22 November 2004
West Dean
We are running a new Labyrinth creative writing competition. [This competition closed in early 2005.]
The competition is in partnership with West Dean College, an extraordinary centre for specialist study in the Sussex Downs near Chichester. West Dean College is run by the Edward James Foundation, a charitable trust based in a fine country house with an estate encompassing park and gardens, an arboretum, farms, forestry and a nature reserve.
Edward James was born in 1907. He inherited the West Dean Estate on the untimely death of his father in 1912. He was a passionate supporter of Surrealism, a rebellious art movement born out of social and political uncertainty. Surrealists rejected the rational, escaping into a world of fantasy and irrationality.
James gave surrealist artists practical support by buying their work. He established a collection of paintings and art objects that subsequently came to be accepted as the finest collection of surrealist work in private hands. He supported Salvador Dalí for about two years and allowed René Magritte to stay in his London house to work. There's a famous Magritte painting of the back of a man's head. The man is looking into a mirror. In the mirror the spectator – you or me – sees the back of the same man's head. That man is Edward James.
He also sponsored Minotaure, a lavish Surrealist magazine published in Paris. His refurbishment of Monkton House, close to West Dean House, is a Surrealist dream, including a large sofa to which Dalí gave the form and colour of Mae West's lips. Perhaps his most fantastic surrealist excess was realised in the Mexican rain forest. Here he built a series of palaces, temples, pagodas and fountains, populated with exotic creatures such as flamingos and boa constrictors.
My partner Greg Mosse and I will be teaching weekend residential courses at West Dean College in Summer 2005. That's around the time my novel Labyrinth will publish. You can contact us for details by writing to: gregmosse@mosselabyrinth.co.uk.
Take advantage of the Labyrinth.
