The true child of the intermedia

By JOA N L OWNDES
"Under the pretense of civilization and pro­
gress, we have managed to banish fro!Il the
mfad everything that may rightly or wrongly
be termed super�tition, or fancy ; forbidden is
any kind of search for the truth which is not
in conformance with accepted practices."

SURREALIST . HAS
DESERT MISSION

This quotation from the first surrealist m anifesto
l}ubli shed in 1924 by Andre Breton , the leader of the
movement, h as not become outd ated .
It is especially applicable to Gregg Si mpson, a stu­
dent of the occult whose work in the visual field has
been profoundly influenced by surrealism. A true child
of intermedia - drummer, composer and writer as
well as artist - he will leave Vancouver next month on
a Canada Council bursary to establish links between
local artists inspired by the m a gical tradition and those
in the European underground . From his researches he
hopes that an exhi bition of international scope will 1·e­
sult at the UBC Gallery early in 1972.
Hls first stop will be Paris, then on to A m sterda m
and London and finally , for his own psy chic develop­
ment, to Morocco, where h e speaks of burning away
his surface personality in the desert.
In Paris he will try to make contact with two of the
great survivors of original surrealism : Max Ernst and
Man- Ray, both now in their eighties. Ernst, who is
presently being· honored by the French state with a ret­
rospective at the Orangeri e , is in Gregg's eyes th e su­
preme master of surrealism, the equal in terms of hand­
ling fantasy and dreams of Bosch and Fuseli.
It would be one of the great moments of his life if he
could m eet him. He is armed with two talismanic let­
ters : one from the Canada Coun cil , the other from Wil­
liam Rubin, who organized th e mammoth exhibition
Dada, Surrealism and their Heritage for the Museum of
Modern Art, New York in 1968.
Gregg hopes that he could obtain som e small things of
Ernst to give the UBC show a certain cl ass, or at the
very least photograph his work as a juxtaposition to
what is going on here.

PS YCHE COLLAGE
sculpture, represents a fi gure in a long black robe
wearing a golden mask with h orns. Equ a lly h ermetic is
a triangular canvas covered with cabalistic and al­
chemical signs which h angs in Gregg's studio behind
his dru ms.
Here one w1ters upon what i s to most of u s complete­
ly foreign territory : Gregg's fir m belief in alchemy.
Andre Breton referred to it in some of his later writ­
ings and Gregg is convinced he will find adherents in
Europe.
Certainly on the \Vest Coast he is not alone . Al Nell,
of the Al Neil Trio for which Gregg pla yed, introduced
him to alchem y, while J a ck Wise frequently uses al­
chemical symbols in h i s paintin gs,
Gregg recently formed the Divine Order of the
Lodge, which co1i c ists beside himself of G ary Lee-Nov a ,
Gilles Foisy and David u u ( a pseudonym which this
concrete poet and collagist i s soon to m ake legal . ) They
h ave all read deeply in metaph y sics including alchemy,
and are scheduled to have a show together in the late
fall at the Avelles Gallery.
Webster's Internation al Dictionary defines alch emy
as follows : "The medie v a l chemical science and specu­
lative philornphy whose great objects were the
transmutation of the base metals into gold and the dis­
covery of the universal cure for diseases and means of
indefinitely prolonging life . . alchemy as a science
produced discoveries which Jed the way to modern
chemistry."
Gregg says : "The definition of alchemy to me would
oe like any process that ha a physica l side and a spir­
itu al si de as wel l .
"A painting is very much like i t , m ixing pigments
and oils together - in th at sense transmuting. Art is al­
chemy because it has a ph ysical m anifestation and the
individual is going through a spiritual process in doing
it. My Summer painting went through so many changes
before it ended up as it was and I went throu gh so
many too - like a duplicate process.

With photographer and colla gist M a n Ray there will
be no problem : he is A merican and very approachable.
Gregg plans also, through the little known Galerie du
Dra gon, to get the names and addresses of artists still
pursuing the surrealist ideal of "pure psychic automa­
t.i on . "
A t the same t i m e h e will be able to provide them
with a full docu mentation of his own work - no use
going without your medicine show, he says. He is now
putting together a loose-leaf notebook of five-inch by
seven-inch photos cov ering his paintings, drawings, col­
la ges and decalcomanias. The latter we-re an invention
of the surrealist Oscar Dominguez, very popular as a
wa y of invoking ch ance. You simply spread gouache on
a sheet of paper, lay another on top of it, press here
and there, then peel off your second sheet.
lts markings suggest exotic, spongy growths or fan­
ta stic caves. Since no special techni cal ability is re­
quired, there is no reason why G regg Simpson's decal­
com anias should not equal those of Dominguez. But he

DENI EAGLAND PHOTO

GREGG SIMPSON
. student of the occult

CARD TRICK
The VANCOUVER SUN : Fri. 1 May 21,' 1971

has yet to use them as a sprin gboard for compositions
in oil, as did Max Ernst.
A selection of Gregg•� collages was included in the
recent show at the UBC Gallery devoted to this type of
work. Some of them h a v e a disturbing incongruity an organ like a liver pasted over a woman's head while others are h auntingly poetic.
Of his drawings Gregg says : "I was right on a peyote
trip at that time, really putting person and paper to­
gether and essentially letting them draw themselves. I
really didn't do much at all to help. They 're crazy dis­
torted faces, a Francis Bacon sort of influence and
some Claude Breeze too . "
H e talks of his paintings creating themselves o n the
canvas in much the same terms. His finest is Summer,
dedicated to Max Ernst, a lush, tangled jungle full of
erotic allusions.
A stranger painting, evocative of some of Ernst's

"Music is uniting the sa cred and the profane. When I
sit down to play the drum s people sa y : 'How wonderful,
y ou can work off your tension s ! ' But if it's successful
a gain it' s a transmut ation . I ' m right in the test tube
when I'm pla ying.
"Alchemy is pretty well docu m ented . P eople only
hear of the myth. Modern science h a s done almost ev­
erything alchemists did but by bla ck magic. Like black
m a gicians toda y are the atomic scientists ..,.. sell-out
scientists I call them .
"By means o f Cyclotrons they can' ch ange elements
and th at's alch emy. In a sense all western science c an
do.is prove that occult science is true , but their motives
are things th at I would question.
"Tarot, the m ysteries of the G r ail, the pagan mys­
teries, astrology, Rosicru cian teachings, masonery, all
these syste m s cross-reference and you find they are
talking about the same thing, trying to get to the essen­
tial order that exists in the universe. But we're coming
so close to chaos that people now are really looking for
a spiritual path . If there's not a spiritua l rebirth , we're
not going to be h ere t o the turn of the century. "