ROSALEEN NORTON TIMELINE 1917 (October 2): Rosaleen “Roie” Miriam Norton was born in Dunedin, New Zealand to an Orthodox Protestant family. 1925 (June): Norton migrated with her family to Lindfield, Sydney, Australia. 1934: Sixteen-year-old Norton published three horror stories in the newspaper, Smith’s Weekly. On the merit of her work, Smith’s hired her as a cadet journalist and illustrator for eight months. 1940 (December 24): Norton married Beresford Lionel Conroy (1914-1988). 1943 (June): An article on Norton, “A Vision of the Boundless,” was published in the magazine Pertinent. Norton was portrayed as a mystic-artist, able to access astral realms through expanded states of consciousness. 1949: Searching for art exhibition spaces, Norton hitchhiked from Sydney to Melbourne with fellow poet and Pertinent contributor, Gavin Greenlees (1930-1983). 1949: Norton was indicted for…
EVERQUEST TIMELINE 1996: John Smedley at Sony Interactive Studios America developed the main concepts for EverQuest. 1999: EverQuest launched online and quickly became more successful than anticipated, setting high standards for the developing culture of massively multiplayer online role-playing games. 2002: The fourth expansion of EverQuest, “Planes of Power,” stressed its simulated religion, offering access to the Plane of Time, but only for avatars that vanquish minions of four elemental deities. 2004: EverQuest II launched online. 2006: After a period of effective exile, the gods returned to Norrath in the original EverQuest. 2009: A special issue of the journal Game Studies was devoted to EverQuest on its tenth anniversary. 2015: EverQuest and EverQuest II were transferred from Sony to Daybreak Game Company. 2016: Plans to release a third version, EverQuest…
MOINA BERGSON MATHERS TIMELINE 1865 (February 28): Mina Bergson was born in Geneva, Switzerland. 1867: The Bergsons moved to Paris in 1867. 1873: The Bergsons settled permanently in London in 1873. 1880: Mina Bergson began attending the Slade School of Art. 1882: Annie Horniman and Mina Bergson met and began a friendship that lasted for the rest of their lives. 1883: Exceptionally talented in drawing, Mina Bergson was awarded a scholarship from the Slade School of Art. During the course of her studies, she received four certificates of merit for her drawing. 1886: Mina Bergson received a certificate of completion from the Slade. 1886–1887: Mina Bergson left her family home and moved to shared rooms at 17 Fitzroy Street with her painter friend, Beatrice Offor. 1887: Whilst independently studying and…
JEANNE MAMMEN TIMELINE 1890 (November 21): Gertrude Johanna Luise Mammen (named Jeanne) was born in Berlin as the youngest daughter of the businessman Gustav Oskar Mammen and his wife Ernestine Caroline Josephine Elise, née Delhaes. 1900: The Mammen family moved to the upper-class suburb of Passy in Paris. 1907: After attending the Lycée Molière, Mammen, together with her sister Adeline Marie Louise (named Mimi), began studying Fine Arts at the internationally renowned private Académie Julian, founded by the painter Rodolphe Julian in 1868. 1908 (November): Jeanne Mammen and her sister moved to Brussels. They continued their formal art training at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Fernand Khnopff, Herman Richir and Jean Delville were among their academic teachers. 1911: After finishing their fine art studies in Paris and Brussels, Jeanne Mammen and…
ITHELL COLQUHOUN TIMELINE 1906 (October 9): Margaret Ithell Colquhoun was born to British parents in Shillong, Assam, India. 1907-1908: Colquhoun and her family settled in Cheltenham, England. 1919: Colquhoun was enrolled at Cheltenham Ladies College. 1923: Colquhoun’s interest in occultism was stimulated when she read a newspaper account of Aleister Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema. 1926: Colquhoun was enrolled at Cheltenham School of Arts and Crafts. She wrote the script and designed the costume for the alchemically-informed one-act play Bird of Hermes. 1928: Colquhoun moved to London to study at the Slade School of Fine Art. In the same year, she joined the Quest Society, founded in 1909 by the Theosophist and former secretary of the Theosophical Society in England, G.R.S. Mead. 1929: Colquhoun was awarded a joint first prize in…
Victoria Ferentinou is Assistant Professor at the University of Ioannina, Greece, where she teaches art theory and history of art. She is the author of a number of articles and book chapters on international Surrealism and women artists, and on the relationship between modern art and esotericism. She is also a contributor to The International Encyclopedia of Surrealism (Bloomsbury 2018) and co-editor of Surrealism, Occultism and Politics: In Search of the Marvellous (Routledge 2017).
