megan Rooney's exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue (Thaddaeus Ropac London, 2025). 

 

[6] See Martin Heidegger, 'The Origin of the Work of Art', in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (Rouledge, 1993), pp. 139-212. This essay as it appears here was first presented as a tripartite lecture entitled Der Urspung des Kunstwerkes, presented in Frankfurt in 1936.     

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'Chaos in Poetry' ... op. cit., p. 109. 

 

 

This post is for Hemma Matuschka (née Khevenhüller-Metsch) Head of Events and Client Development at Thaddaeus Ropac London, in gratitude for all her hard work and attention to detail.   

  

 

Impressionism Reconsidered

Claude Monet: Impression, soleil levant (1872) [1] 

Oil on canvas (48 x 63 cm) 

Musée Marmottan Monet

 

 

I. 

 

My view of French Impressionism has until now largely been shaped by D. H. Lawrence's argument that it was essentially an attempt to dissolve substance and to make the body into a thing of light and colour:

 

"Probably the most joyous moment in the whole history of painting was the moment when the incipient impressionists discovered light, and with it, colour. Ah, then they made the grand, grand escape into freedom, into infinity [...] They escaped from the tyranny of solidity and the menace of mass-form. They escaped, they escaped from the dark procreative body [...] into the open air: plein air and plein soleil ..." [2]   

 

This was a moment of ecstasy; albeit a relatively short-lived and illusionary moment. For invariably the impressionists were brought back to earth with a crash by the so-called post-impressionists, who championed the "doom of matter, of corporate existence, of the body sullen and stubborn and obstinately refusing to be transmuted into pure light, pure colour, or pure anything" [3].  

 

Nevertheless, even if the cat came back - "bristling and with its claws out" [4] - there's no need to denigrate or dismiss the impressionists. And indeed, Lawrence acknowledges that they were wonderful; "even if their escape was into le grand néant" [5] and even if many of their works, whilst delightful, look somewhat chocolate boxy to us now.  

  

 

II. 

 

The thing that I'm now starting to appreciate is that impressionism wasn't just about the attempted escape into the great nowhere via the denial of substance that Lawrence writes of. 

 

It was also characterised, for example, by visible brush strokes, unusual perspectives, and the attempt to capture movement and the passage of time and impressionism was profoundly hated by piss-taking critics of the period not for its idealism, but it's violation of the rules and conventions formulated by the Académie des Beaux-Arts that had long governed painting in France [6].         

 

In other words, the impressionists were not really afraid of the human body anymore than Turner, whose work was so influential on their thinking, was afraid of ships; they were fed-up of a governing body telling them what to paint and how to paint and they turned to colour and the realism of everyday life in order to defy the authority of the Grey Ones obsessed with lines and contours and idealised images of the heroic past.   

 

It's a little surprising, further more, to find Lawrence of all people criticising artists for painting outdoors in order to capture the ever-changing effects of sunlight and shadow on natural settings; would he really prefer them to remain studio-bound and producing true (because fixed and enduring) representations of the world ...? 

 

I know Lawrence believes that a painting has to come primarily from the artist's intuitive awareness of forms and figures - that working from models and objects can actually spoil the picture [7] - but, c'mon! that's no reason to jeer at those who prefer to work en plain air and catch fleeting glimpses of things and people palpitating avec mouvement, lumière, et vie, as Stéphane Mallarmé said of this new style of seeing and painting.  

 

Ultimately, for a writer like Lawrence who values immediacy and quickness and who attempts to compose a new form of verse that he terms poetry of the present - i.e., one that opens out on to chaos and is all about the nowness of the moment - to criticise impressionism in the manner he does, is more than a little surprising, it's disappointing [8].     

And so, today I'm going to give two cheers for the young painters - headed by Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir - who, in Paris in the early 1860s, revolutionised the world of painting [9].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The title of this painting provided the movement's name after Louis Leroy's 1874 article - 'The Exhibition of the Impressionists' - implied that the painting was, at most, an amusing though unfinished sketch and not to be taken too seriously. Ironically, the term impressionist - a bit like punk a century later - quickly gained favour with the public and it was also accepted by the artists themselves, even though they were a diverse group in style and temperament, unified primarily by their spirit of independence and rebellion (again, a bit like those musicians categorised under the genre heading punk rock). 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 197. 

 

[3] Ibid.

 

[4] Ibid., p. 198.

 

[5] Ibid., p. 197.  

