“Painter and Magician”
by
Alice Rahon
From Surrealist Women: An International Anthology (ed. Penelope Rosemont). The text is from the catalog, Alice Rahon, Willard Gallery, New York, 1951
In earliest times painting was magical; it was the key to the invisible. In those days the value of a work lay in its powers of conjuration, a power that talent alone could not achieve. Like the shaman, the sibyl, and the wizard, the painter had to make himself humble, so that he could share in the manifestation of spirits and forms. The rhythm of our life today denies the primordial principle of painting; conceived in contemplation, the emotional content of of the picture cannot be perceived without contemplation.
The invisible speaks to us, and the world it paints takes the form of apparitions; it awakens in each of us that yearning for the marvelous and shows us the way back to it—the way that is the great conquest of childhood, and which is lost to us with the rational concepts of education.
Perhaps we have seen the Emerald City in some faraway dream that belongs to the common emotional fund of man. Entering by the gate of the Seven Colors, we travel along the Rainbow.
Biblioklept 