Time: 7 pm EST
Admission: $8 - Tickets HERE
Signed copies of Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power and Witchcraft. The Library of Esoterica will be available for purchase through the Morbid Anatomy website as the event approaches.
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The image of the witch as we know it first appeared in visual culture in the late fifteenth century, and became a popular subject in artwork in the years that followed through today. Artists as varied as Dürer, Fuseli, Goya, and Blake used the archetype of magical – and often malevolent – women to titillate their patrons or reflect their own anxiety about female bodies and societal roles, often resulting in works that were either grotesque or beguilingly glamorous.
But what happens when witches themselves wield the brush? In the mid-nineteenth century, a family tree of female visionary artists began to take root. Deeply entrenched in esoteric studies, and often engaging in their own ritual practices, these women began creating works that used their own metaphysical experiences as inspiration, thus becoming their own muses. In doing so they conjured a "re-visioning" of the witch as a complex carrier of feminine power worthy of celebration.
In this richly illustrated presentation, Pam Grossman will explore the ways in which the image of the witch has evolved over time, and shine a light in the corners of art history where craft and Craft are one and the same.
Pam Grossman is the creator and host of The Witch Wave podcast, the author of Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power (Gallery Books) and What Is A Witch (Tin Can Forest Press), and the co-editor of WITCHCRAFT (Taschen). Her writing has appeared in such outlets as the New York Times, The Atlantic, Ms. Magazine, and her occulture blog, Phantasmaphile. She is co-founder of the Occult Humanities Conference at NYU, and her art exhibitions and magical projects have been featured in such publications as Artforum, Art in America, and the New Yorker. You can find her at PamGrossman.com and @Phantasmaphile.
Images, in order: Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The Witches Sabbath or The Witches, 1797-1798; Leonor Fini, La sorcière, 1935; Rebecca Artemisa, Persimmon Permission Spell, 2016; Albrecht Dürer, The Witch, ca. 1500; Lezley Saar; Mourna is the mother of the deceased, whom she keeps in the dark depths of the earth. She protects all their secrets and memories, swaying to faint music, making the ground slippery with her tears, 2019; Remedios Varo, Witch Going to the Sabbath, 1957; Andy Warhol, Myths (The Witch), 1981