GATE OF IVORY AND GATE OF HORN, 1952
Ink and gouache. 11¼ x 17½in. (29 x 45cm.)
Inscribed on the reverse of the frame with the artist’s name, the title, c.1965 and ‘Automatism: Cadavre Exquis’. With the Paul label.
Provenance:
National Trust bequest.
Exhibited:
Penzance, Newlyn Orion Gallery, 1976, No. 36.
Literature
Colquhoun, I. Children of the Mantic Stain. Athene, May 1952, pp29-34. Illustrated.
According to the catalogue of the Newlyn exhibition,, the technique is stillomancy. This contradicts the inscription on the reverse of the frame. The symmetry of the image, together with the clear vertical fold that runs down the centre of the work, however, indicate that the technique is, indeed, stillomancy.
The painting, although not identified by name, was used to illustrate Colquhoun’s second article on automatism published in the journal Athene, as an example of stillomancy. As this was published in 1952 the date on the backboard is clearly incorrect. Nor is the work an example of cadavre exquis, the surrealist activity in which a number of artists make sequential contributions to a drawing, blind to the earlier contributions of others.
In Greek mythology, Morpheus was the god of dreams and sent dreams from Hades to the Outerworld through the Gates of Hypnos. False or deceptive dreams travelled through the Gate of Ivory whilst true dreams (those which contain meaning) came through the Gate of Horn.
The surrealists were preoccupied with dreams and their interpretation. Here, Colquhoun chooses to depict the mechanism through which dreams penetrated consciousness.
Colquhoun's poem Muin, published in Grimoire of the Entangled Thicket, contains the lines:
I drank from the horn-cup and swam into a trance
So deep that only attraction amethystine
Recalls me, after a voyage through gates of horn.
I come now to bless and renew dreams that are true
John Dryden, however, was a better poet:
Two Gates the silent House of Sleep adorn;
Of polished Iv’ry this, that of transparent Horn;
True Visions thro’ transparent Horn arise;
Thro’ polished Iv’ry pass deluded Lies.
Colquhoun may also have been aware of The Gate of Horn, a study by Levy (1948) of prehistoric religion. In this instance ‘horn’ refers to shape rather than to substance - a curved or arched form. The horned gate is seen as a symbol of transition between, for example, life and death, human and divine, night and day. The book was a milestone in the history of Goddess spirituality.
References
Colquhoun, I. Grimoire of the Entangled Thicket. Ore Publications,
Stevenage, Hertfordshire, 1973.
Levy G.R. The Gate of Horn. Faber & Faber, London, 1948.