 

[6] Via its control of Salon exhibitions and educational programmes, the French Academy of Fine Arts (founded in 1816) enforced rules and conventions for painting in the 19th century, thereby significantly influencing the style and subject matter of art during this period and determining the careers of artists.

      Privileging neoclassical and romantic styles and the depiction of mytho-religious or historical subjects - or traditional portraiture - the Academy required artists to display a high level of technical skill and ability rather than creative innovation. The impressionists - to their credit - challenged the conservatism and authority of the Academy; they weren't interested in producing perfect pictures made with precise brushstrokes and a restrained use of colour, overlaid with a thick coat of varnish and doxa.

      Interestingly, although the French public were at first hostile, they gradually came to admire how the impressionists were offering a fresh and original vision, even if the art critics and art establishment continued to disapprove of the new style (during the 1860s, the Salon jury routinely rejected about half of the works submitted by Monet and his friends, obliging them to exhibit independently in the following decade).  

 

[7] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Making Pictures', in Late Essays and Articles, p. 231.  

 

[8] The only modern painter that Lawrence seems to admire is Cézanne, dismissing other post-impressionists as sulky and still contemptuous of the body, even if they begrudgingly admit its existence and, in a rage, "paint it as huge lumps, tubes, cubes, planes, volumes, spheres, cones, cylinders, all the pure or mathematical forms of substance". 

      See D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, p. 198.   

 

[9] And a big shout out also to Gustave Courbet, who had gained public attention and critical censure a decade earlier by depicting contemporary realities without the idealisation demanded by the Académie thereby inspiring the impressionists to be bold; and to Édouard Manet, whom the younger artists greatly admired, even though he never abandoned his liberal use of black as a colour and never participated in the exhibitions organised by the impressionists, of which there were eight in Paris; the first in April 1874 and the last in June 1886. Camille Pissaro was the only artist to show work at all of them.   

 

Yellow Yellow Blue: Notes on an Exhibition by Megan Rooney

Megan Rooney: Yellow Yellow Blue (2025)

Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas

(200 x 152 cm / 78.5 x 60 in) 

Photo by Maria Thanassa

 

'You spend your life as a painter developing a relationship to colour and then 

testing the limits of that relationship. It’s radical, it’s ever-changing - 

it can submit to you and it can betray you. It always seduces, always excites.'  

                                                                                               - Megan Rooney

 

 

I. 

 

Sometimes you visit an exhibition because you know and admire the work of the artist and wish to be reassured of their genius and reconfirmed in the soundness of your past judgement and the continuity of one's aesthetic tastes.   

 

Sometimes, however, you visit an exhibition without any prior knowledge or formed opinion and in the hope that perhaps you'll discover something new not only about art, but about one's self ... 

 

And so to Thaddaeus Ropac, to see an exhibition of new paintings by the London-based artist Megan Rooney entitled Yellow Yellow Blue ... [1]

 

 

II. 

 

Probably it was the title of the show that first caught my interest: I like yellow and I like blue and in this body of work Rooney explores the chromatic territory that lies between yellow and blue (as well as the spectrum of green that emerges from mixing these two primary colours).   

 

Yellow I love for its emotional intensity (its joy, its vibrancy, its madness) [2]; blue for its profundity - for blue is the colour of the Greater Day and of the Void much loved by painters, poets, and philosophers; a colour which Christian Dior once described as the only one that can possibly compete with black, which remains the ne plus ultra of all colours [3]. 

 

But, having read the press release for the show, I was intrigued also to see how Rooney - said to be an enigmatic storyteller - manages to construct a dreamlike narrative indirectly referencing "some of the most urgent issues of our time" whilst also addressing "the myriad effects of politics and society that manifest in the home and on the female body" [4], simply by using colours, lines, shapes, and gestural marks on canvas in an almost entirely abstract manner.

 

For whilst I'm happy to accept that you can use purely visual elements to convey emotion or explore the formal qualities of painting as an art, I'm not entirely convinced (as a writer and philosopher) that you can adequately convey the kind of ideas mentioned above simply with such elements; ultimately, words - not colours - remain the primary tool for this. 

 

 

III. 

 

Located on the gallery's two floors, Yellow Yellow Blue presents pieces ranging from a dozen or so small works on paper (pretty enough, but not massively exciting) to large-scale (slightly overwhelming) canvases alongside a family of works in Rooney's signature wingspan format (i.e., equivalent to the full-reach of her outstretched arms). 

