What to do when, in the words of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, All that is solid melts into air? Times of upheaval inspire a search for alternative understandings of reality. This was as true a century ago as it is today. In a prefiguring of our own troubled moment, the rise of modern capitalism undermined long established social systems while new scientific discoveries challenged long accepted religious beliefs.
Then, as now, those dissatisfied with mechanistic explanations of life and society had two choices: retreat back to now discredited philosophies or seek other ways of understanding the forces reshaping human life. In the late 19th century, two phenomena emerged from this confusion. Many of the eras leading thinkers embraced the new science while rejecting a purely materialist vision of human existence. At the same time, artists moved beyond conventional representational strategies toward a radical new approach to art. In 1986, a now legendary exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art proposed a link between these two developments. The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 18901985 challenged prevailing formalist histories of modernism by tracing the origins of Western abstraction to a confluence of ideas about spirituality current at the turn of the last century.
Maurice Tuchman, the exhibition curator, threw down the gauntlet in the first line of his catalogue essay. He declared, Abstract art remains misunderstood by the majority of the viewing public. In a sprawling exhibition of works by more than 100 artists, he presented both canonical figures and little known practitioners, early modernist masters and contemporary artists, in each case revealing deep connections to spiritual, utopian, or metaphysical beliefs. At the time, his radical reconceptualization of the history of modernism landed like a thud. In 1998, author Charlene Spretnak interviewed him about the shows effect on art-world attitudes. He responded: None, whatsoever. But that assessment is no longer accurate. Where once it was, in the words of Rosalind Krauss, embarrassing to mention art and spirit in the same sentence, today it could not be more au courant.
Massimiliano Gionis 2013 Venice Biennale, titled The Encyclopedic Palace, was dedicated to spiritualist cosmologies of all kinds. Since that time, a steady drip of rediscoveries of art with occult themes has been felt. In 2014 and 2015, Marjorie Cameron (19221995), aka Cameron, had her occult art showcased at LA MoCAs Pacific Design Center (Songs for the Witch Woman) and Jeffrey Deitch in New York (Cinderella of the Wastelands).
A 2016 exhibition of British artist Georgiana Houghtons spirit drawings at the Courtauld in London drew huge crowds, the same year that Language of the Birds at New York Universitys 80WSE Gallery presented a cross-historical exploration of art inspired by Kabbalah, alchemy, hermeticism, and Tarot. Self-taught painter and telepathic healer Emma Kunz was featured at the Serpentine just last spring. And, of course, the Guggenheims Hilma af Klint show broke records for attendance last yearperhaps the moment it became clear to all that the new interest was truly a juggernaut.
