CAMERON (1922 – 1995)
Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel
OPENING SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25th at Kent Fine Art
As a tribute to the power of the imagination, the observation of strange phenomena and to the sense of the sacred through cosmic mysteries, Kent Fine Art is 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.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
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 andCurtis 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.There would ultimately be a major retrospective in 2015 organized by L.A. MOCA. At that time, the art curator Philippe Vergne described her work as being
on “the edge of surrealism and psychedelia”.
Following the reintroduction of her work in 2007 by Nicole Klagsbrun and Michael Duncan and subsequently by MOCA in 2015, Cameron was included in Of Mythic Worlds: Works from the Distant Past through the Present, The Drawing Center, New York (2023); Drawing Down the Moon, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2022); Cameron: The Lion Path; Art, Astrology and Magic, Marc Selwyn (2023) and (2014); PACIFIC STANDARD TIME: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture 1950-1970, The Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2011); Traces du Sacré, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2008); Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle, Santa Monica Museum of Art (2005); and Beat Culture and the New America 1950-1956, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1996). Presently her work can be seen in Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions at the Morgan Library & Museum (June 26-October 4, 2026).
