Thought Forms (1)
‘The Dove No.1’ by Hilma af Klint (1915)
Thought-Forms - A Record of Clairvoyant Investigation, published in 1901 by the Theosophical Society in London, was written by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, two leading figures in that organisation. The book describes and analyses various thoughts, emotions, and experiences, and the accompanying images, which are colourful, expressive, and evocative, could readily be shown in a gallery and pass as original creations. Significantly, however, they were made by three more or less unknown painters, ‘Mr. John Varley, Mr.Prince, and Miss Macfarlane’, who worked only on the basis of Besant’s and Leadbeater’s descriptions; barely credited in the book, they are seldom mentioned in other contexts and their authorship is considered of little importance. The visual impact of Thought-Forms was nonetheless strong and pervasive, and there is little doubt that it had significant influence on artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Paul Klee, among others, who have since come to be known as pioneers in the development of abstract art.
It is worth emphasising that the neither Besant nor Leadbeater ever said that the Thought-Forms illustrations had anything to do with artistic expression or even with the depiction of states of mind; they were visual impressions of psychic ‘auras’. This awkward fact tends to be ignored or brushed aside; a fairly recent essay, for example, suggests that Thought-Forms is essentially a book about synaesthesia and that its occult content can safely be dismissed as ‘pompous, pseudoscientific nonsense’. It may not be coincidental, though, that synaesthesia, once thought of as a rare and obscure ‘gift’ that enabled someone to blend words with colours, or music with smells, is now believed to be widespread, if not common; people as diverse as Kandinsky, Richard Wagner, Marilyn Monroe and David Hockney - as well as a formidable host of contemporary musicians such as Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Kanye West, and Frank Ocean - are described as synaesthetes. It is even thought to be a desirable trait; an article in ‘The Observer’ proposed that ‘developing the mysterious condition in the 96% of people who do not have it may help to improve learning skills, aid recovery from brain injury and guard against mental decline in old age’. ‘Pitchfork’, the online music magazine, declared that ‘studies appear to suggest that we’re all actually born with synaesthesia, but most of us lose it by the time we’re eight months old’. Attitudes have changed very quickly; although synaesthesia was first medically described in 1812, it was only in the 1980s that it was defined as a neurological ‘condition’. A decade later it had become so pervasive that organisations and associations were formed to enable synaesthetes to share information and experiences with each other.
In that light, it is perhaps not surprising that Hilma af Klint’s paintings and drawings, kept hidden from the world until twenty years after her death in 1944, and which have since become celebrated and popular, should also be considered a manifestation of synaesthesia. It is rather more unexpected that her family should agree so readily with that view, because af Klint was convinced that her work was guided by spirits, and that her mission was to help to ‘open humanity’s eyes to a life that lasts for eternity’. It is unlikely that she would have felt entirely comfortable with the idea that her work was simply the reflection of a ‘neurological condition’, however benign and interesting it might be. As in so much contemporary life, reliance on physicalist explanations of unusual or eccentric experiences tends to be reductive.
Two other women artists and seers, Georgiana Houghton and Emma Kunz, made work that is in many respects related to af Klint’s and, like her, they believed that their images had a spiritual purpose. Houghton (1814-1884) was sure that ‘spirits guided her hand’; her paintings, largely produced unconsciously, were dominated by kinetic swirls of colour that generated dense skeins of threaded lines. Some contained clearly identifiable forms; others were less defined or abstract. Kunz (1892-1963) would go into a trance, swing a pendulum over a large sheet of graph paper, and then plot the beautiful patterns that it described; the hundreds of drawings she made, which were never exhibited during her lifetime, were part of her healing and divinatory practice.
All three artists developed abstract visual languages in conjunction with their esoteric beliefs, as - at one remove - did Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater; questions relating to artistic authorship were of little importance to them, and this has made it difficult for their paintings and drawings to find a stable position in the hierarchies of the art world. While physicalist explanations of their talents and aspirations have some interest and may help to enhance their reputations among sceptics, it is nonetheless probable that their implicit rejection of materialist paradigms, both of knowledge and value, will continue to inhibit deeper acceptance and understanding of their work. That this perspective doesn’t appear to have affected the enthusiastic respect granted to their male counterparts suggests that gender may have provided further grounds for their relative obscurity. A recent exhibition of the work of Houghton, af Klint, and Kunz, perceptively entitled ‘World Receivers’, drew attention to the artists’ shared belief that creation must be understood as a form of ‘receiving’; it is hard to imagine that the same would ever be said, at least without qualification, about a group of Western male artists.
For further exploration:
Thought-Forms: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16269/16269-h/16269-h.htm
‘Victorian Occultism and the Art of Synesthesia’: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/victorian-occultism-and-the-art-of-synesthesia
The ‘benefits’ of synaesthesia: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/apr/27/benefit-synaesthesia-brain-injury-mental-decline
More on synaesthesia: https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-28/february-2015/surprising-world-synaesthesia
Hilma af Klint and synaesthesia: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ie/blog/sensorium/201903/hilma-af-klint-synesthete
‘Pitchfork’ on synaesthesia: https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/229-what-the-hell-is-synesthesia-and-why-does-every-musician-seem-to-have-it/
‘World Receivers’: https://www.lenbachhaus.de/en/visit/exhibitions/details/world-receivers
Mediumistic art: https://mediumisticart.com/artists-mediumistic-psychic-visionary-spiritual/
‘Glory be to God’ by Georgiana Houghton (1864)