Purple Magazine
— S/S 2016 issue 25

Kenneth Anger

Los Angeles underground film director, writer, and artist Kenneth Anger’s magical deciphering of modern mythology haunts many contemporary works. It is now inevitable that Warhol’s reputation, through overexposure, photocopy after photocopy, will spread so thin as to vanish. And Anger, Warhol’s “unknown superior” in esotericism, will only see his reputation shine brighter, like that of their common master, Lucifer. photography by TERRY RICHARDSON text by SIMON LIBERATI In 1953, Anaïs Nin recounted in her diary a costume party thrown in Malibu by the painter Paul Mathiesen. The theme was “Come as Your Madness.” Kenneth Anger is mentioned, as is Marjorie Cameron, the extravagant, redheaded deity who would preside over Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, a film directed by Anger that same year, after the party and with the same cast of characters. Nin, dressed that evening as Astarte, describes her costume in a wealth of detail: “I wore a skin-colored…

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