 

A bit like Goldilocks, I preferred these works; not too big, not too small, just right in size; for like D. H. Lawrence, I think it important that an artist acknowedge their limitations and the fact that they end at their finger-tips [5].

 

I liked the fact that Rooney clearly puts a LOT of work into what she does; constantly layering on paint, then sanding the works down and attempting to discover forms which might lie buried deep within the surface, before then slapping on more and more paint. 

 

By her own confession, Rooney often continues working on canvases right up until the opening; some seemed to be still wet in places and one could smell the canvases before even entering the room to view them - this was something else I also liked very much.   

 

Some works made one think of Monet and his water lilies and as I believe abstract impressionism is a thing, I don't think that's too crass or naive an observation [6]. Other works, because of their yellowness as an essential common feature, invariably made one think of Van Gogh. 

 

Still, as Rooney likes to talk of her paintings as having family connections - i.e., of being intimately connected to one another "as well as the lineage of paintings that precedes them" [7], I don't suppose she'll object to my seeing of similarities between her works and those of le dandy of impressionism and het gekke menneke of post-impressionism.  

 

 

IV. 

 

"Does anyone know, really, what a life is?" asks Emily LaBarge [8].    

 

As a reader of Deleuze, I suppose I could put my hand up and answer: Yes: a life is something inseparable from philosophy conceived in terms of pure immanence; something that has to be invented [9].   

But nobody likes a smart arse and I suppose it's essentially a rhetorical question - albeit one the answer to which just might lie in painting, according to LaBarge; an art form that captures something of temporal and spatial reality, even whilst painting does not quite belong to the same temporal and spatial reality of this world.  

Thus it is that: "As soon as we think we have identified something recognisable in [Rooney's paintings] - a copse of trees? a flurry of lilacs? a sunrise? a chimney? a rain-soaked evening? - it disappears ..."  

That's true - or at least, I think I know what Ms LaBarge means by this: All that is solid melts into light and colour, as Marx might have put it. 

 

The moment you grasp something concrete in Rooney's work, "it departs, skitters away, taking your heart with it, if only to throw it back to you [...] with the reminder that this image is also, first and formost, a painting: a made thing, worked and burnished [...] where luminous forms merge and fly like ghosts". 

 

And that's the beauty of abstract art; it doesn't just present on a plate like representational art - it gives, takes back, and gives once more - or, more precisely perhaps, it shows and hides and then shows some more in a provocative game of tease: It always seduces, always excites!

 

And if it fails to satisfy, that's arguably the point and it tells us something crucial not only about pleasure, but about the allure and withdrawal of objects in a way that a still life cannot.  

 

     

Megan Rooney photographed in her studio 

by Eva Herzog (2023)

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Megan Rooney: Yellow Yellow Blue at Thaddaeus Ropac (London) 12 June - 2 August 2025: click here for details. 

      See also Megan Rooney's page on ropac.net: click here, or visit her own website: megan-rooney.com   

 

[2] See the post 'How Beautiful Yellow Is' (1 May 2024): click here. 

 

[3] I have written several posts on the colour blue in art and literature; click here, for example, for a post dated 1 April 2017 on Rilke's blue delirium; or click here, for a post dated 2 April 2017 on the work of Yves Klein.  

 

[4] From the exhibition press release written by Nina Sandhaus (Head of Press, Thaddaeus Ropac London).  

 

[5] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Why the Novel Matters', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 1985). pp.191-198. 

      Lawrence argues that every man or woman - artist, philosopher, poet, or scientist included - ends at their own finger-tips and that this is a simple, but profoundly vital, truth. We may draw sustenance and stimulation from outside ourselves - from sights and sounds and smells and ideas, etc. - and these may allow us to change, but it's the living body upon which these things act that remains the most important. 

      Rooney appears to share this view, which is why she (mostly) likes to keep her canvases roughly 200 x 152 cm in size; i.e., in relation to her own reach, her own body. Thus, as it says in the gallery's press release: "The body has a sustained presence in Rooney’s work, as both the subjective starting point and final site for the sedimentation of experiences explored through her [...] practice."   

 

[6] Abstract impressionism is an art movement that originated in New York City, in the 1940s, the term apparently being coined by the painter and critic Elaine de Kooning and then popularised by Louis Finkestein (initially to describe the works of Philip Guston). 

