The Sex Was Out of This World
This article is only a portion of the full article. If you are already a premium subscriber please login. If you are not a premium subscriber, please subscribe for access to all of our content.

            A second gallery focuses on the occult and brings together a stunning collection of visionary drawings and paintings by Cameron (the mononym of Marjorie Cameron). Standouts include two large pen-and-ink drawings, East Angel and West Angel. The compositions are eye-catching from across the gallery, and as one is drawn closer, the pair of angels reveals fine linework in blue ink on paper. They hover weightlessly, their golden robes wafting in the ether. This otherworldly draftsmanship is perhaps explained by the fact that Cameron often practiced automatic drawing while in trances. Cameron also plays central characters in the gender-bending films featured in the gallery, including Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954-66), by Kenneth Anger, and The Wormwood Star (1956), by Curtis Harrington.

     Cameron was also the wife of Jack Parsons, founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and member of the secret society Ordo Templi Orientis led by British occultist Aleister Crowley. Harry Hay compiled musical scores and played organ for Gnostic Masses performed by O.T.O. These scores were drawn from diverse sources such Wagner’s Parsifal and compositions by John Cage. Hay would go on to cofound the gay rights organization, Mattachine Society. After Hay and Kepner left the Mattachine Society, they both became involved with ONE magazine.

            The third galley surveys sci-fi communities and highlights the work of Morris Scott Dollens. Dollens was an active photographer, painter, and contributor to fanzines for decades. While Dollens never identified publicly as queer, there are clear homoerotic themes in his work and associations with gay publications. On exhibit is the back cover from a 1963 Physique Pictorial published by Bob Mizer. The photograph is a double exposure of a nude male figure on an alien landscape gazing upward at a rocket ship in flight. The figure is pure beefcake in the style of the Athletic Model Guild, while the background is one of Dollens’ sci-fi paintings of an imaginary planet. The titillating result is pure sci-fi kitsch underpinned by a naïve aspirational thread that weaves through the entire exhibition. Remarks Johnson: “Looking at the historical perspective definitely gives me some solace and a blueprint for how to band together to work outside the mainstream. Sci-fi wasn’t a panacea, but it allowed folks to imagine a different way of being in a future outside the mainstream. That’s where the exhibition is both really hopeful and helpful.”

            The exhibition is part of the Getty Foundation’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide, a five-month initiative involving more than seventy related exhibitions at museums, galleries, and public spaces throughout Southern California. And if you’re not able to visit the exhibition, Inventory Press has published a sumptuous catalog that is widely available.