SPIRITUALISM AND THE VISUAL ARTS TIMELINE 1814 (April 20): Georgiana Houghton was born in Las Palmas, Canary Islands. 1824 (January 15): Anna Mary Howitt (later Howitt-Watts) was born in Nottingham, England. 1832 (February 10): David Duguid was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. 1848 (March 31): Spirit phenomena began in Hydesville, New York with the Fox Sisters, Kate (1836-1892), Margaret (1834-1893), and (later) Leah (1811-1890), the conventional date for the origins of Spiritualism, although mediums had been active before. 1853-1855: Seances with productions of spirit art took place in the home of Victor Hugo in Jersey, Channel Islands. 1857: Allan Kardec (pseudonym of Hippolyte Denizard Léon Rivail, 1804-1869), published The Book of the Spirits, the most influential textbook of the French version of Spiritualism, also known as “Spiritism.” 1862 (October 26): Hilma…
VISUAL ARTS TIMELINE 1911 (March 13): Lafayette Ron Hubbard was born in Tilden, Nebraska. 1946 (March 14): Claude Sandoz was born in Zurich, Switzerland. 1948 (October 8): Gottfried Helnwein was born in Vienna, Austria. 1950 (May 9): Hubbard published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. 1951 (August 1): Hubbard published Science of Survival, which included a section about aesthetics and the visual arts. 1953 (November 12): Carl-W. Röhrig was born in Munich, Germany. 1965 (August 30): Hubbard published his first technical bulletin of the “Art” series. 1977 (September 26): Hubbard published his technical bulletin on “Art and Communication.” 1984 (February 26): Hubbard published his technical bulletins on “Colors,” and on “Art and Integration,” where he presented his theory of the mood lines. 1986 (January 24): Hubbard died in Creston,…
VISUAL ARTS TIMELINE 1821 (July 16): Mary Baker, later Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, was born in Bow, New Hampshire. 1850 (date unknown): Painter James Franklin Gilman was born, possibly in Woburn (Massachusetts). 1874 (June 10): Painter and muralist Violet Oakley was born in Bergen Heights, New Jersey. 1875: Mary Baker published the first edition of her main theoretical work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which includes several comments on the visual arts. 1879: The Church of Christ (Scientist) was founded. 1893: Mary Baker Eddy started the construction in Boston of the Mother Church, Christian Science's architectural masterpiece. 1893: Eddy and Gilman published the illustrated book Christ and Christmas. 1893 (December 21): Winifred Nicholson was born in Oxford. 1902-1927: Oakley produced a key work in the…
ZBIGNIEW MAKOWSKI TIMELINE 1930 (January 31): Zbigniew Makowski was born in Warsaw, Poland. 1950: Makowski was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. 1956: Makowski obtained his diploma after working in the workshop of K. Tomorowicz in Warsaw. 1957: The first individual exhibition of the artist took place in the student club Hybrids in Warsaw. 1958/1959: Makowski created his first illuminated book, which opened a series of over two hundred works of this kind. In order to produce it, he worked on a book by Theosophist Annie Besant, writing and painting on a copy of it. 1962: Makowski travelled to Paris, where he met André Breton and became involved with the artistic movement Phases. 1965/1966: Makowski worked as a lecturer in the National Higher School of Fine Arts…