Theosophy & Abstract Art

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I'm Quinn Rose, and I didn't go to art school, but that doesn't stop me from learning all about art.

Betty: And I'm Betty. I also didn't go to art school, but it doesn't stop me from learning about art either. And today's topic is actually something I'm not super familiar with, but I have read a bunch of stuff about it. So let's see how it goes.

Quinn: What are we talking about today, Betty?

Betty: So what I'm going to say is we're talking about a religion, but we're talking about a religion that has its own art movement. So it's, I'll explain the religion a little bit later, but basically the religion is called Theosophy. And we actually touched upon it a little bit when we were talking about Piet Mondrian. Cause he is one of the people that has, that follows this religious movement. And some of his paintings have to do with, with basically this movement. But I am going to start off by showing you some paintings.

Quinn: Okay. We're jumping right into it.

Betty: Do you want to kind of verbally describe what you see? Actually, sorry, let's start with the two on the left.

Quinn: Yeah, so I'm looking at two different paintings right now. They definitely are part of a set, I guess. It’s two landscape style paintings with black backgrounds, a bit of a textured black background and then centered is this large oval pink shape. It basically looks like a pink cloud. So the one on the top is mostly all pink, it’s some lighter pinks, some darker pinks, but it basically looks like a cotton candy cloud kind of shape taking up most of the image. And there's a small white eight in the bottom left corner. And then on the one below it in the bottom of left corner, there is a nine. And this one, it’s roughly the same shape, but it is a little bit different. The cotton candy cloud is a little bit different. It’s a darker pink and then within the darker pink, there is more of a black, gray and white kind of shape. It looks like it's dirty almost in the center.

Betty: Yeah, so you have just described two paintings that was done in 1905 by—she’s actually primarily known as like a writer and an educator. Her name is Annie Besant and she's a British, I guess some would call her a British writer and philosopher, but she also paints. So these are two paintings by Annie Besant. And what she describes is that, so the name of this, these paintings are Thought Forms. So she thinks of these as perceived auras that emanate from individuals to reveal their emotional and spiritual state. So the upper pink cloud, she says it's about “vague, pure affection that seen from someone who's happy and at peace with the world thinking dreamily of some friends.” And then the one below, it shows this affection intermixed with dull gray or dull selfishness. So basically she’s, she's painting these as not just emotions, but as a spiritual state. So it's taking the concept of painting what's in somebody's head in like an enlightened spiritual state. 

Quinn: Okay. So it's like, this is your brain. This is your brain on enlightenment 

Betty: Kind of, yeah. So do you want to describe what you see on the right? The painting you see on the right. 

Quinn: Sure. So then there's this painting that is a square. And most of the square is orange. Again, it's kind of a textured orange, but then in the center of the square, there is a circle. The left half of the circle has a, there’s like a vertical line dividing the circle in half and on the left side, there's a black semicircle. And then next to it, there is a white semi circle. And then on the right side of that split there is an orange and then a yellow and then a blue, the right side almost looks like kind of rainbow. And then the left side looks like a black and white rainbow, I guess. 

Betty: This is another painting that was also done in the early 1900s by an artist named Hilma Af Klint. She's a Swedish artist and she's a part of these five, a group of five women in Sweden, and they use seances to communicate with spirits of the dead. What she does is she will have one of these seances and she'll just start painting. And so what she says is like, she thinks the spirits are painting through her. So she says like, these are spirits painted through me and she says she draws great force from them. And she has no idea what paintings are supposed to depict, but she basically just starts painting and doesn't change, like she just automatically does the painting. She doesn't change a single brushstroke and in the end, a painting is just what the spirits have communicated to her and what she has just spilled onto the canvas. So this painting you were seeing on the right here is called the Swan. It basically is her representation of what the spirits have embodied her with and what she has spilled onto the canvas.

Quinn: Ah, yes. The Ouija board approach to art.

Betty: Yeah. So I will, okay. I'm going to talk now about what theosophy is. So these are two prominent artists from the theosophy movement, the theosophical society, it was founded in 1875. It's actually, so it's a spiritual organization that was founded in the United States. But it’s, a lot of it is based on the writings of this woman named Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. And so she is somebody who wrote these philosophical writings, they are an eclectic mix of a lot of Hinduism, Buddhism, but she also mix ancient Greek philosophy and modern science within this basically theological set of texts. And a lot of people basically started following this movement. It's basically it’s—I will just say I'm personally not a religious person, so I'm sorry if I end up like saying some of these things in not super respectful ways, but it just seems to me that this is a movement for people who don't actually follow any mainstream religions like Christianity or Judaism or Islam or any of these mainstream religious movements. And it's a new religious movement for people who basically have mixed a bunch of these different teachings from various points throughout history, into a new religious movement.

