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Surely Modern Art is not Occult? It is Modern!
- Edited by Marco Pasi, Peter Forshaw, Wouter Hanegraaff
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- Book:
- Hermes Explains
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 24 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 02 July 2019, pp 29-38
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Summary
Without a doubt there are strong strains of esotericism and occultism in modern Western art (ca. 1860–1970). For instance, one often hears of the Theosophical and Anthroposophical affiliation of famous De Stijl artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), who described his art style, Neoplasticism, as “theosophical”. The occult interests and sources of other well-known abstract innovators such as Kazimir Malevich (1897-1935), Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and František Kupka (1871-1957) have been researched too, as has the widespread persistence of occult thought at the Bauhaus. The presence of occult themes in the ideas or works of avant-garde movements, such as Futurism and Surrealism, has also been charted, at least partially. Indeed, while certainly not every modern artist evinced a serious interest in Spiritualism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, modern ceremonial magic or other occult currents, the proportion of those who did among those artists generally qualified as more radical and avant-garde is remarkably high. If we look just at the formative avant-garde and modernist trends in European art in the first half of the twentieth century, and in particular at those canonised styles and (white male) artists we have come to associate with formal innovation and abstraction as well as with modernism in the arts overall, it is clear that understanding modern(ist) art as entirely separate from occultism is untenable. Indeed, it has been untenable at least since the path-breaking exhibition The Spiritual in Art (1986). Since then, several exhibitions and studies have added to the overall picture that, in the Global North, modern art, and as a part of that “the aesthetic experiments … that we call modernism,” drew significantly on the “discourses of the occult dominant during [this] period.”
Occultism and modernism are deeply intertwined, as several scholars have argued. In grossly simplified terms, both arose in response to, on the one hand, modernity and the cultural anxiety of being modern, and on the other, the heritage of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. The latter forced a confrontation with paradigms such as mind-body dualism, rationalism, the secularisation thesis, and a positivist understanding of history and civilisation, among other things. Modern art faced with modernity gave rise to modernism.
Surrealist Medievalism: A Case Study
- from II - Other Responses to Medievalism (and Authenticity)
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- By Tessel M. Bauduin, Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in Modern & Contemporary Art History at the University of Amsterdam and a laureate of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research's VI-programme for Excellence in Research.
- Edited by Karl Fugelso
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- Book:
- Studies in Medievalism XXVII
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 May 2018
- Print publication:
- 17 May 2018, pp 151-178
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Summary
For a movement conventionally counted among the (modern European) utopian avant-gardes, Surrealism was rather obsessed with the past. The array of historical figures one encounters in Surrealist sources is quite broad, and changed over time, but among the well-known persons claimed in one way or another as Surrealist predecessors are Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Isidore Ducasse/Comte de Lautreamont, Lewis Carroll, and the Marquis de Sade, as well as artists such as William Blake, Francisco Goya, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hieronymus Bosch, and Paolo Uccello. A less specific, but no less tangible sense of nostalgia for a past runs through the many different media that Surrealism produced as well. Overall, the Surrealist interest in the (European) past ran the whole gamut from late classical gnostic coins to modern Art Nouveau architecture, but figuring prominently in Surrealist sources are the nineteenth century and the Middle Ages. The last is of course very much an invented middle ages; that which Surrealism considered medieval or ascribed to the medieval extends well into what would today be qualified as early modern, and was furthermore frequently seen through the lens of the nineteenth century.
This essay will examine Surrealism's medievalism, a subject that, while not understudied, has hardly been exhausted either. The literary works of Andre Breton (1896–1966), one of Surrealism's main theoreticians, have been well studied, and attention has been drawn to his favoring of medievalizing motifs and topoi such as the (ruined) castle, grail and other quests, philosopher's stones, chivalrous love, and the serpent-woman Melusina of French medieval legend. Another important Surrealist theoretician was Georges Bataille (1897–1962), Breton's foremost frenemy and a trained medievalist and numismatist. His contributions to medieval and medievalism studies have been analyzed by Bruce Holsinger, among others. That these two central figures carried the flag of medievalism in their work and imparted their interest to their respective circles and the movement overall is clear. That a middle ages – in the form of visual art or literature, tropes, thought, paradigms, or historical or legendary figures – hold a special place in Surrealism's heart generally appears beyond dispute too. Still, studies of the medievalism of other Surrealists or of the widely diverging forms Surrealist medievalism and its reception trajectories can take are few.