      I'm not sure Rooney would wish to be associated with the term, but there is something lyrical in her canvases and although resolutely abstract, her works "contain fleeting suggestions of recognisable forms [...] ladders, beehives, clouds, trees, skies and tombs weave through the exhibition, like fugitive glimpses of a half-dreamed world". Again, see the gallery press release by Nina Sandhaus available to download from the Thaddaeus Ropac website.

 

[7] Nina Sandhaus, press release for Yellow Yellow Blue.  

 

[8] Emily LaBarge, 'Like the Flap of a Wave', written for the catalogue to Megan Rooney's exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue (Thaddaeus Ropac London, 2025). All lines quoted in this section of the post are from this text unless stated otherwise. 

      The title of the piece refers us to the possibility that if you squint hard enough and long enough at Rooney's large canvases you might just imagine, as LeBarge did, "Virginia Woolf's London as described by her heroine, Clarissa Dalloway, on a fresh morning in spring [...] when everything seems [...] to be happening all at once, the past and present kaleidoscoping in a work of art".      

[9] See Gilles Deleuze, 'Pure Immanence: A Life', in Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life, Intro. by John Rajchman, trans. Anne Boyman (Zone Books, 2005). 

 

 

For a follow up post to this one - 'More Yellow, More Blue!' (29 June 2025), please click here.    

 

 

My Purrfect Catwoman

 

Fig. 1 Selina Kyle as Catwoman wearing her classic outfit (DC Comics)

Fig. 2 Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman in Batman Returns (dir. Tim Burton, 1992)  

 

I.

 

I think everyone likes the DC comic book character Catwoman, criminal alter ego of Selina Kyle, created by Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane in 1940 [1]. 

 

Even Batman can't resist her feline charms and, despite the fact that she is one of his major adversaries, many stories depict them as a couple caught in a complicated romantic relationship. Probably this has something to do with Finger and Kane deciding from the outset that they wanted to give the character sex appeal [2].  

 

Not that there's anything wrong with that! Even D. H. Lawrence approves of sex appeal, which he defines as the communicating of beauty and the kindling of a sense of warmth and gaiety. 

 

For Lawrence, indeed, the loveliness of a really lovely woman - such as Selina Kyle, in whom sex burns brightly - lights up the entire  world. To encounter such a woman - extremely rare even in a comic book universe containing wonder women and supergirls - is a genuine experience [3].     

 

However, without wishing to jump on any kind of moral highhorse, I do sometimes feel that the kinky hypersexualisation of Catwoman has been taken too far in recent years and that this negatively impacts upon a character with a long and interesting history. 

 

As one commentator writes:  

 

"She's always been attractive, however, her [...] complexity takes a nosedive when creators rely too heavily on feline and female cultural connotations. When she's rendered with an extremely minimal waist, but with boundless cleavage [...] her power is diminished." [4]

 

The same commentator adds that whilst the the way Catwoman is drawn in the comic books diverges from artist to artist, all too often "her imagery falls into the realm of overplayed sex fantasy" and her body is often "twisted submissively into feline poses" [5] that are essentially designed to titilate heterosexual male readers.   

 

 

II. 

 

Many people blame TV and Hollywood for this hypersexualisation of Catwoman; from Julie Newmar in the 1960s, to Michelle Pfeiffer in the 1990s, Catwoman has always been portrayed on screen in a manner that emphasises her physical attributes rather than her criminal skills and intelligence [6]. 

 

However, we might also remind ourselves that it was the comic book writer Frank Miller (in collaboration with artist David Mazzucchelli) who not only reimagined Batman as the so-called Dark Knight, but radically revised Catwoman's origin and character ...

 

Thus, in Batman: Year One (1987), we were now asked to accept that before becoming a cat-suited thief, Selina Kyle had worked as a dominatrix whilst also taking care of a 13-year-old prostitute named Holly Robinson.

 

And that, I would suggest, is a pretty much perfect example of the pornification of popular culture.      

 

 

III. 

 

So, how then would I envision Catwoman, if I were tasked with so-doing? 

 

Well, I'd be tempted to return to her Golden Age look prior to the Batman TV show, consisting of a purple dress, a green cape, a domino mask, and mid-length boots. It's a good look: sexy, but sophisticated and stylish, rather than porno-fetishistic in a way that - even if once transgressive - has now become boring and stereotypical. (See figures 1 and 2 above.) 

