This is a recording of an event that took place in the Philosophical Research Society auditorium on Thursday, October 28, 2021.

Dr. David Brafman, the rare books curator at the Getty Research Institute (GRI), presented his study on the Spirit of Alchemy in the History of Art, with images from Manly P Hall's rare book collection.

About the Event:

Long shrouded in secrecy, alchemy is now recognized as the forerunner of modern chemistry. Alchemists were notorious for attempting to make synthetic gold, but their goals were far more ambitious: to transform and bend nature to the will of an industrious human imagination. For scientists, philosophers, and artists alike, alchemy seemed to hold the key to unlocking the secrets of creation. Thus, for some, it also unveiled a spiritual blueprint for inner transformation through revelation.

Alchemists’ efforts to discover the way the world is made have had an enduring impact on artistic practice and expression around the globe. Inventions born from alchemical laboratories include metal alloys for sculpture and ornament, oil paints, effects in glassmaking, and even the chemical baths of photography. The evening’s talk will explore how the mysterious art of alchemy transformed visual culture from antiquity to the industrial age and the ways in which its legacy still permeates the world we make today.

"Acquisition of the Manly Palmer Hall [Alchemical Manuscript & Book] Collection in 1995 provided the Getty Research Institute with one of the world's leading collections of alchemy, esoterica, and hermetica. This collection allows scholars to trace the trajectory of alchemy from the European golden age in the late 16th and 17th centuries, through the years of Enlightenment and revolution, and into the modern period." getty.edu/research/special_collections/highlights/alchemy/index.html

About Dr. David Brafman

David Brafman is the rare books curator at the Getty Research Institute (GRI). Before joining the Getty in 2002, he was a visiting professor in the Classics Dept at NYU, and concurrently Resident-Expert at H.P. Kraus, Rare Books and Manuscripts in NY. His Ph.D. is in Classics and Arabic from Duke University.

Some curatorial projects at the Getty in the last few years include exhibitions such as Cave-Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China’s Silk Road; The Art of Alchemy which traveled to Berlin as: Alchemie: Die Grosse Kunst (“Alchemy: The Great Art”) at Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (“National Museums of Berlin”). In 2019 he was invited back to Berlin to teach a semester as the Rudolf Arnheim Visiting Distinguished Professor at Humboldt University. His 2012 Getty Graffiti Black Book Project became an exhibition in 2014, called SCRATCH, a collaborative installation with the Getty Black Book artists at ESMoA (El Segundo Museum of Art), and that original and unique suite of works on paper was published recently as L.A. Graffiti Black Book (Getty Publications 2021), and was sold out within 2 weeks. The 2nd printing is on a boat from China waiting for an open port at San Pedro where it can unload the shipment.