Quinn: So is the actual premise of the religion… I know we talked about this a little bit, but it was very surface level in the other episode we did. So is the actual premise of this religion that it is like taking all of these things from other existing religions or is that just kind of what ended up happening?

Betty: So it seems like it's kind of what ended up happening because as I'm doing my research, it seems like the society, they don't have any formal, like, dogma or established rituals. It's not like, it's not like these other religions where they have like these rituals and these set strict rules and guidelines. This just seems like, it just seems like a bunch of people in the late 19th century wrote a bunch of things that were spiritual because they were frustrated with modern science. They were basically frustrated with a lot of these like rational and enlightenment approaches and they wanted to go back to the spiritual world, but they, they just ended up writing a bunch of things about religion and they took it from various sources from history, but then those people who followed it, they basically were people who are looking for truth through these abstract ways of thinking is what it seems to be the case.

Quinn: Okay.

Betty: So basically there is a connection between theosophy and religion, and this is basically that—so it dates back to this movement called symbolism. And symbolism is a movement where these artists were—basically, they were rejecting the, they reject science and modernity and they wanted to turn away from the way—first, they wanted to turn away from impressionist depicting like urban subjects, like trains and buildings and like modern industrial movements. And they also wanted to get away from naturalism, which is depicting things in like realistic ways, you know, studying the human anatomy and as well as depicting things in these like natural scientific ways is that they were basically getting—trying to get away from rational thinking, which it sounds, which is like it's because they were frustrated with, with modernism and with science and technology, and they wanted to go back to this world of spirituality. And so the symbolism was led by Paul Gauguin and the painting I just showed you is a painting called Vision After the Sermon or Jacob Wrestling with the Angel. And this work basically is, this work as well as a lot of works by Gaugin were really important in this basically the symbolism movement, a lot of people used his concepts of he's using these like flat colors. He's not, he’s not using like, as you can see in this painting, he's not really using perspective. He's kind of just approaching it from kind of like a spiritual type of way. I don't know if you can see that in the painting.

Quinn: What do you mean by a spiritual type of way versus perspective? 

Betty: It's like, he's trying to have like this spiritual sense instead of like using scientific perspective or depicting these people in naturalistic ways, or like he's using colors that you wouldn't expect. Like he's being very overt with the use of color and flattening the picture in terms, instead of using these established established ways that scientific perspective of say like the Renaissance, you wouldn't expect a painting like this coming from like a Leonardo painting that uses scientific perspective.

Quinn: Yeah, okay.

Betty: So anyway, this is a, so a bunch of symbologists—so after Gaugin, there was this movement of this group of people called the, the Nabis, N A B I S. And it's after the Hebrew word for profit. So it's a bunch of, so this one is a painting by Paul Sérusier, and it's called the portrait of Paul Ronson in Nabby costume. And basically it's further, like these artists further using like symbols and wanting to like, achieve like some sort of spiritual enlightenment. But this is, this is still in the late 1800s before they started to go full abstraction. But as you can see the colors and the way that this figure is depicted is, it’s not natural. It's not like what you would expect of like a Renaissance painting or a neoclassical painting.

Quinn: The art traditions around this religion are very interesting to me because basically all religions have our traditions around them, of course. Christians just absolutely will not stop painting Jesus. Like that's, they're so into it. But it's interesting that a religious movement that like very specifically does not have the same kind of like specific core tenants as you were talking about. They're not, not the same kind of specific rules, I feel like creates a much looser ideas for like what art should be in relation to it. And the different ways that that can be interpreted as like, what is theosophical art look like? It probably looks like something else to any person who is inspired by it.

Betty: Yeah, and the next thing I'll move into is that a lot of artists, they, they start with depicting things in like naturalistic and realistic ways and they progressively move towards being more and more abstract. And what I'm going to show you right now is, I'm just going to show you like the full body of—not the full body of work, but like a bunch of different works by Wassily Kandinsky. He followed the theosophy movement. As you can see, like he kind of, if you look at this like painting he did in like 1898 of the Odessa port, like it's he's, he starts off painting very representational, like he's painting ships, he's painting like the water and he's painting, you know, one of these paint, one of these painters that starts off painting realistic things. But then if you move down towards the page, you'll see like more and more he's going towards abstraction. Like there's a painting called the Blue Rider in 1903 and he’s, so he says like the color blue is very significant to him from like a spiritual point of view. And he's kind of using that as—so this painting is basically one of the defining transitions that Kandinsky has from painting in like quite highly realistic ways into starting to be abstract. 

Quinn: I mean, that's a progression that we've noted from like, most modern artists that we've talked about. 