 

Alternatively, I think I'd go for a look inspired by legendary English ballerina Margot Forteyn, as Agathe, in Roland Petit's Les Demoiselles de la Nuit (1948): see figure 3 below. 

 

For ultimately my perfect Catwoman is graceful and stealthy rather than raunchy and explicit; a daring thief characterised by impeccable manners and charm, who steals rare and beautiful objects not because they are valuable, but because she enjoys the challenge and the danger involved; a woman who defies convention and lives on her own terms, but doesn't drone on about being empowered or feel the need to have the letters BDSM tramp-stamped on her lower back to show us how sexually liberated she is.    

 

 

Fig. 3: Margot Fonteyn as Agathe the Cat in 

Roland Petit's Les Demoiselles de la Nuit (1948) [7]

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Kyle features as a mysterious jewel thief called the Cat in Batman #1 (Spring, 1940). Although she doesn't wear her iconic cat-suit and mask, the story establishes Kyle's character as a feline femme fatale who both frustrates and attracts Bruce Wayne.

 

[2] As mentioned, what Finger and Kane did not originally give Catwoman, however, was a costume or any form of disguise. It was not until her third appearance that she donned a full-face furry cat mask and not until sometime later that she adopted what became her regular look prior to the Batman TV show, consisting of a purple dress, a green cape, a domino mask, and calf-length boots. This costume is distinct from the sleek and shiny catsuit she is now known for. 

  

[3] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 143-148. I discuss this text in relation to the thinking of E. M. Cioran in a post published on 24 September 2018: click here 

 

[4] Elliot Swan, 'The Oversexualization of Catwoman Harms Her Character', on CBR (6 June 2013): click here. 

 

[5] Ibid.  

 

[6] Julie Newmar was the first actress to play Catwoman during the first two seasons (1966-67) of the live-action TV series Batman, starring Adam West as the caped crusader Bruce Wayne and Burt Ward as Dick Grayson (aka Robin). Newmar later revealed in an interview that the skin-tight costume she wore left her no option but to tell the character's story with the movements, postures, and gestures of her body. 

      Unfortunately, due to an injury, Newmar was unable to reprise the character for the full-length movie based on the TV show (dir. Leslie H. Martinson, 1966), thus opening the way for Lee Meriwether to play Catwoman. But perhaps the most famous actress to do so is Michelle Pfeiffer, who haphazardly stitched and squeezed herself into an iconic shiny black cat-suit in the 1992 movie directed by Tim Burton, Batman Returns, playing opposite Michael Keaton's Batman. This movie was far darker and more sexual in tone - as well as more violent - than many fans and critics were anticipating. 

      Pfeiffer's latex costume - of which there were dozens made at a $1000 a pop - was designed by Bob Ringwood and Mary E. Vogt. Some versions, made from a cast of Pfeiffer's body, were so tight that she had to be covered in baby powder in order to get into them. Ringwood and Vogt found it problematic to add actual stitching to latex and so they essentially painted what looked like stitching on to the suit with liquid silicon while it was worn by Pfeiffer.     

 

[7] Roland Petit's one-act ballet Les Demoiselles de la Nuit premiered in Paris at the Théâtre Marigny on May 22, 1948. The libretto was by Jean Anouilh, with music by Jean Françaix. The costumes and set designs were by Leonor Fini. Petit created the role of Agathe especially for Miss Fonteyn.  

      It tells the tragic story of a poet-musician who falls in love with his beautiful cat Agathe, who has magically assumed semi-human form. Agathe initially attempts to be faithful to her human lover, but is eventually seduced by the sound of male cats howling in the night and the desire for freedom. Leaping from a rooftop in order to escape, the poet-musician tries to grab hold of her and they both fall to their death. 

 

 

Readers might be interested in an earlier post on feline femininity - 'Reflections on the Case of Irena Dubrovna' (4 June 2022) - click here. 

 

Readers might also like this piece of artwork slightly reimagining the work of Finger and Kane from the first issue of Batman (Spring 1940) that I didn't have the chance to use in the main body of this post: 

 

 

 

The Battle of Blythe Road: The Great Beast Versus W. B. Yeats

Messrs. Crowley (1875 - 1947) and Yeats (1865 - 1939)

 

'Crowley climbed the stairs. But Yeats and two other white magicians came resolutely forward 

to meet him, ready to protect the holy place at any cost. When Crowley came within range 

the forces of good struck out with their feet and kicked him downstairs.' [1]

 

 

I. 

