CAMERON (1922 – 1995)
Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel
As a tribute to the power of the imagination, the observation of strange phenomena and to the sense of the sacred through cosmic mysteries, we are pleased to present the work of Cameron. Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel worked under the identity of the mononym “Cameron” with a somewhat clandestine reputation as an American artist, poet, actress and occultist. Her work explored the subterranean paths which penetrated the world within which they were hidden. With a belief in theosophy based on the mystical insight into the divine nature of spirit and matter, she followed other equally inspired and curious artists such as Hilma af Klint, Mondrian (The Secret Doctrine) and Kandinsky’s “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”. It can be speculated that Cameron preferred “the spice of the bizarre”. Superbly gifted as a draughtman, she also was not precious of her completed works and was known to have destroyed or given away most of her work prior to 1955. Following the untimely death of her husband, Jack Parsons, she led an experimental lifestyle moving between Pasadena, Joshua Tree, San Francisco, Santa Fe, San Miquel de Allende, and finally Los Angeles where she died in 1995.
Early notoriety came to her through the exhibit of her best known work “Peyote Vision“ at the legendary Ferus Gallery (founded by Walter Hopps and Ed Kienholz) in 1957, deemed so lewd at that time that the Los Angeles police closed the exhibition and arrested the artist Wallace Berman for including the work in his exhibition. Both Wallace Berman as well as Cameron vowed they would never exhibit in any commercial gallery for the remainder of their lifetimes, cementing her role as an underground avant-garde mystic. She is also remembered for her roles in several films by Kenneth Anger Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and Curtis Harrington’s The Wormwood Star, and Night Tide with Dennis Hopper. Though she continued creating drawings and paintings her entire life, her work would not appear publicly again until presented by the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in 1989. Entitled Cameron: The Pearl of Reprisal, it would be the last public presentation of her work prior to her death in 1995.
Her legacy has become recognized as a significant West Coast underground avant-garde mystic. Following her death in 1995, she was included in Lisa Phillip’s historic exhibition entitled “Beat Culture and the New America” at the Whitney Museum which was one of the first inclusions of visual culture into the movement which had largely been relegated to writing and music. This was followed by a significant survey of her surviving works by MOCA (LA) in 2015.