Betty: Yeah, but in, I think the significant thing with Kandinsky is that once you, if you scroll down to his abstract paintings, he has decided that he wanted to use this as an opportunity to explore the spiritual. So he, he wrote a text like, or a treatise called Concerning The Spiritual in Art in 1909. And he very much after this piece of writing, he started to explore not just lines and shapes in the abstract, but he's using this as a way to, again, this is like so hard to meet for me to describe as a non-religious person, but it seems like he is trying to achieve some sort of spiritual enlightenment with these, exploring these concepts.

Quinn: Okay. Interesting.

Betty: It seems like the theosophists and the artists who were influenced by this movement, they felt that like the truth was inaccessible through the scientific method and that there was this like, meta reality that exists beyond the reaches of human perception. And theosophy, they use this as a source to seek higher spiritual truths. And they feel like there's this aspect of art, as well as the world where that's like, there's, it's beyond the natural senses and they're using these colors and lines and shapes to kind of explore these concepts. 

Quinn: Forgive me for asking the obvious question, but how do lines and shapes help you explore those concepts?

Betty: They feel like the natural world is not adequate enough to, for them to explore the things that they need to explore. So they're using these geometric concepts to like achieve this level of like spiritual enlightenment. It's, it's really hard for me to describe, unless you are kind of like looking at these works where it's just showing like planes and shapes and colors.

Quinn: I find it really interesting how many abstract artists and like artists who we think of, of developing specific forms of abstraction were involved theosophy. Like Mondrian or like Kandinsky and these artists who are like pretty well-known and like, well collected in museums and all these other artists that you keep showing me like these different works that are all connected to theosophy and inspired by theosophy. It is like there was a whole movement of people who were developing abstract art as a form of this like spiritual experience that they were having. But you do not hear about theosophy. Like not just as like a casual person, who's like looking at Mondrian and Kandinsky in a museum. They're not, you don't get, like, you don’t get to learn about theosophy at the same time, which I think is very funny how it, it does seem like it was really influential for a certain era of artists. But it has largely been forgotten.

Betty: Yeah. And I think that's one of the reasons I kind of really wanted to look into this religious movement is that it seems like it really was highly influential to yeah, not just Kandinsky and Mondrian, but apparently Kazmir Malevich as well. And so it does just seem like these artists, they always—not always, but like quite often towards the ends of their lives and ends of their careers are going towards this high abstraction. And it seems like they're trying to achieve some sort of answer to the universe and everything or something through this means, but I'm not sure if they got there, obviously.

Quinn: No idea. I'm like, I don't know. Maybe some of them ascended to a higher plane. Like we don't know. My general impression of theosophy is that it is something that was like deeply personally felt by people who were involved in it. And I perhaps shouldn't use past tense so liberally, like I don't think that there are no followers of theosophy anymore, but like it's definitely past its heyday, as you would say. But in terms of these artists and the way that they were exploring it in their art, it does seem like they were, they're trying to convey feelings or trying to convey like a plane beyond our physical reality. And so of course it would be hard to describe and to explain exactly what they mean in just like spoken words. Like the whole point of it is that it's a really particular art form and it is chosen to be very specific and very personal. 

Betty: Yeah. That's a good way of putting it. So it's, yeah, it's very, it's very hard for me to describe exactly what Kandinsky or Cuca was going for in terms of their, like their lines and shapes, because they were exploring some personal, some personal creation on a, in their own spiritual way.

Quinn: Yeah. And if it was, this was helpful for them, great. Well, as we are wrapping up here, we do want to take a minute to tell you about another show on Relay FM, that if you like this show, you will probably like Make Do. It’s hosted by Julia Skott and Tiff Arment. Julia is a journalist and potter and Tiff is a glass artist and painter and photographer, and they both do tons of other stuff beyond those things actually. And they're constantly just making things and making art. And so the whole show is about that process, different kinds of arts that they are trying, their experiences with sort of this constant battle between like, validation as an artist, how money comes into art and how it shouldn't sometimes. It's a really interesting show and I really do think that if you like Pictorial, you will like Make Do. 

Betty: Yeah. And if you want to check out some recent or some really great episodes, one of them is the Myth of the Tragic Artist. Another one is Don't Tell me How to Hobby. So if you want to get started, I would suggest those two episodes.

Quinn: Yeah, absolutely. And you can find those at relay.fm/makedo, or just search for Make Do wherever you get your podcasts. And in the meantime, you can find our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial. You can also find us on Twitter or Instagram @pictorialpod, and you can find me on Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @articulationsv. And I'm also on YouTube as ARTiculations, and speaking of YouTube, we also upload these podcast episodes to YouTube under Pictorial Podcasts, usually a few weeks after the audio version’s out. So for this one, you can experience all the esoteric theosophy art as we talk about them, go by on the screen.

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!