 

We recently discussed the (non-)relationship between Aleister Crowley and D. H. Lawrence, which basically consisted of a few bitchy and dismissive remarks that the one made about the other and the fact that they had certain ideas in common, moved in similar circles, and were both demonised in the popular press [2].  

 

In other words, they never physically met in person and that is probably just as well, for it's easier to imagine their coming to blows than it is their politely conversing round a dinner table. Having said that, however, Crowley almost certainly would have enjoyed Lawrence's company far more than that of Irish poet W. B. Yeats, with whom he had an actual skirmish that is always worth the retelling.

 

Ah, let us start from the beginning ... 

II.

 

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a short-lived (but hugely influential) secret society devoted to the study and practice of esoteric philosophy and occultism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; kind of a masonic lodge with magical knobs on that, unusually for the time, allowed women to join on an equal basis.    

 

The first temple (Isis-Urania) was established in London in 1888; other temples soon followed, including the Horus temple in Bradford (1888), the Amen-Ra temple in Edinburgh (1893), and the Ahathoor temple established by MacGregor Mathers [3] in Paris (1893), presumably with the full blessing of the Secret Chiefs [4]. 

 

By the mid-1890s, the Golden Dawn was well established, with over one hundred members from every class of Victorian society and a number of well-known individuals, including the actress and composer Florence Farr, the Irish revolutionary and suffragette Maud Gonne, and the Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, who joined the Order in March 1890 and was known by the magical name or motto Daemon est Deus inversus [5]. 

 

Aleister Crowley - resented by some as a Johnny-come-lately - was initiated into the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn in November 1898, at the Isis-Urania temple in London. The ceremony was led by MacGregor Mathers, who, by this date, was in complete control of things. Crowley received the magical name Frater Perdurabo (the latter term indicating his determination to persevere with his magical work and endure all hardships).

 

A year is a long time in the esoteric world, however, and towards the end of 1899 more and more senior Golden Dawn members, including Florence Farr, were becoming dissatisfied with Mathers's autocratic leadership style, his growing friendship with (and reliance upon) Crowley, and the fact that he spent most of his time in Paris rather than London [6]. 

 

Cracks were threatening to widen into splits and splits widen into schisms and the ensuing power struggle resulted in an incident known as The Battle of Blythe Road ...

 

 

III. 

 

As indicated, young Crowley was unpopular with many members of the Golden Dawn from the first; some were uncomfortable with his idiosyncratic interpretation of ceremonial procedures and rules in general; others didn't approve of his libertine lifestyle involving drugs and bisexuality. 

 

Yeats, for example, favoured a far more structured approach to magic and wanted to incorporate his esoteric beliefs into a broader aesthetico-political project. He had very little time for the darkness and chaos that Crowley thrived in and perpetuated. The two men had such radically different philosophies and personalities and held one another in such contempt that it was almost inevitable that they would end up in a physical altercation. 

 

And when Crowley showed an increasing willingness "to use his occult powers for evil rather than for good, the adepts of the order, Yeats among them, decided not to allow him to be initiated into the inner circle", fearing that he'd "profane the mysteries and unleash powerful magic forces against humanity" [7]. 

 

Mathers was obliged to step in when he heard about this, personally enabling Crowley to attain the higher grade he deserved. He also felt it necessary to take further disciplinary action against those challenging his authority. And so, in March 1900, Mathers dismissed Farr as his London representative. 

 

Unfortunately, however, this only triggered an emergency general meeting in which a motion was passed calling for his removal from office and, indeed, expulsion from the Order. The Isis-Urania temple had declared its independence and autonomy and Mathers and Crowley were now personae non gratae.     

 

What happened after this is, depending on one's point of view, either an example of the seriousness with which occultists take matters, or an example of just how farcical these robe-wearing, spell-casting, Golden Dawners could be ...    

 

Acting under orders from Paris, Crowley - with the help of his mistress Elaine Simpson - was sent to take control of the Golden Dawn's London headquarters at 36 Blythe Road in West Kensington, collect some sensitive papers that were held there, and convince as many senior members as possible to sign a pledge of allegiance to Mathers.   

 

Anticipating trouble, Crowley had cast certain spells beforehand; both to protect himself and disenable his enemies. But, just in case - wearing full Highland dress with a plaid thrown over his shoulder and a black mask over his face - Crowley also armed himself with a dagger at his side.   

