The Quest for Gold

The Quest for Gold is an edited version of writings by visionary Andrew Fekete - a painter, architect, poet and writer, who died in 1986 from an Aids-related illness. Andrew, flâneur, walked the city; he was a man whose writings, to adapt the words of Baudelaire, serve as a mirror as vast as the crowd itself.

This anthology, collated by his brother Peter, comprises key works from Andrew Fekete's opus, and deals with his development as an artist, his visions and his experiment in Jungian alchemy - the intentional creation of visionary experiences to manifest unconscious archetypes to consciousness. The title is taken from an autobiographical novella that Andrew wrote in 1982, with extracts from his diaries also provided. The culmination of the anthology is the poem Punishment for the Transgressors in which Andrew confronts his impending death, thereby illustrating the connection between art and life.

The work, which is open to multiple interpretations, is witty and entertaining, dramatic and engaging, full of deep sentiment and self-reflection. We journey with Andrew in his Quest for Gold that occurs against the background of his sexuality and his membership of the gay community. We see into the mind of a man undertaking an experiment in the exploration of what Jung calls the contents of the collective unconscious in an attempt at self-healing and expansion of consciousness.

Andrew Fekete was a painter, writer and practicing Jungian alchemist. He died of an AIDS-related illness in 1986.