 

Upon arriving at the address, Crowley attempted to ascend a flight of stairs, only to find his path blocked by Yeats and two other members of the Golden Dawn, who told him to leave in no uncertain terms. When Crowley refused to do so, Yeats resorted to the less than magical means of eviction and kicked Crowley down the stairs. 

 

The latter was then escorted out of the building, whilst Yeats calmly telephoned the police in order to report the incident ... [8] 

 

 

 Golden Dawn Rose Cross Lamen 

 

Notes

 

[1] Richard Ellmann, 'Black Magic Against White; Aleister Crowley Versus W. B. Yeats', in Partisan Review, Vol. XV, No. 9 (September 1948). I don't know if this story originates with Ellmann - who claimed that Crowley told him it on his deathbed - but it is contradicted by first person accounts, including Yeats's own. See note 8 below. 

 

 [2] See the post 'Aleister Crowley and D. H. Lawrence: The Great Beast Versus the Priest of Love' (21 June 2025): click here. 

 

[3] Samuel Liddell (MacGregor) Mathers (1854 - 1918), was a British Freemason and occultist primarily known as one of the three original founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (the other two being William Robert Woodman and William Wynn Westcott).   

      By 1891, Mathers had assumed leadership of the Golden Dawn, but - as we shall see in part III of the post - personality clashes and challenges to his authority eventually resulted in his expulsion in April 1900. Retreating full-time to Paris, Mathers formed his own secret society called Alpha et Omega (based at the Ahathoor Temple). 

      Crowley - his one-time friend and ally - became a stern critic in later years and thought Mathers well-meaning, but a piss-poor leader who had been largely responsible for the rapid fading of the Golden Dawn.

 

[4] The Secret Chiefs are believed to be the spiritual authorities responsible not only for the operation of the cosmos, but for overseeing the day-to-day running of esoteric organisations and magical orders. Some believe them to be incarnate in human form (but with superhuman powers) and working anonymously in secret locations; others insist they exist only on a higher plane.

      In 1892, MacGregor Mathers - one of the founders of the Golden Dawn - claimed that he had contacted the Secret Chiefs and that they confirmed his authority. Much to the irritation of those who took all this very seriously indeed, Crowley would declare that he had attained Secret Chief status in 1909.

 

[5] Yeats was initially given the classical Latin adage Festina Lente, but changed it as he progressed through the ranks of the Golden Dawn. For a recent post on this idea of making haste slowly, click here. 

      Just for the record, Florence Farr was initiated into the Golden Dawn by Yeats, in July 1890, taking the magical motto Sapientia Sapienti Dona Data (Wisdom is a gift given to the wise); Maud Gonne was initiated in November of the following year, having been invited to join the party by Yeats, and she received the magical motto Per Ignem ad Lucem (Through fire to the light).

     For readers who might be wondering, such mottoes (or aspiration names) are taken by initiates in a number of magical orders in order to separate their magical identity from their mundane identity. Within the Golden Dawn, mottoes were usually in a foreign language, but not always Latin. Members were free to change them as they progressed into higher degrees of the organisations. 

      See the post published on Halloween 2020 entitled 'On Magical Names and the Nietzsche-Crowley Connection' - click here.

 

[6] To be fair, Mathers was married to a French woman; the artist and occultist Moina Mathers (born Mina Bergson, younger sister to the philosopher Henri Bergson). Moina was the first initiate of the Golden Dawn in March, 1888. Her chosen motto was Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum (Prudence never retraces its steps). In 1918, following the death of her husband, Moina took over the Alpha et Omega as its Imperatrix. She died in 1928 in London.  

 

[7] Richard Ellmann, 'Black Magic Against White; Aleister Crowley Versus W. B. Yeats', op. cit. Again, I think we should take this statement with a pinch of salt. 

 

[8] It is more than likely that this popular account of events - for which I'm assuming Ellmann's 1948 essay is to blame - is humorously exaggerated, at best; if not entirely fictional. Yeats wrote his own rather more sober statement, which he then printed for circulation among senior members of the London temple Isis-Urania. According to this, Crowley was simply prevented from entering the building and obliged, with the assistance of a policeman, to leave the area. 

      When the case eventually went to court, the judge ruled in favour of the London lodge retaining possession of 36 Blythe Road, as they were the ones paying the rent. 

      To read Yeats's statement in full, see the blog post by Sally North on the Hollythorn Press website (13 June 2024): click here.